Ezekiel 28:17 (NET): “Your heart was proud because of your beauty; you corrupted your wisdom on account of your splendor. I threw you down to the ground; I placed you before kings, that they might see you.”

I am interested in the phrase about the heart becoming proud—God saying this personality’s heart became proud because of his beauty—and I want to draw our attention to how damaging pride is.

The Bible says that God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble (James 4:6; 1 Peter 5:5). God wants you to walk humbly before Him (see Micah 6:8), but we are convinced in our minds that we are supposed to be proud. That is a trap. It is the trap of pride that we will do well to watch out for.

Somebody may not speak proudly but may be proud in his heart. Somebody may say, “I am not proud,” but certain situations will come up and you will say certain words, and you will convince yourself, “No, I am not being proud, I am just telling the facts.” But you are being proud.

So the challenge here is not to justify pride. It is to embrace the charge of Scripture that is against all kinds of arrogance and pride. You are supposed to walk humbly before your God. In the famous passage about Jesus Christ in Philippians chapter 2, He humbled Himself to the point of death, even death on a cross, and now He is exalted above all. He has been given a name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow (Philippians 2:5–11).

The point is, whatever you want to achieve by arrogance, it is that very thing that you are setting yourself up to lose, because you are setting yourself up for God’s resistance. That is just the truth. So the only way with God is the way of humility. That is the only way with God. Whatever that is in your context, however that is in your context, that is the only way it is going to be.

Pride is an insidious thing. The reason I say it is insidious is that it is like a background noise that somehow becomes part of the environment, so that you may not be able to easily isolate it.

“Your heart was proud because of your beauty.”

Anything can become a source of pride—a source of you comparing yourself to another person, a source of you giving glory to yourself. Anything can be a source of pride.

So we need to watch out for it. We need to watch out for how we react. That reaction will show us more than our carefully curated responses or actions. How do you react in situations that come up? How do you react? What words come from your mouth? How do you pull down others, and that becomes how you lift up yourself? It becomes part of your MO—pulling down the other person.

Look at what the Bible says here: “Your heart was proud.” We are talking about a heart issue here. Remember what the Bible says: “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9, NET). That is what I meant when I was talking about the background noise. It is so much a part of you. That is what Paul meant when he said that sin lives in him (Romans 7:17, 20). It is so much a part of the atmosphere we exist in, like the air we are breathing. It just feels normal. It is a heart thing.

“Your heart was proud because of your beauty.”

That is why, when it comes to salvation, the operational point is that no one can boast before God. God is the One who began the work of salvation. God is the One who chose you in Christ. He raised you up, even though you were dead in trespasses and offenses; He raised you up in Christ, lifted you up, and seated you with Christ Jesus in the heavenly places (Ephesians 2:1–6). He is the One who did all this so that there is no argument. He is the One who did all this so that no one would boast before Him (1 Corinthians 1:29, NET). That is His way of dealing with us. That is how He wants us to be: walking in humility, on the path of humility.

I pray that God will give us the grace to continually walk in it, in Jesus’ name.

God bless you.