A Great Warrior . . .

has fought courageously and has gained glorious victories over mighty enemies. Someone who imagines that he is a great warrior but barely overcomes a weakling is actually thinking much too highly about himself.

For someone to imagine he is a great composer, having only composed something that is definitely third-class, isn’t that approaching delusions of grandeur?

This also applies to the spiritual realm. Much knowledge, great talents, and a brilliant way of speaking can fool a person so effectively that he can actually believe that he is really someone, despite the fact that he is having a hard time barely overcoming ordinary sins, that he has been a bad fisher of men, and that he has not gained any confidence worth mentioning in the church.

Such a person is puffed up by his carnal mind. He can consider himself to be truly someone when, in fact, he has conducted his affairs so badly that the church has quite a job bearing with him, instead of he, as an older brother or even as a leading brother, bearing with the others. In such a case, one’s imagined greatness and worthiness is a powerful deception of Satan.

A person’s lack of work and confidence within the church are clear evidence of his poor state, and this ought to speak to the person about humbling himself instead of exalting himself as some great person worthy of respect.

No one amounts to anything more than what his life and ministry demonstrate.

For this reason, it is good to consider Paul’s life and word and ministry. This will result in having considerably smaller thoughts about ourselves, because he was a man of flesh and blood like ours and was formerly a great sinner!