Deadly Poison For The Heart

Paul Earnhart

There is a deadly sin from which no man is entirely free yet nearly all find repulsive in others. Actually, the more one is possessed by it the more he resents it in those around him. And yet this sin is rarely confessed.

This poisonous evil is pride or self-conceit. In its worst stages it degrades to arrogance and insolence. It keeps the most awful company. “For … out of the heart of men,” Jesus said, “proceed evil thoughts adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, deceit, lewdness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness” (Mark 7:21, 22). And yet in full reality pride is worse than all the sins of the flesh because it is a spiritual lust, a drive for power and supremacy over all others. Angels, wholly spiritual beings, can be affected and destroyed by it (1 Timothy 3:6; Jude 6).

Pride is the complete anti-God state of mind which reaches to the very center of the genius of sin. Like Eve we all seem to be more seduced by the thought of becoming “like God” than by the lesser more narrow lusts. Pride is all encompassing.

Earnhart, P. (1998). Heart Lines: Deadly Poison For The Heart. Christianity Magazine, 15 (11), 9.