The Person God Opposes:

Let me introduce you to a prospective church member. He will attend every service, including special events. He will go on mission trips with a passion to convert the heathen. He will tithe, sing in the choir, read his Bible daily, and memorize Scripture. He will be happy to pray in corporate worship. He is thoroughly orthodox in his theology. He is an inerrantist and believes in Heaven and Hell. He never gets drunk, is not addicted to porn, never uses profanity, is a family man, loves his country fervently, weeps on July 4, and votes the right way. His reputation in the community is stellar. If any man ever earned the right to go to heaven, it is this man. His religion is certainly something to admire.

Sadly this is a man headed for hell. I have just introduced you to a twenty-first-century Pharisee! A Pharisee in the first century was not scorned as a legalist. No, he was looked up to as a model citizen and a person of piety and religion. Unfortunately Pharisees had, as Paul says, a “zeal for God, but not according to knowledge” (Rom 10:2). Amazingly we can have a passion for God yet not know God. We can be deceived, captured, and enslaved by the deadly lure of legalism. Tragically, those who have been raised in the church are the most susceptible to this deception. Our pride in our religious rituals, church practices, and cultural traditions blind us to both our great sinfulness and the great Savior who alone can rescue us from our sin.

In Mere Christianity C.S. Lewis writes,

There is one vice of which no man in the world is free; which everyone in the world loathes when he sees it in someone else; and of which hardly any people, except Christians, ever imagine that they are guilty of themselves. I have heard people admit that they are bad-tempered, or that they cannot keep their heads about girls or drink, or even that they are cowards. I do not think I have ever heard anyone who was not a Christian accuse himself of this vice. And at the same time I have very seldom met anyone, who was not a Christian, who showed the slightest mercy to it in others. There is no fault which makes a man more unpopular, and no fault which we are more unconscious of in ourselves. And the more we have it ourselves, the more we dislike it in others…The vice I am talking of is Pride or Self-Conceit…Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind.

And the Scriptures contain harsh language to convey the Lord’s disdain for pride:
• The LORD protects the loyal, but fully repays the arrogant. (Ps. 31:23)
• The LORD destroys the house of the proud. (Prov 15:25)
• Pride comes before destruction, and an arrogant spirit before a fall. (Prov. 16:18)
• I will put an end to the pride of the arrogant. (Isa. 13:11)
• As to the terror you cause, your presumptuous heart has deceived you. You who live in the clefts of the rock, you who occupy the mountain summit, though you elevate your nest like the eagle, even from there I will bring you down. This is the LORD’s declaration. (Jer 49:16)
• For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and the one who humbles himself will be exalted. (Luke 14:11)

Why is God so opposed to pride? It is because human pride is in opposition to God. It thinks more of itself than it should. It thinks more of itself than God does! And amazingly, such pride may be lurking in unsuspecting locations, such as in religion in the guise of legalistic bondage to the traditions of men.

In conclusion, there are basically only two approaches to religion, each of which can be summed up in a single word: do or done. The world says the problem is out there, and the solution is to answer the question, What can I do? The Bible says the problem is inside of us, and the answer is what Christ has done! You see, in legalism we think better of ourselves than Jesus does. But in salvation we think the same of ourselves as Jesus does: we are hopeless, helpless sinners in desperate need of a Savior. First Samuel 16:7 says, “Man does not see what the Lord sees, for man sees what is visible, but the Lord sees the heart.” When the Lord examines your heart, what does He see? Does He see a self-righteous legalist trusting in what “I do” or a humble sinner trusting only in what Jesus has done? The difference is of eternal significance.