Posted on 09/12/2022 11:47:52 PM PDT by Pilgrim's Progress
“Only by pride cometh contention: but with the well advised is wisdom” (Proverbs 13:10).
“Only by pride cometh contention,” this is a hard saying. What is contention? It is any kind of disagreement, argument, or contending with another person. It is pride which refuses to admit that a man might be wrong, and the dispute is fed with any and all kind of reasons to simply win the quarrel. A man may claim that he is justified, he can say anything he wants to, but the Bible says it is “only by pride” that the contention continues.
There is a verse before this, and one after this that reveal the second step of contention, but the root of contention is pride.
The first is “Hatred stirreth up strifes: but love covereth all sins” (Proverbs 10:12). Any time there is an argument, hatred is involved to some degree. People “hate” to be put down, they “hate” to lose, they flat out “hate” to be wrong. What produces the hatred? Nothing but personal pride. People come to hate someone because they feel they have been short-changed them, or hurt them, and they end up on the short-end of the deal. There is a degree of a desire for vengeance. They feel disrespected.
The other verse says: “A wrathful man stirreth up strife: but he that is slow to anger appeaseth strife” (Proverbs 15:18). Wrath and hatred are the product of pride in the final estimate. Those things stir up trouble.
James wrote: “From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members? Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not” (James 4:1-2). You feel that you deserve to have what they have and you are willing to fight for it. That is where wars come from, on a larger scale. Why? Because of pride.
“. . . but with the well advised is wisdom,” where does that good advice come from? It comes from the book! The man that knows his Bible also knows that “a soft answer turneth away wrath: but grievous words stir up anger” (Proverbs 15:1). The Bible brings good sense. You get the right advice from the Book, from a good father, from a good mother, from a good husband, from a good wife, from your preacher, they’ll tell you how to avoid trouble: “Where no counsel is, the people fall: but in the multitude of counsellors there is safety” (Proverbs 11:14).
It takes two people to have an argument, just as it takes two countries to have a war. If you want to avoid an argument between a husband and a wife, one of them has to give in. The enemy of the good here is pride, while humility is the cause of the soft answer.
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PRIDE in sin and rebellion is promoted today. Nothing good there.
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