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I think the image suggests four things about the natural condition of the human ego: that it is empty, painful, busy and fragile.
Firstly, empty. The image points to the fact that there is emptiness at the centre of the human ego. The ego that is puffed up and over-inflated has nothing at its centre. It is empty.
2 Spiritual pride is the illusion that we are competent to run our own lives, achieve our own sense of self-worth and find a purpose big enough to give us meaning in life without God.
And, secondly, it is also painful. A distended and overinflated ego is painful.
The ego often hurts. That is because it has something incredibly wrong with it. Something unbelievably wrong with it. It is always drawing attention to itself – it does so every single day. It is always making us think about how we look and how we are treated. People sometimes say their feelings are hurt. But our feelings can’t be hurt! It is the ego that hurts – my sense of self, my identity. Our feelings are fine! It is my ego that hurts.
And, thirdly, the ego is incredibly busy – in other words, it is always drawing attention to itself. It is incredibly busy trying to fill the emptiness.
The way the normal human ego tries to fill its emptiness and deal with its discomfort is by comparing itself to other people. All the time.
‘Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next person.
By comparing ourselves to other people and trying to make ourselves look better than others, we are boasting.
And lastly, as well as empty and painful and busy, the ego is fragile. That is because anything that is overinflated is in imminent danger of being deflated – like an overinflated balloon.
A superiority complex and an inferiority complex are basically the same. They are both results of being overinflated. The person with the superiority complex is overinflated and in danger of being deflated; the person with an inferiority complex is deflated already.
The thing we would remember from meeting a truly gospel-humble person is how much they seemed to be totally interested in us. Because the essence of gospel-humility is not thinking more of myself or thinking less of myself, it is thinking of myself less.
True gospel-humility means I stop connecting every experience, every conversation, with myself. In fact, I stop thinking about myself. The freedom of self-forgetfulness. The blessed rest that only self-forgetfulness brings.
True gospel-humility means an ego that is not puffed up but filled up.
A truly gospel-humble person is not a self-hating person or a self-loving person, but a gospel-humble person. The truly gospel-humble person is a self-forgetful person whose ego is just like his or her toes.
Do you realize that it is only in the gospel of Jesus Christ that you get the verdict before the performance?
But Paul is saying that in Christianity, the verdict leads to performance. It is not the performance that leads to the verdict. In Christianity, the moment we believe, God says ‘This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased.’
You see, the verdict is in. And now I perform on the basis of the verdict. Because He loves me and He accepts me, I do not have to do things just to build up my résumé. I do not have to do things to make me look good. I can do things for the joy of doing them. I can help people to help people – not so I can feel better about myself, not so I can fill up the emptiness.
Like Paul, we can say, ‘I don’t care what you think. I don’t even care what I think. I only care about what the Lord thinks.’
