Neighborhood Church

Sin

If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere, insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn from The Gulag Archipelago

Sin is when what we were meant to rule begins ruling us.

Pride
Envy
Wrath
Sloth
Greed
Gluttony
Lust

Sin is the one thing that ruins everything.

We are all a mixture of what God made us to be, what Satan tempted us to become, and what the Holy Spirit is shaping us into.

Pride
---
the complete anti-God state of mind
CS Lewis

PRIDE = SPIRITUAL REBELLION

Pride is essentially competitive—is competitive by its very nature… Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man.
CS Lewis

As long as you are proud you cannot know God. A proud man is always looking down on things and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.
CS Lewis

Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere fleabites in comparison…Pride leads to every other vice.
C.S. Lewis

Pride isn’t just one of the seven deadly sins…it’s the engine driving all seven of the deadly sins.

Pride is the carbon monoxide of sin—it silently and slowly kills you without you even knowing.
Tim Keller

Pride does 3 things really well
#1 Pride Diminishes You
#2 Pride Crowds Others Out
#3 Pride Crowds God Out

The invitation to follow Jesus is actually the invitation to unfollow pride.

Pride is the loss of humility.

Humility is the foundation of all good character traits.

Jesus came to bring humility back to earth—to share it with us,to invite us to live from it, and to save us through it.

Humility creates space…
for God to move
for others to come close
for us to become who we were created to be.

THREE QUESTIONS
• Where is pride showing up in your life?
• Where is it making you smaller, shutting others out, crowding God out?
• And what would it look like for you to take that first step of humility this week?