For the LORD of hosts has a day against all that is proud and lofty, against all that is lifted up—and it shall be brought low. Isaiah 2:12
Sometimes we brush pride off as being one of those low level, ‘respectable sins’ so that it never makes into our ‘sins that need to be repented of’ box. The reason for this faulty analysis is having a wrong understanding of what pride really is. As we see in our text God takes pride very seriously and therefore, so should we. Allow J. Piper from his book, ‘Desiring God’ to help us understand what pride is.
“Pride is the presumption that we can be happy without depending on God as the source of our happiness and without caring if others find their happiness in God. Pride is the passion to be happy contaminated and corrupted by two things: 1) the unwillingness to see God as the only fountain of true and lasting joy, and 2) the unwillingness to see other people as designed by God to receive our joy in Him. If you take the desire to be happy and strip away from it God as the fountain of your happiness, and people as the recipients of your happiness, what you have left is pride. Pride is the pursuit of happiness anywhere but in the glory of God and the good of other people.”