God is serious about the sin of pride. When He graciously gives the laws He wants His people to live by, He looks into the future and sees that they will refuse to listen. He warns:

And if you will not listen to me, then I will discipline you again sevenfold for your sins, and I will break the pride of your power, and I will make your heavens like iron and your earth like bronze.

Leviticus 26:18-19, ESV

God will break the pride of their power. Throughout the Old and New Testaments, God is destroying, repaying, opposing, bringing low, spoiling, ruining, cutting off, and punishing the pride in human hearts. If there was a sin that angered God more than any others, it would be pride.

What does it look like when God opposes the proud? While many passages in the law and prophets sound like God’s response to pride is always deadly, there are times when a puffed-up person is given a chance to come to their senses. God brings them low – but for the purpose of winning them back.

• Samson: This judge of Israel was loaded with strength and cunning. Samson’s pride led him to be made weak, enslaved, and blind. In the end, his heart turned back to God who granted him one last act of strength.
• Saul of Tarsus: Saul was sure that he was God’s agent in carrying out persecutions against the disciples of Christ. A light and a voice told him otherwise and left him blind for a time. Saul responded in humility and became Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles.
• Jonah: God told Jonah to preach against Nineveh and the prophet refused. In an effort to escape, Jonah encounters a frightening storm at sea and spends three days in the belly of a great fish. Jonah reluctantly follows God’s call to Nineveh.
• David: This great king ofIsrael used his power to steal another man’s wife and cause that man’s death in battle. The words of Nathan and the affliction of his newborn son brought David to repentance.
• Nebuchadnezzar: At the height of Babylon’s power, Nebuchadnezzar reached new heights of hubris. He gazed upon the grandeur of his capitol and claimed credit for its majesty. God cursed him with a madness that made him flee human company and eat grass. Nebuchadnezzar humbled himself in prayer and God restored him.

I don’t know how God will humble me the next time pride takes over my heart. My prayer right now is that God will love me enough to get my attention. Proverbs (and later Hebrews) tells us this is how God’s love plays out:

My son, do not despise the Lord’s discipline or be weary of his reproof, for the Lord reproves him whom he loves, as a father the son in whom he delights.

Proverbs 3:11-12, ESV

Pride is so serious that God’s love will seek to topple that vice within our hearts. May we walk in humility through every step along His path. And if we stray into arrogant pride, may our hearts be quick to repent when His discipline comes.