Always leading us back to grace

How easily we try to justify ourselves in comparison with others! 

In a very sad and deeply deceptive way, we tend to feel better about ourselves when we think we are better than others.

Perhaps we’re not as audacious as the man who prayed, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers…” (Luke 18:11), but our hearts must fight against a desire to be confident of our own righteousness and look down on everyone else.

Comparison is the tool we use to satisfy our longing for approval and acceptance.

If we confess that salvation is “not from ourselves but the gift of God — not by works, so that no one can boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9), why do we so easily engage in comparisons with our fellow-worshippers to satisfy our desires to be better than others?

How this must grieve God!

He “made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ” (II Corinthians 5:21). Our Savior “who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood” (Revelation 1:5). 

We are called to “serve each other in humility, for ‘God opposes the proud but favors the humble.’ So humble yourselves under the mighty power of God, and at the right time he will lift you up in honor” (I Peter 5:5-6).

God is always leading us back to grace to confess our unworthiness and to celebrate His mercy. This is where true service of God and others begins. 

God faithfully destroys the idol of self-justification and relentlessly leads us to find our confidence and comfort in the cross — not in a delusional and dangerous fantasy of being better than others.