*This is the second part of a two-post series of Pride and Grace: How to Know God is Opposing You*
What if I told you that God opposes some people? That there are some people God does not give His grace to? How would you respond to something like that? Does it conflict with what you believe about God and His love for us?
He also withholds grace from some people.
The prideful—by their own pridefulness—cannot receive grace.
We might like it to be otherwise, but while God gives grace to the humble, He withholds it from the proud.
While humility presupposes contentment, pridefulness does something a little different. It’s not the opposite of what humility produces, which we might think to be discontentment. Instead, pridefulness produces a sense of sufficiency.
In other words, instead of simply not being satisfied with what you have, if you are prideful you would be convinced of the sufficiency of your own efforts to be content, or to gain more. So this idea of sufficiency supersedes discontentment.
Biblically speaking, pridefulness is what keeps people from experiencing the grace of God in a personal context. What I mean is that pridefulness produces a sense of self-sufficiency which naturally negates the need for forgiveness. Forgiveness is a stupid word in the ears of pride and self-sufficiency.
That’s why the prideful cannot receive God’s grace in a personal, salvific way. It cannot accept the need for forgiveness, because it cannot perceive the danger of its way. When a mind becomes plagued with pride and self-sufficiency, it is also blinded to the present condition of the soul.
And if you’re living on the fumes of sufficiency, you are at the same time rejecting God’s gift of grace.
So… being opposed by God is directly related to not receiving grace.
It’s not that He doesn’t want to give people grace, it’s that some just won’t receive it. Let’s remember, we’re not talking about grace to live, or to breath, or to experience life on this planet. We’re talking about grace unto salvation. There are those who simply want nothing to do with God.
Other manifestations of pride can be seen in those who think they’re okay with God because of the sufficiency of their own morality. It’s dangerous because major blindness and ignorance is involved. We should be careful not to assume we are in the green here!
I’m talking about us Christians. Just because you’ve received grace unto salvation doesn’t mean you have lost the tendency to mentally revert to pridefulness. It’s subtle, and it sneaks up without warning. That’s why you always need to be on your guard, and “resist the devil” by submitting to God in humility (James 4:7).
Can’t think of a better example of this other than Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. He didn’t want to experience the weight of the sin punishment, but He did it anyway. Jesus submitted to the will of the Father, and Satan couldn’t do a thing to Him. I think Jesus wants us to have that same desire for God’s will.
What are some ways that pride creeps into our lives? What keeps us from receiving God’s grace?
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