Mark 15

"9 But Pilate answered them, saying, “Do you want me to release to you the King of the Jews?” 10 For he knew that the chief priests had handed Him over because of envy. "

Pride is a dangerous and evil thing. It is very sad that almost everyone has some degree of it. Jesus had warned us clearly that He "Resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble". Pride is not good, but it becomes deadly when the pride is against God. You may be wondering why I mentioned pride when this verse is talking about envy. It's beccause envy can only exist if pride exists first. If one has no pride, then one will not be bothered if another person is better. Envy is caused when one's pride is hurt by someone else being better than themselves. It is caused by pride, because they are not able to recognize and applaud another person being better and more prominent than themselves. This could indeed be a difficult obstacle to overcome. May the Lord help us, because even He knows it is hard. Because He has given us warning messages in this regard time and again through Himself and his apostles (James 4:6, 1 Peter 5:5, Phillipians 2:3, Mark 7:22,23, etc...).

From this story, we can see how pride can be deadly, both for the victim and the offender. Because of pride, they crucified Jesus. Even if Jesus wasn't God and was just an ordinary person, they still committed physical murder. Because Jesus is God, the offender killed themselves spiritually by not being able to accept their Saviour. Because Jesus is God, they ended up with a bad deal, a deal for their own spiritual death and eternal suffering, a deadlier death than Jesus' physical death.

What we can learn from this is to remind ourselves not to make a bad deal that ends in our spiritual death. Remember how we can make eternal deals that will last, even when they may appear to be bad deals in this transient life. Learn to look further into the future and not just in the present. Remember that the priests in their present moment seem to have won and diminished the one who overpowered them. But in actuality, they have lost the battle that mattered, the eternal one. May the Lord help us.