Don't become puffed up!

I am preparing a message on qualifications of an elder from 1 Timothy 3. Verse 6 reads, "He must not be a recent convert, or he may become puffed up with conceit and fall into the condemnation of the devil." Elders must be humble.

We all must be humble for "pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall" (Proverbs 16:8).

Pride is what made the devil fall from being one of the most beautiful and exalted of all angels to taking up the role of God's archenemy.

Defeating pride is a lifelong pursuit. Pride is one of the three main categories of sin (1 John 2:15).

To defeat pride and cultivate humility we must identify pride, see its seriousness, confess sin, and become broken in spirit.

Below is a list that reminds us that pride is a hideous sin and that humility is a great virtue. Many of these quotes were compiled from Wayne Mack's book Humility: The Forgotten Virtue.

"Humility is "the contrary grace"—Cotton Mather

"It takes many forms and shapes and encompasses the heart like layers of an onion—when you pull off one layer, there is another underneath."—Jonathan Edwards

"It is hard starving this sin, as there is nothing almost but it can live upon."—Richard Mayo

"I know I am proud; and yet I do not know the half of that pride."—Murray M'Cheyne

"I am more afraid of pope 'self' than of the pope in Rome and all his cardinals."—Martin Luther

"I endeavored to take a view of my pride as the very image of the Devil, contrary to the image and grace of Christ; as an offense against God, and grieving of His Spirit; as the most unreasonable folly and madness for one who had nothing singularly excellent and who had a nature so corrupt."—Cotton Mather

"I kept a private fast for light to see the full glory of the Gospel. . . and for the conquest of all my remaining pride of heart."—Thomas Shepard

"That demon of pride was born with us, and it will not die one hour before us. It is so woven into the very warp and woof or our nature, that till we are wrapped in our winding sheets we will never hear the last of it."—Charles Spurgeon

"Pride is the essential vice, the utmost evil. It is the one vice of which no man in the world is free and of which hardly any people. . . ever imagine they are guilty themselves."—C.S. Lewis

"Pride is the mother of all evils"—Chrysosotom

"Those who think too much of themselves don't think enough."—Amy Carmichael

"Man is naturally a proud piece of flesh. This sin runs in the blood, but the godly do not allow themselves in it. Our first parents fell by their pride. They aspired to deity. There are the seeds of this in the best of us, but the godly do not allow themselves in it. They strive to kill this weed of pride by mortification. But certainly where this sin reigns and prevails, it cannot stand with grace. You may as well call him who lacks discretion a prudent man, as him who lacks humility a godly man. . . It is better to lack anything than humility. It is better to lack gifts rather than humility. No, it is better to lack "the comforts of the Spirit" than lack humility."—Thomas Watson

"I must try to describe pride to you. I might paint it as being the worst malformation of all the monstrous things in creation; it hath nothing lovely in it, nothing in proportion, but everything in disorder. It is altogether the very reverse of the creatures which God hath made, which are pure and holy. Pride, the first-born son of hell, is indeed like its parent, all unclean and vile, and in it there is neither form, fashion, nor comeliness.

In the first place, pride is a groundless thing. It standeth on the sands; or worse than that, it puts its foot on the billows which yield beneath its tread; or worse still, it stands on bubbles, which soon must burst beneath its feet. Of all things pride has the worst foothold; it has no solid rock on earth whereon to place itself. We have reasons for almost everything, but we have no reasons for pride. Pride is a thing which should be unnatural to us, for we have nothing to be proud of."—Charles Spurgeon

"There is one voice of which no man in the world is free, which everyone in the world loathes when he sees it in someone else, and which hardly any people except Christians ever imagine that they are guilty of themselves. The only people who do not see it that way are Christians. There is no fault that makes a man more unpopular, no fault which we are more conscious of in ourselves. And the more we have it in ourselves, the more we dislike it in others. According to the Christian teachers, the essential vice, the utmost evil, is pride. Unchastity (unfaithfulness), anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that are mere flea bites in comparison. It was through pride that the devil became the devil. Pride leads to every other vice. It is a completely anti-God state of mind."—C. S. Lewis

"Nothing sets a Christian so much out of the devil's reach than humility."—Jonathan Edwards

"There is nothing into which the heart of man so easily falls as pride, and there is no vice which is more frequently, and emphatically, and more eloquently condemned in Scripture."—Charles Spurgeon