The Sin and Danger of Pride

The Sin and Danger of Pride

August 18, 2025

Host: Hon. Sam Rohrer

Guest: Renton Rathbun

Note: This transcript is taken from a Stand in the Gap Today program aired on 8/18/25. To listen to the podcast, click HERE.

Disclaimer: While reasonable efforts have been made to provide an accurate transcription, the following is a representation of a mechanical transcription and as such, may not be a word for word transcript. Please listen to the audio version for any questions concerning the following dialogue.

Sam Rohrer:

Hello and welcome to Stand In the Gap Today, and it’s our monthly focus here today on Apologetics biblical worldview and education with our recurring guest, Dr. Renton Rathbun. Now Dr. Rathbun’s, a speaker and a consultant on biblical worldview instruction for A BJU press. He’s also a host of his new education podcast entitled The Renton Rathbun Show, which is designed really to help parents walk through the challenges impacting their children by finding resolve. I’m going to put this way in a proper application of a biblical worldview, and here’s a website@rentonrathbun.com. You can find that information now each month when Renton, Dr. Rathbun joins me here, we choose relevant challenges as we pray and seek the Lord’s face in what we deal with, but we seek challenges generally that are occurring within our own culture and bring them to a considered biblical worldview analysis, which involves defining the terms, which is always important.

We say identifying the cause and then confidently anchoring a solution, the solution oftentimes in biblical truth based on the authority of God’s word. Now, for instance, here are a few topics that we’ve considered this year. In January, our focus was the fear of God and the title there was the ultimate question, do I Fear God and Keep His commands? In February, we focused on deception and what scripture says is the spirit of Antichrist title was an end times warning, avoid deception and the spirit of Antichrist. In March, we considered the heresy of our age deconstruction. Our title was deconstruction and today’s teens more than just a harmless fad. And then in April we examined the critical theme of holy living, be ye holy for I am holy and archaic hope or divine requirement. So you get the idea all of those are available and I just gave the first four months, but you can find all of them in our archives at stand in the gap radio.com.

Now, today’s theme is equally relevant. It’s everyday present in the news, and this focus today is on, well, a word, the most accurate one word description of our modern age, our political system, and our leaders and government, business, education, entertainment, technology, and broad culture. And sadly, even within most of our layer to say in church of our age that one word is pride. Pride. Well, it’s not some neutral word like happy or sad or rich or poor. It’s a word laden with unavoidable moral consequence. And it’s a word about which the Bible speaks clearly and about which God has stated His clear and inescapable views and warnings and consequences. It’s something that is visible and the more we understand what it is from God’s perspective, the more visible it becomes and denying its presence or ignoring its daily manifestation, impossible to do. The title I’ve chosen to frame today’s conversation is simply this, the sin and danger of pride. And with that I welcome to the program right now, Dr. Renton Rathbun Renton, thanks for being here and this is a great topic to get going on.

Renton Rathbun:

Thanks for having me. Yeah, this is important

Sam Rohrer:

Renton. Normally on Mondays I provide a short commentary and I’m going to make it even briefer about big events because I talk so often about how big events seem to happen over the weekend and that’s by design. But the biggest media consuming event I’d say of this whole weekend was the meeting of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in Alaska. It’s all over the place. It’s there. And my brief comment, which ties into our focus today is simply this by design, that event is going to carry you over into today, that’s going to drag into the days ahead. It’s all speculative as to its outcome. Everything has been choreographed to keep the world suspended in my opinion and dependent on anyone and everyone other than God in God’s word. And what we witnessed was a grand display of pride from all sides. Someone will say, well, how can you say that? I’m going to say that because humility and the fear of God were conspicuously absent and not even a remote consideration. Now all that being said, Renton, pride is an age old reality, but it’s as new as the thoughts of men’s hearts. So let’s get started by doing, we normally do define the term. How would you define pride? How does the Bible define pride? What is pride? What is pridenNot?

Renton Rathbun:

What’s interesting about scripture is that it both names pride, but then it also demonstrates pride without naming it in many of its stories. I say that because the first time we’re really introduced to pride in scripture is in the garden, the Garden of Eden, where Satan approaches eve in Genesis chapter three, and he asked Eve this question, did God really say Now Satan was not asking for clarification, but he didn’t really understand what God’s rules were. He knew it, but he asked that question, did God really say? Now we will make more references to other passages, but I want to look at this question because what this question does is it makes Eve and it says, Eve, I want you to pull yourself out of the realm that God has made, the story God has prepared for you and Adam, the conditions sanctioned by God for the reality you live in.

I want you to stand outside of the boundaries of right and wrong that God has set for you and I want you to make a decision. What this does is that question placed eve outside of God’s construction where she thought she could make a judgment about God in your car, you have forward reverse and neutral. You might have more stuff than that, but for the most part, all of us have that and forward and reverse are two different directions, but we have neutral and a neutral. You can decide if you’re going to go forward or backward. The lie that Satan introduces us to in that passage is that we think life is that way and we live in the neutral zone where we get to decide right and wrong truth or falsity and we get to make those determinations because God is the one on trial. So scripture says that in James four, four that we are to therefore be people that think on God in humility and we’ll talk more about that in a minute, but the common vocabulary, if I’m going to put it this way, pride isn’t just merely thinking I’m great and above all things pride is believing the lie that I am in a neutral place where I can make judgments about God.

Sam Rohrer:

Renton, that is a great, great way to look at ladies and gentlemen. I hope that that kind of maybe arrest your thinking a little bit and making you think because pride is within us all. That’s the point. It’s within us all. Now when we come back, we’re going to begin to walk through next segment. We’re going to talk about pride as a sin, what the Bible says. Then we’re going to again pride and talk about the danger of it in segment three, and then we will come back with an antidote to pride in segment three. If you’re just joining us, we’re dealing with, well a theme today that I’m going to say, I wonder if there’s anyone out there listening to Renton and I right now that could say, well, this is not a problem for me. Well, what is that theme? Our theme today is pride, the title, the Sin and Danger of pride.

It’s all around us according to the word of God and a biblical worldview, which is how we’re coming at this and all subjects we deal with on this program, the word of God and a biblical worldview is how approach the word of God and understand life. It’s the only view of life that is always true and in that perspective, and we’ll build that out as we walk through. Pride manifests itself. I’m going to say in many ways it’s a permeating reality, it’s inescapable. Pride can be observed literally everywhere from well individual actions and attitudes and thoughts of the heart to politicians, actions and words and tweets that we see to government, laws and policies and regulations to cultural entertainment, content to family life, to strategies and preaching. In most of our churches today, it’s everywhere. Pride is everywhere. It’s around us, it’s beneath us, it’s above us, it’s within us. And in the end, according to the word of God, pride, plain and simple is a grievous sin so bad. God, how he hates it, he actually calls it an abomination. Wow. All right. Renton, building on how you defined pride in the last segment, and that is, as you said there, it’s not just forward or reverse, it’s holding a neutral position, so you’re going to need to build that out a little bit more, but could you provide some verses that provide further clarity as to what the Bible says about pride and God’s attitude towards it?

Renton Rathbun:

Yeah, so Proverbs six 16 through 17, God says, these are things I hate and an abomination, and he starts with the haughty eyes. Now in the Hebrew world, that is to make this sin nice and close to the person. It’s not this idea of pride out here as a concept that he hates. He hates it. When people have these haughty eyes, when they are prideful, he hates it. Proverbs eight 13 talks about pride and arrogance, the evil way he hates. In Proverbs 3 34, he talks about being a mocker of the mocks. He mocks those who mock, but then he gives grace to those who are humble. In James four, four through 10, it gives this very black and white view of the world. There is this friendship with the world and if you are friends with the world, then you are hostile toward God. There’s no in-between.

And part of what I was talking about with that neutrality idea is the idea that I can with my own judgments and my own morality and my own ideas to decide if God’s way is right to decide if God is the right way or is logical enough for me or is moral enough for me based on the morals that are mine. We almost act as if we are in a courtroom and God is on the stand and we are the lawyer questioning him with the criteria that is ours and we do not want to use his criteria and therefore we will not submit. And if you look at James four, after it talks about God, the same verse in Proverbs 3 34, it says, God opposes the proud and gives grace to the humble. He opposes, he hates, he despises. And then it says therefore submit. And that idea of submitting to what God has made, he has made the criteria, he has made the reality you live in, he has made the truth about what is right and wrong. All of that is his. And when you submit to it, that’s humility. When you think you can stand beyond it and decide for yourself based on your own criteria, that’s pride.

Sam Rohrer:

And I think that is great. So it takes you back to the example where the devil himself at the very beginning with Eve just questioned God. So it doesn’t take in a gigantic big visible decision. It’s just in our own mind saying, I wonder if what God said in his word. I wonder if I can finagle that a little bit or however. I mean, so you made the point and that’s great. Let’s go here further now and ask this. We’ve talked about at the beginning there you went to the garden and the interaction with the serpent and eve that started things off, but build that out. What does the Bible say is the cause of pride in the macro? You kind of talked about a little bit, but an individual perspective because everybody alive is dealing with pride almost every moment of the day, but not just one historic occurrence in the garden of Eden.

Renton Rathbun:

Yes, Romans one 18 tells us that God’s anger is kindled against all of mankind. And why is his anger so filled with fury and wrath? Well, because they have been suppressing the truth in unrighteousness. And so in our condition as those who are under Adam, where we have inherited the guilt of Adam, all we want to do is suppress the truth and unrighteousness. It is not that we are ignorant of it, it’s that we hate it and so we suppress it in that suppression. We have to come up with a new story. I can’t merely suppress the truth, I have to replace it with something. And in the act of that replacement, I have to put myself as God to say this is the way reality really is, and let’s see if God is meeting my expectations. So I cannot submit to the story God has made.

I have to create my own story and say, now God, you submit to my story. And this is where we see all this all over our culture who has reinvented parts of scripture so that it leaves room for same sex attraction to no longer be a sin. Even homosexuality isn’t that bad and all these different, the trans world and gender ideology and all of that stuff is ways to say, no, this is the real story, God, how are you going to fit into it? And Romans five 12 tells us where we receive that heart that wants to suppress the truth. We get it from Adam as we have inherited his sin and we need a second Adam, a second Adam, that gives us something much better, a nature that is in him that takes that pride out and we submit. And that idea of submitting comes back as we are one in Christ, we submit to the spirit.

And so think this is another thing. We think that pride is always this angry shake your fist at God, atheistic rage type thing. But pride is always at the ready. It waits for us even if it is only believing that we stand at least in some way that we can disapprove or approve of God’s ways, acts or word in just some way. So even as those who are in Christ, we still struggle with it because that old nature keeps rearing its head saying, no, you need to judge whether this is the way that if God took the right way here or if God’s word really says this or that.

Sam Rohrer:

Renton, as you were describing there a little bit before, you didn’t use the word, I haven’t used the word yet, but when we think of ways we can get around doing what God says exactly as God says to do it, we are in reality placing ourselves above God, which is what you said. But that sounds an awful lot like idolatry, which is something that God hates. But that brings me to Proverbs 16, five. We actually says there in that verse a little, in that section of Proverbs, it refers to the proud in heart and it refers to it as an abomination. Alright, now back to that word. Few things in scripture are referred as an abomination. Can you build this out just a bit more as to why God hates pride so greatly that he calls it an abomination?

Renton Rathbun:

Yeah. So pride is the manifestation of our most deeply held to nature in our sin. So our sin, nature, what condemns us all is still found in Romans chapter one. We suppress the truth in unrighteousness, but there’s a reason for that. The reason is in Romans 1 21, even though we know the truth, even though we know not just that there is a God, we know the God and yet we have rejected him. Why? Because we did not give him honor and we did not give him thanks. And God hates pride so much because it is the outpouring of the gratitude and our lack of honor to our God, even if our lack of gratitude or lack of honor is momentary pride jumps in and justifies that lack with this lie. This lie that tells us that we know better, we possess an independent criteria or that there is some kind of submitting we don’t need to do to God’s work.

Sam Rohrer:

Pride ladies and gentlemen, God hates it. It’s an abomination. It plagues us all. But what’s the Bible say about some of the consequences to pride if it’s so bad, the consequences are equally bad. And we’ll talk about what some of those are in the next segment. We’ll be back in just a moment as we move further into the program today. Again, the theme if you’re just joining us is this the sin and the danger of pride. So in the last segment we talked about the sin of pride that plagues us all. It has been present since the Garden of Eden when Satan positioned himself against God and questioned his authority. And it’s been now down through the ages because we are born that way. So we’ve chatted about that. But what about the dangers? You ever think about the outcome throughout the word of God and consistent with the character and the nature of God, sin from the fall in the garden, which we’ve talked about here, brought with it a consequence.

What was that consequence? Well, it was death. Now from that time, all human beings are born sinners, spiritually dead. And without being born again and quickened to by the Holy Spirit, through faith in Jesus Christ, we will remain forever, eternally, dead, separated from God. Now in this condition, for those of us born after that time of creation, God has granted to each man and each woman an ability to choose free choice, we will call it. And in an ability to either agree with God, to fear God and to obey him or to continue in rebellion against God. One of two ways. When we agree with God and obey his word, blessing will come and it leads to life. That’s what scripture says. When we choose against God in our pride, well consequences will come and none of them are good and they all lead to death and judgment from that initial in the garden to all of us as we live our lives now Renton, what does the Bible say are the greatest dangers to put that way and the consequences to rebelling against God? As we’ve been talking and living in pride and making choices that are marked by pride,

Renton Rathbun:

As we look at people who exercise pride, especially unbelievers, it is easy for us who are believers to look at that and be disgusted and even angry at them. But when you read through scripture, the judgment that is awaiting those people is so vast and so great that we really should have pity because to the unbeliever, the danger of living in pride. Because remember pride is this at the root of our sinful nature is our lack of honoring God and our lack of giving thanks to God and pride is the justification. It’s that thing that says, this is why you don’t have to give thanks or praise to God because you stand in this neutral place where you get to judge him. So pride is that outpouring, if I can put it that way, of the root evil that lives inside of us. And so scripture is very clear, those that live that life, not only will God mock them and utterly destroy them in the next life, he’s going to do it even in the life they live.

Proverbs 1618 makes that very clear to us that God does not allow pride to be successful in this life. And so even though those that are prideful might seem successful through fame or money, it all comes before a fall and a haughty spirit before a fall and pride before destruction. And he is going to destroy them both in this life and the next. And it is sad to watch it, but we have to remember as believers, we too have judgment because we too fall into this desire to justify our doubting, justify our disbelief of God’s word, doubting God and accepting our sin. And Hebrews 12, four through 12 talks about God disciplining those who are his. It even reminds us of something the Old Testament said, my son do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord nor be weary when reproved by him for the Lord disciplines the one he loves and cherishes every son whom he receives.

And so what you see there is this painful chastening where God will not allow his sheep to stray away too far. He brings them back and sometimes bringing them back is incredibly painful. It might even mean bringing you down to your last breath where he imposes an illness upon you that you will not recover from, but because it’s upon you, your soul recovers even if your body does not, and he will chase in you down to your last breath. And so those are the warnings we have. If we are going to let the outpouring of our sin be justified, God will discipline.

Sam Rohrer:

Alright, that is very clear. And of course there are so many other verses that we could give, ladies and gentlemen, there are so many of them. Obediah says that pride deceives. So if we are proud and we operate in that neutral zone, as Renton described it, let alone a fist in the sky and direct defiance to God, obviously that’s driven by pride. If that were to happen, it deceives us, it produces enmity, it assures punishment. Proverbs 29 23 says, pride will bring a man low. So that exalted position of human pride doesn’t last long. Alright, not being the case, let’s look further in its application here, Renton, because according to the word of God, we know and you’ve referred to Romans a number of times, Romans 13 verse one, it talks about all authority basically is ordained of God. It literally means ranked, ordered and ranked by God.

And from that we understand that there’s individual and family and civil and church, each of those will give an account to God because God sits on top as the authority. And each of these positions are going to have to answer to God for how they deal with him in relative to do they submit or do they try to pull him down and say, no, we’re better than you. What we’re talking about pride. So can you give an overview here perhaps of how God’s justice is evidenced against each of these because we know the punishment, as you just talked about in these things applies across the board, but it may be seen witnessed differently in these different jurisdictions.

Renton Rathbun:

Yes. When you look at James four, and I keep going back to those because you’re right, there are so many verses in scripture that deals with pride and things. I think if I keep bringing up two important ones, maybe it’ll help people focus. Because as we look at James four and even one Peter chapter five, pride is extinguished through submission to God. Now, that’s not a general term where we submit to God in a general way. We have to submit to God and his ways that we hear through his words. So we’re submitting to his word, we’re submitting to his ways when we submit to him. And so in government, as you brought up in Romans 13, it demands that we submit to government and it demands it because what it’s saying is even government that you think is terrible and these people that are leading us are awful.

That’s part of my judgment. I put them there. And so for you to oppose that is for you to oppose my decision to do something we see in family. In Ephesians five it says, husbands, you need to submit to Christ, wives, you need to submit to your husbands as you would to Christ. Children submit to your parents. And you see these submitting activities going on which renders pride helpless because as you keep seeing this reoccurring, as each of these different institutions are addressed, it first brings up what is God’s way? God’s way is this way, what are you to do? I am to submit to the way and the way might be hard, but I need to do it because in that submitting I am getting rid of this idea that I can stand above God and correct him based on my personal experiences or my personal morals.

And when we see individually, we see one Corinthians 11, one Ephesians five, one Philippians two, five, where as an individual we are all to imitate Christ. And what did Christ do when he was on the earth? Christ submitted to the Father. Even in the garden of Gethsemane, he says, not my will, but thy will be done giving us a good testimony of what submission looks like. And so we are this way of Christ. If you were to think about the way of our God and then the way of Christ on earth, the exact opposite of that is always pride. And even in the church where in James three, one it even warns people. Not many of you should be interested in being a teacher in the church because you’re going to be judged more strictly. And why is that? Because God places great judgment on those that oppose his will because of their pride.

Sam Rohrer:

Alright, ladies and gentlemen actually, because we can’t go too much more into depth on how it’s manifested pride, the consequences of pride are manifested in these groups of individual and family and civil and church. We’re probably going to come back and deal with these more in another program. But even in regard to that generally pride, well, does it have a solution? What does the Bible say? How can we deal with the matter of pride? Well, we’re going into our final segment here now and we generally try to do on this program, we don’t try not to bring up issues, raise questions and not answer them. Why is that? Well, because it’s not smart, it’s not wise, it’s not truthful, it’s not honest, it’s not biblical. I’m going to go right directly there because the Bible does not ever bring up an issue without also providing a resolve.

And that’s why the Bible is, well, it’s our guide and why we say if we follow a biblical world of view and fear God and keep his commandments, we can. Well, I just hope for we can expect God to bless. Why? Because that’s what God said. Now that’s what we’re trying to do here, this matter of pride. We have not been able on this one hour program to build it out at all in all of its ramifications. But we didn’t want her to bring it up because it is all around us. Anytime we witness anything in the realm of government or which is most obvious, or the media or that kind of thing, and there’s anything there that we see that is not biblical in its content, where did that come from? What came from someone who was acting in defiance of God, not in submission to God?

His word and his way. And from it comes up an alternative, right? We’ve talked here on this program about. Renton, you and I talked about this months ago. Last year we actually talked about pragmatism. This comes to my mind right now. That is the guiding principle of everything that we see about us in politics today particularly. And again, people watch that. So I bring that up, but it’s all of our life and pragmatism is a setting aside of God’s truth. You said that we talked about it, but again, why is that done? Well ladies and gentlemen, it’s pride that says, well we got a better way or God’s word, eh, some truth, but not all truth. Alright, so that ties all this fits together, but here we go, Renton, as we try to conclude that, let’s bring some clarity now to this reality of pride about which we’ve discussed here. It’s always there are consequences. None of them are ever good in scripture. They’re always disastrous, they’re bad. So from a biblical worldview perspective, what instruction does the Bible give if we summarize this all now to help a person to recognize and control the reality of pride? Because it is real and it is all around us and within us.

Renton Rathbun:

One of the most difficult passages that I think most of your listeners would probably recognize but we’re not sure how to understand it, is Proverbs one seven. Proverbs one, seven reads this way. It says, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction. We like that. We like that verse because it reminds us that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. I mean we love that idea, but I don’t know if we understand what that means when it comes to pride. If we’re remembering that pride is the outpouring or the way we justify not thanking God or not honoring God, and it places us in a position where we can question God with our own personal criteria, what we’re doing is we have zero fear of God at that point. Think about what Satan was doing at that moment.

At the moment he was talking to Eve, he was trying to help her no longer fear the Lord because with that challenge he gives her, she begins to lessen her fear of the Lord so that she feels more and more equal with the Lord, that she might cast judgment upon his way and his word. And so she actually, in seeking knowledge, loses knowledge, she becomes a fool because knowledge, real knowledge has to be connected to reality. We don’t live in the lobby of a giant hotel where we look at all the doors that have all these possibilities, Judaism, Christianity, atheism, we from the lobby of the hotel make this decision about what we’re going to choose. And we chose Christianity because it made the most sense. And in the lobby of our criteria, we’ve made this decision and that’s why we’re here. That’s what the world really is and we hope we’re right at the end.

But rather it begins with fearing the Lord where you fear him to thank him, you fear him to honor him. And that is the access we have to the reality of the story. He is made us the reality of the right and wrong. He has shown us in his word, his way, and his word is the reality. Standing before us and fearing him is the only way to gain access to that knowledge. So I say all that to say that for us to recognize and be able to see where our pride is beginning to leak into our hearts, it is where we stop fearing the Lord when we start our pathway to unbelief and we start questioning the Lord’s way. And as Word, ask yourself if you have been fearing the Lord this week and you would be surprised at what you will find.

Sam Rohrer:

Alright, Renton, don’t have much time left here, but if we’re born in sin as we’ve talked about, that means that we are controlled by pride which lifts itself against the authority of God. And if God’s word says that, if you sin you will die, and we say, no, I don’t agree with that, then we will never come to Christ in faith because we’ve had a better way. We talked about that. So salvation would be a first step to dealing with this matter of pride, would it not?

Renton Rathbun:

Absolutely. Absolutely. Because that is the only way that gift from God, which is eternal life as a spoken in Ephesians two, where we are dead in our sin and we are offered this free gift and belief is through the Holy Spirit and we receive that gift that is not just the antidote, but the antidote of pride is actually to get us somewhere as you look at our desire. Once you’re saved to follow Christ as he instructs our wives to submit to the husbands, and you see all this submission going on, the husbands to the Christ and children to their parents and submit, submit, submit throughout the context of scripture when the command is to remove pride and replace it with humility, almost always without exception, it leads to a godly love. In other words, this isn’t just a way to get somewhere or to get rid of our pride, it’s to lead us to love and that love, that godly love is the goal of that removal of pride

Sam Rohrer:

All and ladies and gentlemen, and Renton, I’m going to throw one other thing here in the last minute. We’ll come back and maybe deal with this in another program. Ladies and gentlemen, go check out Deuteronomy chapter eight. Read that there, God tells Israel, I’m going to take you to a land and I will give you good health. I will give you plenty of food. I will give you good houses and I’m going to do all these things. And then the Lord says, here’s the caution when I do these things, don’t think for a moment that you did it yourself because at which point you do, the consequences of pride will set in gratefulness. Ladies and gentlemen, can I suggest that if we know the Lord is our savior, that every day we thank God for who he is and what he’s done? And remember that that will help us in this battle with pride. Dr. Renton Rathbun, thank you so much. His website, lays and gentlemen for his program, which he does, which is very excellent, is Rentonrathbun.com. You can find it there, the Renton Rathbun Show. See you all back here tomorrow.