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The Sin of Self-Pity and the Sufficiency of Christ
By Angela Mitchell
As I reflect on my life, I’ve realized that one of the toughest sin battles I’ve faced is the tendency toward self-pity. Over the past year, this insidious sin has desired to creep back into my heart, especially as I’ve found myself in doctors’ offices far more than anywhere else. Deep down, I know that God loves me and cares for my well-being. I trust that He has a purpose for everything in my life, working it all for my good and His glory (Romans 8:28). Yet my flesh tries to whisper that I have it worse than others, persuading me that I really do have the right to complain and wallow in self-pity at times.
I can almost hear the hostess of the pity party calling out, “Are you Mrs. Mitchell? Pity party of one, your table is ready!” It’s my party and I can cry if I want to…we believe it can be justified, right?
Life is hard at times, and when it’s hard, I am tempted toward the prideful sin of self-pity.
The sin of self-pity, when coddled from a young age, seems to dig its claws into the very fabric and nature of our thought life much quicker than we’d expect. It feels normal, like a default setting. We all have to fight against this default setting by renewing our minds in the Word and repenting, daily, sometimes even hourly, depending on what we’re going through.
We are all born with a sinful bent to pout when we don’t get our way. We all know the familiar whine uttered by the cutest little voice: “I didn’t get that toy,” or “I was left out today.” In our current culture, this is a sin parents are increasingly being encouraged to coddle. Give them all their heart’s desires. Make sure they never feel left out, and never feel like they didn’t get their way. Give them exactly what they want, and they won’t ever have to feel the sinful tinge of self-pity.
That could be the selling point of a modern parenting book.
Self-pity is born from the depraved desire toward self-love. Scripture warns us that in the last days people will be “lovers of self” (2 Timothy 3:2). Self-pity says, “I love myself so much that I will feel sorry for myself when no one else will. In fact, I know how to care for myself better than everyone else.”
The sin of self-pity is hard to nail down because, in everyone’s life, God’s providence will hand us a seemingly bitter circumstance. This can make us prone to look over our circumstances with even the smallest grain of self-pity. One person enjoys health and prosperity, seemingly better circumstances than ours, while another seems to never experience the perpetual rain cloud we feel we live under.
Self-pity puts a sunny sky over everyone else’s life and a rain cloud over our own. We compare our lives to the lives of others, even though Scripture warns us against measuring ourselves by one another (2 Corinthians 10:12).
Not only is this out of touch with reality, but it is also deeply unloving. We know that all who follow Christ will experience hardship in this life. Everyone has it hard. None of us are getting out of here unsanctified. It’s just not going to happen for those who seek to live a life of godliness. We are all promised trials.
“Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted…” 2 Timothy 3:12
So we see that self-pity and envy lace their fingers together and happily hold hands. These two are sister sins. You really can’t have one without the other. Self-pity is born out of envy and pride, and at the root, this sin is simply a form of unbelief. James warns us that where there is “bitter jealousy and selfish ambition,” there will be disorder and every vile practice (James 3:14–16).
“Self-pity is the response of pride to suffering… Self-pity is the voice of pride in the heart of the weak.”— John Piper
The standard of self-pity is that we haven’t gotten what we believe we deserve, so we nurse those feelings of sadness. Self-pity shakes its fist at God and says, “You owe me.” It refuses to be grateful. It glosses over life’s lessons and seasons of growth. It separates close friends because…they just don’t get it.
Self-pity becomes a jail cell for those held captive by it.
Satan loves when we entertain pitying ourselves. It takes our eyes off the mercy and true pity shown to us at the cross and puts them back on our circumstances. It steals fellowship with others, produces grumbling, and gives birth to bitterness. Self-pity wants you all to itself. This sin separates you from the body of Christ, and nothing could become more dangerous for your soul than that.
Do not misunderstand me: some circumstances and bitter providences in life are seemingly more than a person can bear. Losing a child or loved one, having major relationship difficulties, being abused by others, or dealing with sudden, tragic events can lead to a temporary shift in how we navigate our emotions. Every Christian needs someone in their life who allows them to suffer imperfectly. There is grace for truly tragic and difficult circumstances that can temporarily cloud our understanding.
However, self-pity wants to sit on the throne of your life, dear sister.
This is what it wants: for you to look long and hard at what you don’t have in comparison to others. It wants to convince you that no one else draws the short straw besides you. It wants to separate you from other believers and keep you all to itself, because self-pity likes to be prideful. It likes to revel in the blessings of others as long as it can make you look away from your own.
This is a deadly sin with the power to destroy you.
It can make you cruel, passive-aggressive, and even downright mean.
Self-pity wants to destroy you because it convinces you that God has kept good things from you. It will convince you that pleasing yourself matters most of all, and that your real problem is that you don’t love yourself enough. It loves to coddle your pride and your ego and remind you of all you don’t have in this season of life. It illuminates all the things you think will make you happy as some magical, hardship-free season that God has placed just out of reach. This is the same lie Satan whispered in the garden, that God was withholding something good (Genesis 3)
Your pain will be worse than others’ pain. Your tasks will be harder than others’ tasks. It will make you an unjust judge of your friends because, well…they don’t have it as hard as you do.
Friend, self-pity is a mean, ugly, and unjust ruler of a woman’s heart. It feeds off pride, jealousy, and ungratefulness. It doesn’t allow you to behold God or His love for you.
See self-pity for the sin that it is, and seek to mortify it before it destroys you. Scripture tells us to “put to death” what is earthly in us (Colossians 3:5).
It is only when we turn our eyes Heavenward and remind ourselves of the love of Christ, who sovereignly ordains all things that come to pass in our lives while also providing us the grace we need to navigate them, that we can begin to see self-pity for what it is: a deadly sin that turns our eyes away from the truth that we have been given Christ.
So put off self-pity and put on gratefulness, courage, and self-forgetfulness. You can’t wallow in self-pity for long when you’re seeking to meet the needs of others. Self-pity can’t grip a content heart because a content heart knows it has been given what it truly needs: Christ Himself, and the grace to endure trials of various kinds.
“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” 2 Corinthians 12:9
Self-pity seems harmless, but it is sinful and deadly pride. We must remember that Christ is better than anything we think we are missing, that His grace is sufficient for whatever He calls us to endure, and that we can trust the God who has sovereignly ordained our circumstances, even the ones we would never have chosen for ourselves. Jesus pitied us, and it’s the only kind of pity that we need. His pity for our helpless state provided the salvation our souls could never earn. In light of this glorious truth may the Lord grant us the grace we need to mortify our sinful self-pity and fix our eyes on Christ.
