The Opposite of Pride

I have a confession: I am an evil-hearted person. From the day I was born, I have been unable to desire anything good out of my own nature. Because of that, I do not deserve the love and mercy of God. However, it is the gift of righteousness through the death and resurrection of Christ that makes me acceptable to God.

Through my daily devotion time over the past couple weeks, I have been focusing on humility and desiring a more intimate relationship with Jesus, and I have been struggling with what that looks like exactly. Then I came upon a sermon (see previous post) by John Piper.

In this sermon, he says that the opposite of pride is not mainly self-condemnation. The opposite of pride is not just thinking less of yourself, but thinking very highly of Christ. How you value Christ determines your value. How you assess Christ is how you assess yourself.

When I think of how I can be humble, what I really need to do is think of how valuable Christ is to me. As I reflect on the righteousness of Christ, He becomes more and more valuable in the way I think about Him, and in turn, I become more and more valuable in that I become less and Christ becomes more.

My desire is to treasure Christ so highly that the thought of pride would be instantly quenched by the righteousness of Christ.