For Saturday February 4, 2023
1 Timothy 3:6
[An elder must not be] a novice, lest being puffed up with pride he fall
into the same condemnation as the devil.
The late theologian Francis Schaeffer wrote that when we violate one of the Ten Commandments, we actually violate two. Violating any other commandment means first violating the tenth: “You shall not covet.” To want another god, another day to work, to fail to honor our parents, to steal from another person … all are expressions of covetousness—the desire to take for ourselves.
Pride is likely another type of “root” sin, since it appears from Scripture that it was the first sin ever committed. Before the creation of man, when Satan was the “son of the morning” (Isaiah 14:12), he rose up in pride against God and declared he would “be like the Most High” and “exalt [his] throne above the stars of God” (Isaiah 14:13–14). Pride is the motivation that tempts us to put ourselves at the center of the universe, to make ourselves more important than anyone else. Pride leads to conflict and condemnation with us, just as it did with Satan. When you encounter conflict in your path, check first to see if pride is involved.
Repenting of pride—“me-first-ism”—releases us to heal conflicts by becoming servants to others.
It is . . . pride that feedeth at the root of all the rest of our sins.
RICHARD BAXTER
FOR THE LOVE OF GOD 