Jesus reserves his harshest attacks for the Pharisees, beginning about a year before his crucifixion (Matt 15). Just days from his death, Jesus launches his most scathing attack, focussed on the Pharisees overweening pride (Matt 23:1-12), which is best described as focussing on oneself.
Pride comes in many forms. For the Pharisees, everything they did was for show, to look moral, pious and important. Yet pride can just as easily be hidden; doing the right thing so we can look down on others privately. Other forms of pride include feeling self-righteous about being a victim, or constantly replaying conversations in our head. Whenever we focus on ourselves, we are being proud. So how do we defeat this most insidious of sins?
Step 1 to solving a problem is admitting we have a problem in the first place. C. S. Lewis suggests measuring how much we hate seeing pride in others. So ask ourselves, how much to we hate seeing Donald Trump send out another Tweet to insult his opponents? Another option is noticing what makes us feel good about ourselves, in particular when compared to others.
Step 2 is to turn our attention away from ourselves and onto God. When we meditate on the perfect attributes of God, we come up against someone who is immeasurably superior to us in every respect. Instead of seeking honour for ourselves, or titles of honour, such as ‘Rabbi’ or ‘father’ (v. 8-9), meditate daily on how our inferiority to God means we are undeserving of such honour.
Step 3 is to focus on serving others (v. 11), which not only takes the attention of ourselves, but actually causes others to think more highly of us. Serving others is actually the best way to feel good about ourselves, which is why Jesus says ‘the greatest among you will be your servant’ (v. 11).
