Let Us Not Be Desirous of Vain Glory

We all know that we need each other. No one succeeds at life alone, and two really are better than one. But let us be honest about the other half of the truth: relationships are hard. People can get on our nerves. And it is not only people outside the church. Sometimes it is the person in the next pew, the one who is prayerful and sincere and genuinely loves God, who is also, somehow, very difficult to be around. Why is that? Why can someone who truly follows Jesus still end up envious, prickly, and hard to relate to? Paul puts his finger on the root in a single verse.

Let us not be desirous of vain glory, provoking one another, envying one another.

Galatians 5:26

Two Ways Relationships Break

Notice the two words Paul uses: provoking and envying. Between them, they cover almost everything that goes wrong between people. To provoke someone is to relate from a sense of superiority, to look down, to subtly announce that you are ahead of them, to carry the attitude of, do you know who I am? To envy is the opposite motion. It is to look up at someone and be quietly angry about it, to resent them because they seem smarter, better looking, or more accomplished than you.

So all our relational trouble tends to boil down to two complexes: a superiority complex that leads us to provoke, and an inferiority complex that leads us to envy. And here is what is striking. The moment we meet someone, we begin sizing them up, measuring, asking almost automatically, am I better than this person, or are they better than me? Sooner or later, most relationships drift toward one of those two ends, even the ones that started out beautifully.

The Hunger to Matter

Why do we do this? Paul names the reason. Underneath both complexes is what the King James Version calls being desirous of vain glory, a kind of conceit. But conceit here means more than an inflated ego. It points to something aching and universal: deep inside, every one of us carries a gnawing suspicion that we do not really matter, that we are empty of glory. Conceit is the desperate effort to prove, to others and to ourselves, that we are something and not nothing.

Where did that emptiness come from? Scripture traces it to the beginning. In Genesis, the man and woman were naked and not ashamed. Then sin entered, and everything changed.

I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.

Genesis 3:10

The same people who once stood exposed and unashamed suddenly felt naked, afraid, and small. Sin, at its heart, is living for ourselves, and it left us feeling like nothing. You can see the evidence in a simple question: what do we dread most? It is not being disliked. It is being ignored. It stings less to have someone insult your new outfit than to have no one notice it at all. It hurts less to hear that a message was poor than to be met with total indifference, as if you were not even there. Even small children reveal it; any attention, even a scolding, feels better to them than being overlooked. We would rather be disliked than treated as though we do not matter.

That is the engine behind our provoking and our envying. When we act superior, it is because we are trying to prove we matter. When we sink into inferiority and resentment, it is because we are desperately trying to cure that same sense of not mattering. And so we end up using people instead of loving them, feeding on one another to fill our own emptiness.

But if ye bite and devour one another, take heed that ye be not consumed one of another.

Galatians 5:15

The Solution Is Not What We Think

So how do we fix this? More education? That will not do it. In fact, the more educated we become, the more tempted we are to feel superior to those with less schooling and to look down on them too. Achievement cannot heal a wound this deep, because achievement only gives us fresh ground for comparison. Paul offers a completely different answer.

For if a man think himself to be something, when he is nothing, he deceiveth himself.

Galatians 6:3

But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Galatians 6:14

The solution is the cross. And the cross does something no other remedy can. It tells us the truth about ourselves in both directions at once.

Nothing and Something, All at Once

On the one hand, the cross proves that we are nothing. It says plainly that we are sinners, that there is none good, no not one, that even our good deeds are often tangled with selfish motives. If we were fine on our own, Jesus would not have had to die. The cross refuses to let us pretend.

On the other hand, that very same cross proves that we matter beyond measure. For while we were nothing in ourselves, God did not treat us as nothing. He left His glory in heaven, left the worship of angels, and came down to this earth. He took the blows we deserved. He carried the shame that belonged to us, though He had never done a shameful thing. He wore the crown of thorns and hung on the cross in our place. He was forsaken so that we would never have to cry out, for all eternity, my God, why have you forsaken me.

Do you see it? We are nothing and something at the same time. Nothing in ourselves, and yet everything to Him, because He spared nothing, not even His own life, to bring us home. This is why Paul can boast in the cross and nowhere else. In the cross he can fully accept that he is nothing without being crushed by it, because at the very same moment he knows he is treasured by God.

Simul justus et peccator, a righteous sinner, one who was a sinner yet is declared righteous, because of Another who was righteous yet was declared a sinner in his place.

The old hymn writer Isaac Watts caught it well when he surveyed the wondrous cross on which the Prince of glory died, and found that it poured contempt on all his pride while demanding his soul, his life, his all. That is exactly the freedom the cross gives.

Free to Love

Once you truly grasp this, the whole exhausting game of comparison can finally stop. You can walk up to the person who seems better than you and feel no envy, because you know that whatever they are, you too are something precious to Jesus. And you can walk up to the person you might be tempted to look down on and feel no need to provoke, because you know that whatever you seem to be, in yourself you are nothing, and everything you have is a gift.

You no longer have to size people up. It stops mattering who has the degree and who does not, who is impressive and who is plain, who is ahead and who is behind. In Jesus you are a nothing who is something, and that settles the question your heart has been anxiously asking all along. Now you are free to serve your brother and your sister in love, not to extract your worth from them, but because your worth is already secure in the One who declared you righteous.

So let this message settle on your heart with a few honest questions. Are you willing to admit that in yourself you are empty, a sinner who cannot earn your own glory? Do you long to be forgiven and accepted, to be something even while knowing you are nothing? Do you believe the promise that, because Jesus came and died for you, you truly are something to God? And will you receive that as a free gift, taking your place as the nothing who is now, forever, something in Christ? If your answer is yes, then the hunger that has driven so much of your striving can finally rest. You matter, not because you proved it, but because He decided it at the cross.