Exhortation, August 22

Welcome back to the students. As you are starting a new year of school, you have been and will be talked at, exhorted, and challenged many times. And this is going to be one of those times. To the NSA students, I urge you to remember what was said to you at orientation, and in Dr. Atwood�s and Mr. Schlect�s remarks at convocation. But I do want to add my two cents. And my two cents have to do with the sin of pride.

Students are particularly vulnerable to the sin of pride. Paul says, �Knowledge puffs up, but love edifies. If anyone supposes that he knows anything he has not yet known as he ought to know�E(1 Cor 8:1-2). Knowledge puffs up, and nothing puffs up so much as a little bit of knowledge. And, however well you are doing in school, however much you have studied, however much you�ve succeeded in your studies, that is all that you have �Ea little bit of knowledge. That is all any of us have. When you consider how vast and complicated the world is, and then consider that this world is just a distant image of the infinite vastness and boundless complexity of God, then you can begin to glimpse how little you know.

For students, pride often takes the form of thinking that you are superior to the people around you, superior to the craftsmen and farmers and builders that sit in the next row at church. You are reading books and studying things that others in the church have not. Don�t be puffed up by that either. Paul exhorted the Philippians, �Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind let each of you regard one another as more important than himself.�E

Besides, many of those you might consider �uneducated�Eare further along the road to true knowledge than you are. According to Scripture, knowledge is never merely a matter of intellect and learning. To have knowledge, you must have Christian virtues. Paul told the Ephesians to �walk as children of light . . . proving what is pleasing to the Lord�E(Eph 5); we discern the will of God by walking in His light. Love, Paul says, abounds more and more in knowledge and discernment (Phil 1:9-10), and the Proverbs repeatedly reminds us that the fear of Yahweh is the beginning of wisdom and knowledge.

Pride can take the form of displaying your knowledge. You might ostentatiously pull out your Greek NT, to make sure that everyone around you knows that you can read the NT in its original language. By all means, use your Greek; but by all means don�t do it for the praise of men. You might display knowledge by nit-picking criticisms and correction, especially of your elders and parents. Those kinds of displays really only display your ignorance, because they display your lack of charity and your lack of respect for your elders.

Christian college students in Moscow have an added temptation. God has blessed us at Christ Church, Trinity Reformed Church, NSA, and in many other ways. Over the past decades, Moscow has assumed a prominence in the Reformed world, and attracted a significant amount of attention and interest, both favorable and unfavorable. In some circles, Moscow�s Christians have a nationwide reputation for arrogance, cockiness, know-it-allness. In many respects, this is unfair, but in some respects it is deserved. Don�t do anything to lend support to that reputation.

If you want to have true knowledge, sound knowledge, devote yourselves not only to your books and lectures and discussions. Devote yourselves to kindness, love, and service. Look for opportunities to demonstrate in practical ways that you consider others more important than yourselves. Look for opportunities to look out not only for your own interests but for the interests of others. Cultivate the fear of God. Cultivate gratitude, because a deeply thankful person cannot be proud.

Scripture says that God hates seven things, and first on the list of things He hates are haughty eyes. Nothing is more annoying that an inflated college student, puffed up with airy knowledge. If that describes you, you can be sure that God will prick your bubble. Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever inflates himself will be deflated.

posted by Peter J. Leithart on Sunday, August 22, 2004 at 08:06 AM

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