Love is Not Proud 1 Corinthians 13:4 Broadcast Dates: May 11-12, 2021 Steve DeWitt All of my nieces and nephews are favorite nieces and nephews, so one of my favorites is Abby, the second child of my brother Scott. When Abby was around five years old, my brother had run into the store and Abby was sitting on her Mom Dani’s lap in the front seat while they waited. Dani watched as Abby was looking at herself in the rear view mirror. She looked at her face one way. She looked at her face another way. Finally she said, “Mommy, I like me.” At least children are honest. As we get older we learn to hide those naked revelations of self-absorption. Hopefully it moderates but we always have plenty of inward, I like me. Even someone who obsesses over how much they don’t like themselves, even hate themselves, is displaying a destructive obsession with self. Where does all this self-obsession come from? One word: Pride. Of everything said about love in 1 Corinthians 13, this is the core of our failure to agape. The presence of all the other characteristics of agape love flow from the degree to which pride is either dominant or not. It is a zero sum relationship. The more pride, the less agape. The more agape, the less pride. They cannot and will not cohabitate. This is the core of whether we will love or not. Get this and we get all the others with it. Of all the messages from chapter 13, this is the hardest to speak on. I know a lot about pride because the battle with it is so much a part of my spiritual life. I posted on Facebook this week, “Would someone else please preach this message for me?” I had no takers. Apparently my Facebook friends struggle with pride too. Let’s read the text from 1 Corinthians 13: Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;" (1 Corinthians 13:4-5) Our focus today is on Love does not boast; it is not arrogant. Arrogance. Boasting. These two appropriately go together because a sure sign that you think you are wonderful is that you try verbally to convince others of the same. The Greek words behind them are helpful. The word for arrogant means, to be puffed up; to be inflated. The word for boast also refers to air. It means to be a windbag; to blow and blather on about yourself. We might say, He is full of himself (arrogance) and he is full of hot air (boast). The one flows from the other. Perhaps a helpful illustration of this is a balloon. Balloons make themselves appear bigger than they really are. What is required? The balloon needs to inflate itself [Steve inflates the balloon] and with an inflated sense of itself it can make a lot of noise about itself [Steve lets the air out of the balloon]. What is the difference between pride, boasting, and arrogance? Pride is like the air in the balloon. You can’t see it, but you see its effect. Arrogance is how pride looks to other people. It’s the awareness to others that we have an overestimation of our importance. Boasting is what pride sounds like when it talks about itself. Pride is the air. Arrogance is the inflation. Boasting is the sound. Church services at First Church of Corinth looked a like a balloon festival. Chapter 12 shows that a big source of their pride was spiritual gifts. Remember that spiritual gifts are those 1 | P a g e enablements for ministry given to each Christian by the Holy Spirit. Some are more public. Some are more behind the scenes. At Corinth, those with public gifts had superiority complexes and those without had inferiority complexes. The assumption they made was that spiritual gifts indicated spiritual maturity. The more public or spectacular, the more they thought the person was spiritual. This inflated the publicly-gifted Christians’ sense of self-worth. In Corinth, those without the public gifts also had great self-absorption as seen in their resentment of those who had them. Both reveal pride. It’s similar to what happened when James and John quietly approached Jesus asking to someday sit at His right hand and His left when He came into His kingdom (Mark 10:35ff). The other disciples were indignant that James and John would make such a request. Why? Likely they wanted to be at His right and left too. It is always easy to identify pride in other people. It is much harder to see it in ourselves. In fact, ask yourself, Why does pride in other people bother me so much? Why do we not like it when we see people aspiring to sit at Jesus’ right hand or thinking they’ve already arrived there? Our own pride resents pride in other people. Pride’s Prototype While pride has many different expressions, it begins from the same place. The first ever expression of pride was not from a human but an angel. Satan was created by God. God created Satan more beautiful and gave him more authority than any other angel. His gifts of power and majesty were actually what led to his downfall. • Your heart was proud because of your beauty; you corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor. (Ezekiel 28:17) • You said in your heart, ‘I will ascend to heaven; above the stars of God I will set my throne on high; I will sit on the mount of assembly in the far reaches of the north; I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.’ (Isaiah 14:13-14) Somewhere in the dark recesses of the mind and will of the greatest angel ever created there came a thought, While I am the greatest of all angels, I want to be more. I want to be equal with God Himself. The toughest instrument to play in any orchestra is second fiddle. Pride inflated his balloon. His beauty and majesty were his downfall because they inflated his sense of self and fed his desire for more glory. He wanted to be more. He wanted to be God. It is interesting to consider how Satan tempted Eve. But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” (Genesis 3:4-5) How did Satan know this was a powerful temptation? His own heart followed the same destructive path – the desire to be like God; to be more than I am. Pride is very aware of how it stands compared to others. This is why you can make a lot of money, but if you find out your colleague is making a little more, it bothers you so much. Pride is competitive. It competes for glory and praise. It was said of King Henry VIII that he wanted to be the child at every dedication, the bride at every wedding, and the corpse at every funeral. Pride wants all the attention. Pride inflates our balloon. Inflation leads to exaltation which leads to bloviation. Pride. Arrogance. Boasting. 2 | P a g e Why Love is Not Proud While this is a message on pride, it really is a message on love and how love is not this way. Love is not arrogant. Love does not boast. How does love deflate pride? Agape Love = Self-giving for the good and joy of another People self-give for others and do so every day - moms for their children, soldiers for each other, civil servants for their community. However, true agape love that brings delight to God is different than mere human self-giving. As verses 1-3 point out, lots of people do lots of religious and moral things, but in the end they don’t mean anything to God. True agape love seeks the good and joy of others because it has been humbled under the greatness of God in the glory of Christ’s self-giving on the cross for Jesus’ sake. Pride orients around self and wants to make self look good. Agape orients around the gospel and wants to make Christ look good. Their actions may be the same outwardly but their motivation is entirely different. Agape doesn’t feel the need to impress people or be viewed by others as better or even for other people to know about its self-giving. Agape’s audience is God. Love is the death of self. Who is the humblest person in our church? The truly humble Christian is the person who estimates themselves as being the worst sinner in the room. The one who actually thinks they are the proudest and the worst. How do we get there? The cross. The cross and the gospel are God’s antidote to man’s pride. Jesus is the only man on earth who had the right to exalt Himself because He was the Son of God and King of the Universe. Yet, these rights that were His, He let go (Philippians 2) and made Himself a servant and died for sinners. Here’s the irony, Jesus actually had something to boast about, but for Him it would be no exaggeration.