"Love is not puffed up" (1 Corinthians 13:4).
"If anyone thinks that he knows anything, he knows nothing yet as he ought to know. But if anyone loves God, this one is known by Him" (1 Corinthians 8:2-3).
IDEA: We can keep from being puffed up by seeing ourselves before God and seeing ourselves as we really are.
PURPOSE: To help listeners think about how to overcome pride.
Suppose someone took seriously what Paul wrote when he said that love is not puffed up. What might that person do to allow God to deal with that in his life?
In 1 Corinthians 8:1, Paul says that while knowledge puffs up, love builds up.
Bishop Gore once said, humility is “seeing myself as I am, seeing others as they are, and seeing God as He is.” Humility really starts with God.
I. It helps to be realistic about yourself.
The most pathetic people I know are those who don’t know and don’t know that they don’t know.
Paul says in 1 Corinthians 8:2-3, “If anyone thinks that he knows anything, he knows nothing yet as he ought to know. But if anyone loves God, this one is known by Him.”
II. It also helps when we see ourselves before God.
In 1 Corinthians 15:10, the apostle Paul tells us that it is by the grace of God that we are what we are.
What are the implications of that?
How can we be puffed up when we believe that the only possible chance we have with God comes because Christ died for us?
If I am loved by God in this way, so is every other individual. Every person I meet is a fellow sinner and struggler who desperately needs to understand God’s grace.
III. We see others as God sees them.
In 1 Corinthians 8:9-11 Paul warns that a weak brother, for whom Christ died, can be destroyed by our knowledge.
I need to see myself, I need to see God, and then I need to see others as those for whom Christ died.
Conclusion: It should make a difference when I see the neighbor next door or the woman at the office or the people at the church -- not as people to envy or impress, but as those God loves very much and as people God wants me to love.