“You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it.” Jesus spoke this to the religious leaders.

Narcissism in the Pulpit: King Saul as a Biblical Corrective.

The truth is, in every age, the human heart finds new ways to explain old sins. King Saul’s rise and fall have drawn the attention of both preachers and psychologists, each seeking to interpret what made Israel’s first monarch collapse so tragically under the weight of his own ego. One hardly needs to look far to see one’s own reflection in Saul’s story - his insecurity, his hunger for recognition, his panic when God seemed silent. (And if ever there were a warning for pastors, it’s that Saul’s crown was no help in prayer.)

Modern interpreters have increasingly reimagined Saul through the categories of psychology rather than theology. Angela Startz, writing for Called2Rise, explicitly names Saul as a “narcissistic” biblical figure, portraying his pride, jealousy, and craving for admiration as classic indicators of narcissistic personality disorder.¹ Similarly, an article in the British Journal of Psychiatry, “The Case of King Saul: Did He Have Recurrent Unipolar Depression or Bipolar Affective Disorder?”, approaches his spiritual and moral collapse as a clinical mood disorder.² In both readings, Saul’s tragedy becomes a case study in personality dysfunction rather than disobedience before the living God.

This trend reflects a wider cultural habit: to explain sin in therapeutic terms. Modern commentators find overt narcissism in Saul’s public actions - his monument to himself (1 Sam. 15:12), his wrath at David’s popularity (1 Sam. 18:8), his paranoid rage when his image was threatened. Others detect covert narcissism - hidden insecurity beneath his royal poise, a self-pitying tone when he complains, “I have sinned; yet honour me now, I pray thee, before the elders of my people” (1 Sam. 15:30). These categories can be descriptive, but they are not decisive. They name the symptoms but misdiagnose the cause. Saul’s trouble was not a personality style; it was spiritual rebellion.

The Root of Saul’s Sin

Through a Reformed lens, Saul’s story begins not in psychological malfunction but in covenant failure. God had appointed him (1 Sam. 9:16), anointed him by the hand of Samuel, and filled him with the Spirit to deliver Israel. His kingship was an act of divine grace - Israel’s demand for a king was sinful, yet God condescended to provide one. Saul’s first acts were promising: humility, restraint, even courage. Yet the seed of pride already stirred within him, for he would not wait on God’s word.

The turning point came in 1 Samuel 13 and 15. Saul offered the sacrifice without Samuel, usurping the priestly office, and later spared Agag and the best livestock under the pretext of religious devotion. The chronicler’s verdict is simple: he feared the people, not the Lord. Saul’s self-regard sought to preserve his image at the cost of obedience. The psychological term for this might be “narcissistic self-interest,” but Scripture calls it by a more ancient name: idolatry.

When Saul built a monument to himself (1 Sam. 15:12), he inverted the order of creation. The creature exalted himself over his Creator. What modern psychology calls a “grandiose self,” Scripture calls a heart lifted up in pride. When he envied David’s song - “Saul hath slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands” - he demonstrated the covetous root that still lives in every human heart: the desire to be as God. In short, Saul’s narcissism was not a disorder to be treated but a sin to be judged.

The Biblical Correction

Biblical anthropology locates Saul’s downfall in the corruption of the will. Pride is not a symptom of mental imbalance; it is the moral posture of self-exaltation against divine authority. The Reformed tradition insists that sin is not merely misdirected emotion but total depravity - a radical twisting of the heart that infects thought, desire, and choice. To call Saul “a narcissist” may be convenient, but it mistakes fruit for root. His behaviour proceeded from unbelief.

The apostle Paul describes the fallen self in terms that illuminate Saul’s condition: “They exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the likeness of corruptible man” (Rom. 1:23). That is narcissism’s true origin - the worship of self as image, the substitution of God’s glory for one’s own. Saul’s envy, manipulation, and rage flow from this exchange. He feared losing his reflection more than losing God’s favour.

Christ, by contrast, embodies the antithesis of Saul. “He humbled himself, and became obedient unto death” (Phil. 2:8). Christ emptied Himself as King, whereas Saul used kingship to exalt himself. Saul grasped at honour, Christ laid honour aside. The gospel does not manage the narcissist; it crucifies him. Union with Christ means death to the old self and resurrection to new life. The Spirit renews the believer’s affections, replacing the lust for praise with delight in God’s glory. This is why Reformed theology never stops at behavioural correction - it presses on to regeneration.

Sin as Habit or Interruption

Israel’s first two kings sinned grievously, but they sinned in profoundly different ways. Saul’s sin was not merely an act but a trajectory; a settled pattern of ongoing rebellion that grew from fear, pride, and self-rule. From his first act of impatience at Gilgal (1 Sam. 13) to his selective obedience against Amalek (1 Sam. 15), to his persecution of David, to his desperate consultation with the witch of En-dor (1 Sam. 28), Saul’s life reveals a continual posture of resistance toward God’s word. Each act reinforces the last, forming a life that cannot surrender.

David’s sin, by contrast, comes as tragic lapses. They were moments when passion, presumption, or pride interrupt a life otherwise marked by covenant trust. His adultery and murder (2 Sam. 11), his deceptive cover-up, and later his ill-fated census (2 Sam. 24) all expose deep corruption, yet they do not define his pattern. Each sin, though dreadful, provokes a piercing self-awareness and repentance. His heart is not hardened but wounded.

How do we understand the difference here?
The apostle John gives the key: “Whoever abides in Him does not sin. Whoever sins has neither seen Him nor known Him.”

John does not deny that the believer sins; he denies that the believer can continue in sin as a way of life. The Greek tense (ὁ ποιῶν τὴν ἁμαρτίαν) implies ongoing practice. It is sin as habitation, not interruption. Saul’s life fits that pattern: sin practiced, rationalized, and defended. His disobedience becomes identity. David’s sin, though dark, is confronted, confessed, and broken. His repentance interrupts his rebellion.

Thus, Saul’s sin is a course; David’s sin is a crisis. One hardens, the other humbles. Saul abides in sin because he never truly abides in God; David cannot abide in sin because the Spirit abides in him. In Reformed terms, Saul represents the unregenerate man whose heart remains under the dominion of sin; David, the regenerate man who battles sin under grace. The Spirit’s indwelling ensures that sin in the believer, though present, cannot reign. The difference is not moral superiority but divine renewal.

Psychology and the Distortion of Sin

The modern psychological vocabulary of narcissism, helpful as an analytic tool, risks distorting the biblical doctrine of sin in several ways.

1. It redefines sin as sickness.
By treating Saul’s behaviour as the result of disordered self-esteem or mood instability, psychology subtly transforms moral rebellion into mental imbalance. The British Journal of Psychiatry article illustrates this drift: Saul’s despair and rage are explained as depression or bipolar affective disorder, yet the text of Scripture attributes them to the departure of the Spirit and the torment of a troubled conscience (1 Sam. 16:14). The medicalized model turns divine judgment into neural dysfunction. The Reformed confessions resist this reductionism: sin is not illness to be managed, but guilt to be forgiven and corruption to be mortified.

2. It isolates the self from God.
Modern psychology studies Saul’s interiority but divorces it from his theocentric context. The biblical narrative is not about Saul’s fragile ego but about covenant fidelity. His envy of David is theological before it is emotional. He resents the election of another. The soul cannot be understood apart from God; to do so is to misread both Scripture and self.

3. It blurs accountability.
When Saul’s actions are reframed as the outcome of personality disorder, responsibility softens. He becomes a patient rather than a rebel. But Scripture is unambiguous: “Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, he has also rejected you from being king” (1 Sam. 15:23). The language of disorder may evoke pity, but it cannot replace the need for repentance.

4. It obscures the cure.
Psychological therapies aim at self-regulation, improved relationships, or reduced distress, all good in their place, but they cannot reconcile man to God. The gospel offers not adjustment but atonement. “Be renewed in the spirit of your mind,” Paul writes, “and put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness” (Eph. 4:23–24).

A simple illustration may help: painting over rust will never stop corrosion. Without removing the rusted metal, the problem persists beneath the fresh coat. Likewise, psychological language can make sin appear more manageable while leaving the heart unchanged.

A Reformed Anthropology of the Self

Reformed theology views man as created in God’s image, fallen in Adam, redeemed in Christ, and sanctified by the Spirit. Each stage re-centers the self not around autonomy but dependence. Saul’s tragedy is that he forgot his derivative identity. He was anointed, not self-appointed; empowered, not self-sufficient. The narcissistic impulse to “be like God” (Gen. 3:5) re-emerged in Israel’s first king and brought his ruin.

The Westminster Confession reminds us that man’s chief end is “to glorify God, and to enjoy Him forever.” The narcissistic self reverses this: to glorify self and to use God when convenient. This inversion is not unique to Saul, it is endemic to fallen humanity. Every sinner constructs a kingdom of self. But only grace dethrones it.

Thus, while modern psychology names “narcissism” as a maladaptive pattern, Scripture names it as idolatry. The corrective is not self-awareness but self-denial. Christ’s call, “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily” (Luke 9:23), is the divine answer to every form of self-worship.

The Pastoral Application

Saul’s story warns us not only of pride but of presumption. He began in humility (“Am I not the least of the tribes of Israel?”, 1 Sam. 9:21) but ended in self-justifying deceit. Even his repentance was self-serving: “I have sinned; yet honour me now before the elders.” Genuine repentance seeks God’s honour, not self-preservation.

For pastors and believers today, the lesson is sobering. The traits we diagnose in Saul, envy, image-management, manipulation, flourish wherever the gospel is displaced by self-promotion. Church leaders are particularly vulnerable, for ministry can mask pride beneath piety. As Chuck DeGroat has shown in When Narcissism Comes to Church, the quest for spiritual authority can easily become a quest for admiration.³ The antidote is not therapy alone but theology. It is a return to the cross where all boasting dies.

A buffoonish aside may help make the point: one could almost imagine Saul checking his reflection in a polished shield before going out to war. But vanity, whether ancient or modern, always loses its shine when God enters the scene.

The cure, then, is the same for Saul’s heirs as for Saul himself: repentance and faith. Only the gospel can remake the self from the inside out. The Spirit who departed from Saul indwells believers today, empowering us to live for Christ’s glory, not our own.

Conclusion

Modern commentators such as Angela Startz and the British Journal of Psychiatry have reframed Saul through the lens of narcissism and affective disorder, yet Scripture insists that his ruin was moral and theological. He did not suffer from a fragile self-image; he rebelled against God’s word. Likewise, the modern “narcissistic pastor”, to use the words of Jesus, is a child of the Devil. Psychology can describe the pattern, but only theology explains it.

Let us, then, heed Saul’s lesson: that self-exaltation ends in desolation, but obedience leads to life. As the Scripture says, “God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble.” May we seek that grace daily—turning from self to the Saviour who alone can heal the heart. This begins when we call sin out for what it is.

Notes

1. Angela Startz, “Biblical Figures Exhibiting Narcissistic Qualities,” Called2Rise, 2022, https://www.called2rise.com/post/biblical-figures-exhibiting-narcissistic-qualities.
2. “The Case of King Saul: Did He Have Recurrent Unipolar Depression or Bipolar Affective Disorder?” The British Journal of Psychiatry 171, no. 6 (1997): 569–572, https://doi.org/10.1192/bjp.171.6.569.
3. Chuck DeGroat, When Narcissism Comes to Church: Healing Your Community from Emotional and Spiritual Abuse (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2020).
4. The Holy Bible: King James Version (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1982).