Pride builds identities that leave no room for grace.
Lent is the season when Christians give things up: sugar, alcohol, social media, even coffee for the truly brave.
We give up small comforts for forty days as a way of remembering our frailty, Christ’s sacrifice, and examining our hearts. But if we’re honest, most of the things we give up are things we can live without. You can step away from Facebook for forty days and return on Easter morning to a quiet, humbling realization: nobody really noticed you were gone.
Those sacrifices might be inconvenient, but they’re manageable. Giving up pride is something else entirely. Because pride isn’t something we put in our coffee. It’s something we build our lives on. Pride is the quiet belief that we’re doing pretty well. That we’ve worked harder than most people. That we’re more disciplined, more thoughtful, more serious about our faith.
It’s the subtle conviction that we’ve mostly got our act together. And once you believe that, grace starts to feel like something other people need:
The people who struggle more.
The people who fail more.
The people who don’t try as hard.
Grace is for those other people. Pride tells us we’re doing just fine. Pride treats grace the same way we treat the pile of things at the end of someone’s driveway—the old computer desk with a “Free” sign on it—if it’s free, it must be something we don’t need.
Which is why Scripture speaks about pride with a seriousness that should make us uncomfortable.
James writes: “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble” (James 4:6).
Peter repeats the same warning: “God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble” (1 Peter 5:5).
God doesn’t simply dislike pride. He opposes it. The word carries the image of standing in battle formation against someone. Which means pride doesn’t just create a small spiritual problem. It quietly puts us on the opposite side of God.
When I Was Sure I Was Special
I remember the first day of Bible college orientation.
I was sitting in the auditorium with a few hundred other students, wide-eyed and eager. We were all there because we believed God had called us into ministry. It felt electric. Holy, even.
I was convinced I was exactly what the church needed.
But if I’m honest, something else was happening in my heart. I was convinced I was exactly what the church needed. I was young, passionate, serious about Scripture, and ready to change the world. I sat there listening to the president of the school address the new students, and I distinctly remember thinking something ridiculous.
He’s looking right at me.
In my mind it wasn't a coincidence. I was convinced God had somehow revealed to him that I was destined to do something significant. I truly believed I was going to be one of the great ones.
Not that I would have said it out loud. But deep down? I believed it. That’s the thing about pride. It rarely announces itself. It just quietly builds a story in your head where you’re the main character.
Fast forward about twelve years.
I’m pastoring a church in a small town in Central Oregon. Like many pastors, I had built a large part of my identity around preaching. I worked hard at it. I studied constantly. I cared deeply about communicating Scripture clearly and faithfully. And I was pretty proud of it.
One day I was meeting with a man from our church who was helping lead our youth ministry. I respected him, and I wanted his perspective on how things were going.
So I asked a question that, at the time, felt safe - “If you could change one thing about our church, what would it be?”
I expected something like programs or outreach or maybe the music.
Instead he said something I wasn’t prepared for.
“Your preaching.”
Just like that. No hesitation. No softening.
And in that moment something inside me tightened. I smiled politely, but inside I was offended. Because he had just touched the one place where my pride lived. My preaching wasn’t just something I did. It was who I was. Or at least who I thought I was.
Pride Builds Identities Grace Can’t Fit Into
Here’s what I’ve slowly learned since: pride builds identities that leave no room for grace.
When we believe we’re competent enough, disciplined enough, faithful enough, or talented enough, grace starts to feel unnecessary. We don’t say that out loud, of course. But we start living as if it’s true. Grace becomes something we believe in theologically but don’t really need personally. That’s why in Scripture humility is more than a virtue; it’s the doorway to grace.
James doesn’t say God gives grace to the impressive. He doesn’t say God gives grace to the hardworking. He doesn’t say God gives grace to the morally disciplined. He says God gives grace to the humble.
Why? Because humility is the realization that, in and of ourselves, we are something of a spiritual dumpster fire. And when that truth finally sinks in, grace has somewhere to land.
The Freedom of Not Being Impressive
Pride is exhausting. It constantly forces us to maintain the illusion that we’re doing well. That we’re spiritually mature. That we’re competent. That we’re respectable. But humility does something very different. It frees us from the need to be impressive.
“Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves” (Phil. 2:3–4).
Notice what Paul doesn’t say. He doesn’t say humility means pretending you’re worthless. Christian humility isn’t self-hatred. It’s the honest recognition that everything we have is grace.
Our faith? Grace.
Our gifts? Grace.
Our salvation? Grace.
Which means we no longer have to protect our reputations. We can admit when we’re wrong. We can listen to criticism. We can confess sin. We are actually free to grow because our identity is no longer built on our performance. It’s built on Christ.
The Gift of Being Brought Low
Looking back, I’m grateful for that awkward conversation about my preaching. At the time it bruised my ego. But it revealed a deeper problem: I had built my sense of worth on something fragile and fleeting. And God loves us too much to let fragile things hold our identity together.
God uses these humbling moments to expose our idolatry. What feels like a painful experience is often a glimpse into the law—God’s holy standard that reveals just how far we’ve fallen short. “You shall have no other gods before me” (Ex. 20:3). And when the law exposes our idols, it does what the law always does: it puts us to death.
That painful conversation was only the beginning. Over the next several years God began unraveling the pride that had quietly wrapped itself around my identity. What I thought was simply a calling to pastoral ministry had slowly become something more dangerous. It had become my source of meaning. My sense of value. My proof that my life mattered.
Those years were painful and disorienting. The unraveling was slow and, at times, gut-wrenching. Eventually it led to a decision I never imagined I would make when I first sat in that Bible college auditorium full of confidence.
I stepped away from pastoral ministry.
What I once believed was the place where I would find purpose and significance had, in subtle ways, become a false god—something I depended on to give me the meaning, value, and worth that can only be found in Christ. And in losing the identity I had built around it, I began to discover something far better: grace.
The Gift Waiting on the Other Side of Pride
Here’s the truth about pride. It makes us work incredibly hard to prove that we’re worthy.
Worthy of acceptance.
Worthy of love.
Worthy of being used by God.
Yet these are all things we already have in Christ apart from our works.
When our hands are finally empty–they’re ready to receive grace.
The gospel frees us to acknowledge that we were never worthy to begin with. Grace is not a reward for the people who finally get their act together. Grace is a gift for the people who finally admit they never could.
Which means the path to getting over our pride is not another thing to add to our to-do list. It’s just simply being honest about our condition. Honest about our weaknesses. Honest about our failures. Honest about our desperate need for help.
That’s why God gives grace to the humble. Not because humility impresses him. But because humility is the moment we throw up our arms in surrender and open our hands in admission of our helplessness. And when our hands are finally empty–they’re ready to receive grace. It’s here where the command to have no other gods, becomes the promise that you indeed have no other gods because they have all been vanquished in Christ.
So maybe this Lent, we give up the very thing we’ve spent our lives chasing: improving ourselves. Or proving ourselves. The exhausting project of self-made worth.
Maybe we surrender the quiet belief that we’re doing better than most people. And there, emptied of our pride, we can finally receive what was waiting for us all along: grace.
