Tripp: Pride is a source of sin out of which so many other sins and their bad fruit grow.

Pride is a source of sin out of which so many other sins and their bad fruit grow.

Pride crushes compassion and sympathy. Pride makes it very hard for you to be patient and understanding. Pride makes you entitled and demanding. Pride never produces a willingness to forgive. Pride makes you judgmental and condemning.

Pride makes you far more concerned about the sin of others than you are about your own. Pride is the enemy of self-sacrificing love. Pride makes you picky and easily irritated. Pride forces you to deny your wrongs and to shift blame to someone or something else. Pride makes it easier for you to complain than to give thanks.

Proud people don’t tend to be peacemakers. Proud people don’t suffer well. Proud people don’t tend to be generous. Proud people tend to think they deserve what is comfortable and tend to hate what is difficult. Proud people envy the blessings of others. Proud people resist confession and are defensive when confronted. Proud people find winning more attractive than loving. Proud people are better at division than unity and create more enemies than friends.

Proud people are always keeping score and tend to hold on to wrongs. Proud people thrive on being noticed, getting respect, and receiving acclaim. Proud people tend to see themselves as deserving the spotlight and thrive when on center stage. Proud people take credit for what they couldn’t have produced on their own. Proud people demand loyalty, but will forsake you when they are not getting what they want from you. Proud people have to be right and need to be in control.

Pride never has a good harvest. Much of the sin and bad fruit in our lives grows out of the soil of our pride.

Paul David Tripp, Do You Believe?: 12 Historic Doctrines to Change Your Everyday Life (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2021), 324–325.

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