Because your heart is proud, and you have said, “I am a god, I sit in the seat of the gods, in the heart of the seas” . . . you shall die the death of the slain in the heart of the seas. Ezekiel 28:2,8
It was pride that made the devil the devil and in today’s passage, Ezekiel prophesied that it was pride that would destroy the Prince of Tyre. The prince’s great sin was that he did not follow God, but rather made himself out to be a god. This of course, did not change the real God. He is still God. It had drastic consequences for the prince though, who, in his pride, wrought his own destruction.
I look at both the devil and the Prince of Tyre, and I think, I’m glad I’m not proud like that. I would never claim to be a god. I would never be so bold as to tell God that I am in charge. I may not have the audacity to consciously tell God that I am taking his place, but this is practically what I do, every time I go my own way, refusing to follow him.
God is the creator and we are the created, made to live in submission to his will. When we know how he wants us to live, but we insist on doing what we want, we make ourselves out to be gods. Then, those things that we think we want: food, drugs, money, popularity, success, and self-will, become the gods of our own demise.
We think we are free in doing what we want, but we don’t realize, until it’s too late, that the broken appetites and behaviors we pursue become miserable gods that control us. Evil enslaves. God never enslaves.
We make terrible gods and we becomes addicted to our own appetites as we follow our self-will above all. If we desire freedom from our own destruction, we must paradoxically surrender our will to the God who made us. It is only in abandoning ourselves and following him above all, that we can know true freedom from our broken desires.