conceited “one anothers”

Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another.

Galatians 5:26

Sinful pride will take us to some very bad places. It can make the church, the Body of Christ, horribly disfigured and ugly. Paul has already reminded the Galatian church to serve one another in love. He has appealed to the scriptures (Galatians 5:14) to bring that healing understanding: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself (Leviticus 19:18). Doctrinal argumentation over the Christian’s relationship with the Old Testament law had divided the Galatians. Paul observed that the resulting legalism had completely pulled them off center from Jesus and was destroying the true gospel. A vast portion of this epistle corrects their bad doctrine. Now Paul pivots to how they live out the gospel, and love was so scarce in their atmosphere of harsh legalism. They were literally on constant attack of one another. Paul warned that this was going to consume the church completely if they did not repent of it (Galatians 5:15).

But such destructive pride isn’t just a first century church problem. This is a very real issue today. It places a destroying role in every conflict among Christians. We HAVE to be individually right, and might even start was a good reason, such as gospel clarity or doctrinal purity. But then in pride we may judge others, condemn them, talk bad about them, or go on the attack, rather than seeking to lovingly correct, care, and truly reconcile the issue. Our emotions get tangled in the mess and we start provoking them to justify our own “rightness”. Perhaps we envy them because we perceive they get away with what we despise about them.

If we are not careful our perceptions of the problem (skewed by our pride) turn the person into the problem. We are in constant defend mode of ourselves and attack mode of the person in the conflict. We may become so defensive that we are completely blind to the way we are now sinning against one another. And this is so easy to do… sadly today over the really minor issues of health protocols, conscience issues, and worldly politics. Oh how we need to repent of pride and heed the reminder to be sensitively led by the Spirit, crucifying our flesh, so that strife does not mark us, but the fruit of the Spirit does (Galatians 5:22-25)! Oh Lord, help us!