Well, I thought to myself, you are, too, when you put on a big puffy coat to go outside in the cold. And that is indeed what had happened. The wren had puffed up his feathers to hold the heat closer to his small body. Before long, I noticed equally puffy cardinals, titmice, and sparrows. God gave them all waterproof feathers to shed the rain and insulate their bodies, and the ability to create air pockets around them to hold in their body heat by puffing out those feathers. But still, if you are not aware of that, at first glance they look like completely different birds.
And that happens to us as well. When we become puffed up with pride, we act like completely different people. Tell me you haven't seen a man you would have described as a good man, do something which seems completely out of character to protect his image, his status, his control over a situation. We walked out of a congregational meeting one time and someone said to us, "I did not know that brother today. He was not himself at all!" Or maybe he was, and we just found out that day.
I have applied all these things to myself and Apollos for your benefit, brothers, that you may learn by us not to go beyond what is written, that none of you may be puffed up in favor of one against another (1Cor 4:6). Paul defines it for us: when we think ourselves better than others in any sort of way, we are puffed up like all those little birds I saw that morning.
Now some are puffed up, as though I were not coming to you. But I will come to you shortly, if the Lord will; and I will know, not the word of them that are puffed up, but the power (1Cor 4:18-19). He says that pride can make us think we never need to be corrected. The Corinthians with this problem were about to find out otherwise. I would certainly hate to find out before it was too late.
Let no man rob you of your prize by a voluntary humility and worshipping of the angels, dwelling in the things which he has seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind (Col 2:18). How ironic when Paul says that humility can cause pride—false humility, that is. It may not be wrong to recognize that we have improved in our efforts to gain humility, but bragging about it certainly is.
If any man teaches a different doctrine, and consents not to sound words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine which is according to godliness; he is puffed up, knowing nothing, but doting about questionings and disputes of words, whereof come envy, strife, railings, evil surmisings (1Tim 6:3-4). And here we have a false teacher who cannot be reasoned with because he thinks he knows more than you do. The sad thing is, he knows nothing.
We could go on with yet more passages, but perhaps these are enough to get the point across. Pride can change you into someone you really should not want to be. It can puff up you like a bird on a cold winter day, but no one will think it's cute.
Love suffers long, and is kind; love envies not; love vaunts not itself, is not puffed up (1Cor 13:4).
Dene Ward