Proverbs 16:18

Proverbs 16:18

There is a tendency in knowledge to produce humility: so that the more a man knows the more likely he is to think little of himself.

I. Pride proves deficiency of knowledge first, in respect of our state by nature. Who could be proud of beauty, if fraught with the consciousness that all flesh is grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass? Who could be proud because of some little elevation above his fellow-men, who is deeply aware of his own position as an accountable creature, the subject and servant of an invisible King, in whose eyes all men are on a level? Who, once more, could be proud of his intellectual strength, of his wit, his wisdom, his elocution, who knew the height from which he had fallen; who saw in himself the fragments of what God designed and created him to be? It is ignorance, and ignorance alone, which allows of man's being proud:

II. Pride shows deficiency of knowledge in respect of our state by grace. Nothing could be clearer from Scripture than that we owe our deliverance exclusively to the free unmerited goodness of God; and if to this argument for humility, which is interwoven with the whole texture of the Gospel, you add the constant denunciation of that Gospel against pride, its solemn demand of holiness as essential to all who would "inherit the kingdom of heaven," you will see that the further a man goes in acquaintance with the Gospel, the more motive will he have for abasing himself before God, and shunning with all abhorrence a haughty and self-sufficient spirit.

H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit,No. 2421.

References: Proverbs 16:20. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. vii., No. 392; Ibid., Evening by Evening,p. 126. Proverbs 16:22. W. Arnot, Laws from Heaven,2nd series, p. 99.