The devil did not need to convince Adam and Eve to turn away from God; he needed only to turn them to themselves. By getting them to love themselves, he got them to hate God. The devil knows no one can serve two masters, and anyone who tries to will hate the one and love the other. “The beginning of pride,” St. Augustine wrote, “is when a man departs from God.”
How exactly did Satan tempt Adam and Eve to become proud? Before the devil could drive them to pride, he led them to discontentment. He led them to be dissatisfied with what God said and then disappointed with who God created them to be. After God created the entire universe, the earth, and everything in it, and after He gave life to Adam and Eve and planted the Garden of Eden for them, the devil intruded and led Eve to believe all of this was not enough. The devil led them to hate who God created them to be because they were not “like God, knowing good and evil.” When Satan filled their hearts with covetousness, he filled them with pride. Eve imagined that her heart would be a better god than God.
With covetousness comes pride. Covetousness is the sinful desire to be, have, or do anything that God has not made you to be, given you, or commanded you to do. Pride, then, is the quest for exaltation, but on one’s own terms. Rather than being content with who you are and what God says, you set out to find something “better.” “I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ.” (2 Corinthians 11:3).
After all these years, nothing has changed. The devil’s attack remains the same. “Do what thou wilt” is the creed of the church of Satan. The devil injects his venom into your soul through the world’s philosophies, politics, and entertainment which constantly preach for you to “be the master of your own fate,” to “live your life on your own terms,” “my body, my choice,” and “love yourself.” It is through these words that Satan turns you inward toward yourself and away from the God who made you and gave His only begotten Son to die for you.
We must be aware of the devil’s plan because he attacks us at our weakest point: our sinful hearts. In his Loci Communes (1521), Philip Melanchthon describes the sinful condition of man’s soul after the fall into sin:
“No words can describe the corruption of the human heart. The creature who is not filled with love of God necessarily loves himself most. The flesh cannot love spiritual things… Human nature’s primary and highest affection is love of self…How unfathomable is the misery of humanity!”
For this reason, we must fight against all pride, self-love, hubris, arrogance, and conceit. And one way to do this is by recognizing prideful works and avoiding them.
Some of the most apparent works of pride in this world come from the so-called LGBTQ+ community, a group more accurately described as “inventors of evil things” (Romans 1:30). Not only do they promote sin against God, but they are proud of it, and they are proud of their pride! They parade around their wickedness as if it were a virtue. No matter how much they claim that this is their “true self,” they are profoundly discontent with who they truly are. They reject that God created male and female and that marriage is the life-long union between one man and one woman. They have “exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator” (Romans 1:25).
The world created cohabitation. This is a mockery of marriage because there is no love in cohabitation, regardless of how much couples may deceive themselves into thinking there is. Love commits. Cohabitation rejects commitment. It is an agreement to live together as long as you do not find someone better. Promiscuity turns sex from a selfless act into merely self-gratification by using another person’s body for your own advantage.
The world turns sex into the most selfish act not only by refusing to marry and care for the other person, but also by preventing children from being conceived. So, they promote the barrenness of wombs and the murder of unborn children under the guise of “family planning” or “women’s healthcare.” A worldly man would rather sacrifice his child than his money, and a worldly woman would rather sacrifice her child than her career.
The world rejects God’s order of creation when it adopts feminism in doctrine and practice. The devil dupes women into becoming dissatisfied with being women and tempts them into giving up their God-given vocations of wifehood and motherhood. He tempts them to outsource their motherhood to the government and to “exalt” themselves by slaving away under a “boss” who will never be her head as is her husband. This happens both in the world and in our churches. Women who think they are pastors, women who publicly read the Bible, distribute the Lord’s Supper, and so on in the divine service, are dissatisfied that God created them to be women. They exalt themselves above God’s Word.
There are many other prideful works the world practices. Sadly, many Christians are confused about these sins. The truth is that we need to think twice before ever imitating what the world does. We must never approve of the inventors of evil things, as they are deserving of death. We must reject promiscuity and cohabitation, as they are attacks on the sanctity of marriage. We must reject family planning, as it is a dissatisfaction with God’s gift of children. We must reject egalitarianism and feminism, as they exalt oneself above God. All these things come from a covetous and prideful heart.
As the devil lied to Adam and Eve, so too he has lied to the world, and the world has believed him. We renounce the world and boldly confess God’s Word against it. In humility, we reject this world’s pride, knowing that we, too, have been proud and loved ourselves more than God. The world wants itself, but we want God more than we want this world. So, we repent for ever listening to the devil, for ever following this world. As we reject this world’s pride, we pray to God to tear out any pride in our own hearts, and to teach us to cling to Jesus alone, who humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross for our sake, for our salvation (Philippians 2:3–11).
Find contentment in humbling yourself before God, who made you, loved you, redeemed you, and has promised to save you from this vale of tears. Instead of grumbling, complaining, and despising God’s word, delight in it. Love God’s thoughts and words above your own. Instead of exalting yourself, wait for God to exalt you in His time. “Humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time He may exalt you” (1 Peter 5:6–7).