God: "I looked for someone to take a stand for me, and stand in the gap" (Ezekiel 22:30)
1. Pride Is the Root of All Evil (Genesis 3:5; 1 Timothy 3:6; 1 John 2:15-17). 2. God Hates Pride (Proverbs 8:13; 16:5; Isaiah 23:9; Daniel 4:29-37; James 4:6; 1 Peter 5:5). 3. God Loves Humility (Proverbs 11:2, 15:33, 18:12, 29:23; Isaiah 57:15, 66:2; Micah 6:8; Luke 14:11; 1 Peter 5:6). 4. What Pride Is Not: a. Acknowledging and appreciating the gifts and abilities God has given you. b. The presence of godly desire, ambition and purposeful direction in your life (1 Timothy 3:1). c. Acknowledging the work of God within you. d. The pursuit of excellence. e. Defending and proclaiming the truth of Scripture. 5. Pride Is Deceptive (John 8:31-36; Jeremiah 49:16; Proverbs 16:2, 21:2).
If the love of Christ for the church is the standard of the husbands love for his wife, the least that this standard means is that the love must be self-sacrificial and for her good, for that is the way Christ loved the church. Always, therefore, the Christian husband must be thinking of expressing his love for his wife not only in terms of the characteristics found in 1 Corinthians 13, but with these two immensely practical tests: In what ways am I diligently seeking her good? And how is this pursuit of her good costing me something, prompting me to sacrifice something, as an expression of my love for her – in exactly the same way that the Savior sought the church’s good at the cost of His life?
