PRIDE vs THE PRIDE
Pride is a powerful word. It can lead to destruction or victory. What or who decides that eternal fate? The answer to that question may be found in a simple article.
Let’s first look at Pride leading to destruction. I love to tell the story about the New England Patriots once wearing a t-shirt under their pads that said “Humble Pie”. It was a reminder after every practice and game to avoid “Pride”.
Proverbs 16:18 is a well known Biblical Principle that declares Pride comes before a fall. It says, “Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.”
In Leman’s terms if you are too confident about your abilities, something bad will often happen that shows that you are not as good as you think.
Jesus says that “pride” is one of the many “evil things [that] come from within and defile a man” (Mark 7:21-23).
Solomon shares a ton of wisdom about pride. Humility, not pride, comes before honor. “A man’s pride will bring him low, but the humble in spirit will retain honor” (Proverbs 29:23). “By pride comes nothing but strife” (Prov. 13:10). “When pride comes, then comes shame” (Proverbs 11:2). “The fear of the LORD is the instruction of wisdom, and before honor is humility” (Proverbs 15:33).
Let’s take a deep dive into the origin of the word “Pride”.
The literal translation of the Hebrew word mashiach (מָשִׁיחַ, messiah), is ‘anointed’.
Pride is contrary to love of the Messiah, for God loves all men without partiality and in the grace of God the chosen ones see and are not blind: we have the mind of Jesus the Messiah.
If the opposite of our Messiah is pride, then is it any surprise that Satan would choose the pride movement to attack the family and Christian values across the world?
In the KJV New Testament the word “pride” is found 3 times (Mark 7:22,1 Tim 3:6,1 John 2:16). “Proud” is found 6 times (Luke 1:51,Rom 1:30,1 Tim 6:4,2 Tim 3:2,James 4:6,1 Pet 5:5). Of these occurences 6 times “pride/proud” is translated from the Greek by the word huperethanos or huperethania. This word literally means “to show above (as others)” or implying “pride/proud”.
In 1 Tim 3:6 & 1 Tim 6:4 the Greek word translated “pride/proud” is “tuphoo” (tu-pho-oe). “Tuphoo” is derived from the word “tupho”, meaning “to make a smoke”. The word is used in Mat 12:20 in the phrase “smoking flax”. Thus, tuphoo literal means “to envelope in smoke” as it is a strengthened form of the word “tupho”. Both of these two words are derived from meaning “blind” and “to make blind” respectively. Thus the sense of “tuphoo” is “the blindness that comes when one is enveloped in smoke”.
There is one other Greek word translated “pride/proud” and that is “alazoneia”. This is found in 1 John 2:16. This Greek word is used in one other place, James 4:16, and is translated “boastings”. The root word of this Greek word seems to have the meaning of vanity or empty, thus is speaks of the “emptiness” and in this case the “emptiness of boasting”. A more consistent translation of the word in 1 John 2:16 would be “boastings”. Out of pride does come boasting and the words are closely related.
The two Greek words which are translated “pride/proud” in their puddle of meaning indicate “blindness” and the sense of “above others”. Thus in the Greek language, pride is the “thinking of oneself above others” or a “blindness”.
In Old Testament Hebrew, the word pride/proud is translated from a number of different words. The meaning of the words vary, but the puddle of meaning is “lifted up”, or “wide”, “roomy”, “broad” or “enlarged”, and thus “proud”.
Also the meaning can be “strut as a lion”, or “to seethe” or “to boil”. The sense of “lifted up” is most often the meaning of the Hebrew word translated “pride/proud” and the second most often meaning is “to seethe” or “to boil”. Both the Greek and the Hebrew have a common word translated “pride/proud” with a sense of “lifted up” or “exalted”.
With the Hebrew word with the meaning of boiling or seething, it is that which cannot be contained. This is pride’s effect on the flesh as in “boiling” or “seething”. Pride exalts the man in the flesh. Pride in the sense of raising up, is contrary to the spirit.
In the flesh when we are set up in an elevated place, we see far distances. In the spirit when we are elevated in the flesh in pride we are blind in spirit. “The carnal mind is enmity with the things of God.”
It is written as prophecy, “God resists the proud one, but gives grace to the humble one“. Yeshua the Mashiach was condemned in the flesh, and justified in the Spirit. “He who knew no sin, became sin, by the letter of the law, that we might be made the righteousness of God in the Mashiach.” For this was the mind which was in the Mashiach, Yeshua, “Who being in the form of God, thought is not something to be grasped to be equal with God” in the days of His flesh.
That was Deep. I took much of it from this link. https://habasar.wordpress.com/2011/01/02/word-study-prideproud/
What happens when you add a small article to Pride?
A, An and The are called articles. They are essentially demonstrative adjectives. A and An are called indefinite articles and The is called the definite article .
A pride is a group of lions that live together. The members of a pride spend days in several scattered groups that meet to hunt or share a meal.
2 to 40 Lions make Pride. The head of the family is the pride male. He’s the king of the pride and it’s his job to protect the female lions, called lionesses and their young cubs. Sometimes there can be three or four kings who share this responsibility.
I suggest you study more about Lions and how God made them special. Their nature, eyes, fearlessness, that only associate with other lions, and so much more. He made you and I in His own image and God compared Jesus to a Lion. Not just any Lion.
THE LION OF THE TRIBE OF JUDAH
I love the fact that when you add the definite article “THE” to the Pride, then Pride takes on a whole different direction. There is only ONE high and lifted up. Exalted above all others. As Children of God, Kings and Queens, Lions and Lioness, we are Heirs to Throne! Jesus the Messiah, the Anointed One, is the King of kings. There is no other pride like His! There are no counterfeit pride movements that can stand against The Lion of the Tribe of Judah and His Pride!
The Christ-lion, the Lion of Judah, is a beacon of light, courage, bravery, agility and dignity. And he is a fighter, symbolic of the line of David and of Kings.
Or as one of team chaplain’s Tony Siebles best put it. “Pride is attempting to be something we are not. Humility is being who we are (Image Bearers) Pride isolates and intimidates. Humility motivates and moves.”