The Bible says,

“Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall” (Proverbs 16:18 NIV84).

“For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted” (Luke 14:11 NIV84).

Why is this so? What is the problem with pride? Why is pride a sin?

Is pride a sin merely because God said not to have it?

Is it a sin because it upsets God and antagonizes Him by trying to compete with Him?

Is it a sin because it started with Lucifer, and if he started something, it must be bad?

Or is there something about reality, design law, how life is created to function, that makes pride wrong—because in some way, it is harmful, it injures, it causes death?

And what is it about pride that, because of how reality works, causes everyone who clings to it to be lost in the end?

Pride is the sin of having an inflated, grandiose, superior opinion, attitude, or sense of self that is not reality-based, that denies objective truth. Thus, pride always leads to destruction because all created beings are finite, not supreme, limited in our understanding, and it makes our own self the final authority, the one who knows best, which means we cut ourselves off from reality, from truth; we refuse correction and, therefore, error after error becomes incorporated into our minds, hearts, and characters; and we degrade, decay, and take ourselves out of harmony with God, heaven, reality, and life—and the only result is ruin and death. Pride, being so full of confidence in self, closes the heart and mind to healing and correcting truth.

Whereas the humble, those who acknowledge their limitations, their weakness, their lack of knowing all things, not only acknowledge their need of a Savior, but also their need for ever-advancing truth. They become lovers of truth and have an inner framework (mind/heart) that is eager to be corrected, to update, to learn, to grow, to mature, to develop as they are able to comprehend truth. Thus, they will be exalted, not by some external award ceremony but by reality, by their actual growth in truth, love, and likeness to God—they, in reality, grow brighter and more capable and more like Jesus in all things.

Pride comes from focusing upon self and placing more value upon oneself than objective reality merits. This self-focus with an unreal inflation of oneself will always incite internal insecurity and fear because that is the natural result of believing things that are untrue. When we believe something contrary to reality, our internal alarm system activates, attempting to alert us to the danger of stepping out of harmony with how reality and life function. But the proud resist the truth because it would require humbling themselves, and therefore, they deny reality and reinforce the arrogant and proud internal self-distortion to protect against the emerging fear and insecurity—a terrible reinforcing loop! Pride incites fear and insecurity, and fear and insecurity inflame pride.

Pride is also intimately connected with one’s perceptions of self in relationship to others. The rising insecurity from their false, inflated view of self is threatened by the objective skills, successes, and achievements of others. Thus, the proud constantly compete and compare themselves to others from a position of envy and jealousy: “I am as good as they are. I could do that just as well as they can; in fact, I could do it better than they are doing it. It’s not fair that I never get called on, never get the opportunities to demonstrate my wonderfulness. They get all the breaks.”

The Progenitor of Pride

Speaking about Lucifer, the Bible says:

Your heart became proud on account of your beauty, and you corrupted your wisdom because of your splendor (Ezekiel 28:17 NIV84).

In heaven, Lucifer turned his mind, heart, and affections away from God and began to adore and admire himself. He allowed his mind to form conclusions and opinions about himself that misled him—that his beauty, talent, skill, and abilities were innately his, originating from him and not gifts from God.

By turning his mind and heart away from love, thankfulness, and appreciation for God for all of his blessings, and focusing upon self, he introduced error into his own heart and mind—that he was greater, better, and more deserving than objective reality merited. He also compared himself to Christ and became jealous of the worship Jesus was receiving. Rather than recognizing reality—that he, as a created being, had been blessed by God beyond every other created being—having begun to bask in the glow of his own splendor, he introduced lies, distortions, and falsehoods about himself into his own mind. When reality presented Jesus, who is fully God, receiving reality-based and appropriate worship from the other heavenly beings, Lucifer’s distorted view was threatened. Lucifer either had to accept truth, humble himself, return to reality, and worship Christ and give thanks again to God for every talent, skill, ability, and blessing he had, or choose to resist truth, create more self-inflated fantasies strengthening pride, ultimately leading to the self-imposed delusion that he deserved to be worshiped, that he deserved to sit on God’s throne:

How you are fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How you are cut down to the ground, you who weakened the nations! For you have said in your heart: “I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God; I will also sit on the mount of the congregation on the farthest sides of the north; I will ascend above the heights of the clouds, I will be like the Most High” (Isaiah 14:12–14 NKJV, emphasis mine).

Lucifer’s pride led him to assert that he should rise up to the station Christ held and sit on the throne only the Godhead sits upon. But since he is a creature and not Creator, his pride introduced into his mind fantasy, fiction, and falsehood that are contrary to reality and, therefore, incites fear and insecurity. His fear that he would not receive what he now believed was rightly due him motivated him to act selfishly to seek to protect and advance himself, and he set about his warfare in heaven (Revelation 12:7). He began to lie and misrepresent God, seeking to turn the hearts and minds of angels away from God and to align with him.

Pride is antagonistic to truth and love. It is rooted in a false grandiosity about self and, combined with fear, results in selfishness, jealousy, the denial of truth, and the rejection of love.

Having pride is not just rule-breaking; it is a fundamental, structural, and operational break from how God has built life to function. It cuts one off from truth and love and corrupts the heart, mind, and character, making the prideful unable to be reached by truth and love.

The arrogant do not experience truth with thankful rejoicing in the opportunity to grow, but they respond to truth with hatred, for they experience truth as an attack, a threat, an attempt to hurt, diminish, embarrass, or degrade them. Thus, Satan, the proud rebel, wars against God by all manner of lies and distortions about God:

For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ (2 Corinthians 10:3–5 NIV84, emphasis mine).

Satan’s warfare is not physical; it is a war of ideas, motives, and attitudes of the heart and mind. Satan, the father of lies, exists in a self-made world of fiction, delusion, and fantasy in which he is the victim of an abusive and unfair Creator. He uses every skill at his disposal in his efforts to corrupt our hearts and minds with his delusion, with his distortions, with his jealousy, anger, sense of victimhood, with his fear and insecurity, and with his pride. He presents God as an imperial rule-maker who uses power to punish rule-breaking, as the source of pain and death inflicted for so-called justice’s sake, and as a being who plays favorites and is unfair.

But God has provided divine weapons to demolish the strongholds of fear, insecurity, lies, guilt, and shame. He has provided reality-based truth, achievement, evidence, of His love, grace, compassion, forgiveness, and trustworthiness. He loved us so much that He sent His only Son to deliver us, save us, heal us, redeem us, and protect us. He reveals truth, reality—that Jesus, though by nature God, did not think equality with God was something to cling to, but surrendered it all in love in order to save you and me (Philippians 2:5–8).

Jesus said that when we know the truth, the truth will set us free (John 8:32). Jesus is the truth—the truth about God, the truth about reality as God designed life to function. God is fully manifest in Christ, and Christ has revealed by action, by deed, by accomplishment, that He loves us more than power or position or adoration. Love is not self-seeking, and God is, in truth, love and He gives constantly of Himself for the good of all His creatures. Lucifer’s pride in self, his delusions that God is unfair, that he is being treated unjustly, are all exposed as false, and God is glorified in Christ as perfect, holy, true, and completely trustworthy. 

When we see past our own fears and insecurities, when we see the true character of God as revealed in Christ, we humble ourselves in trust and open our heart to God. Then the Holy Spirit enters and brings us the life of Christ (Galatians 2:20), and we are reborn with a new spirit (John 3:3) and no longer live driven by fear and the desperate need to promote self, but live in trust and the wonderful desire to promote Christ. As Paul wrote, “you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship” (Romans 8:15 NIV84).

Pride, self-focus, self-exaltation, always leads to destruction because it cuts the prideful off from reality and encodes error, distortion, decay, and degradation, ultimately leading to death. It closes the heart and mind to correcting and saving truth. There is no other possible outcome other than destruction.

But when we are won back to trust based on the truth revealed by Jesus and humble ourselves and open our hearts, then we are filled with the Spirit of truth and love, which results in healing—truth replaces lies, order replaces disorder, love replaces fear, joy replaces worry, trust replaces distrust, peace replaces guilt and shame—and we are brought into unity, oneness, coherence, alignment with God and heaven.

Reality is exactly as Jesus said: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:3 NIV84).