What is the root tactic in putting the axe to pride?

What is the most deep and fundamental thing that needs to be done in order to target with

a lethal gun, this unbelief of pride?

How do we win the lifelong fight against pride?

That's the question John Piper answers from 1 Corinthians 4.7 in this episode of Light and Truth.

This sermon was originally preached at Bethlehem Baptist Church on December 18, 1988.

Pride is a subcategory of unbelief.

You can see it real clearly if I define it like this.

Unbelief is a turning away from the all-satisfying Christ to look for and find satisfaction in anything else.

And pride is a turning away from that all-satisfying Christ in order to find satisfaction very specifically in self and being made much of by others.

So you can see that pride is a species of unbelief.

Therefore the battle against pride is the battle against unbelief as with all these other sins that we've seen and the fight for humility is the fight of faith.

Now what I want to do, we don't have a lot of time left, is to begin with 1 Corinthians 4.7.

Look at this verse and then run real fast through five other verses elsewhere in the Bible.

And in each verse look for pride and its opposite.

And I think I can show you in every verse that we look at that this opposite thing to pride belongs to the nature of faith so that you will be really persuaded by the time we're done that if you want to attack pride you must go for faith or you must attack unbelief.

1 Corinthians 4.7 says, who sees anything different in you or I think a better translation would probably be the NIV who makes you different from others or perhaps even better who gives you your distinctives, the answer is God.

What have you that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as though it were not a gift? Now what's the opposite of boasting in that verse?

The opposite of boasting in that verse is failure to recognize that everything you have is a gift from God.

Specifically, everything that distinguishes you positively from another person in which you are prone to boast is God's work and therefore let him who boasts boast in the Lord.

The opposite of pride is the recognizing and savoring or cherishing the truth that everything I am and have is a gift from God in which I may not boast except to give him glory.

The way therefore to battle unbelief at this point or to battle pride at this point is to believe that, to believe that God has given me everything I have and every time I'm prone to boast in wisdom or strength or riches, I'm a fool.

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