comparison – Moment to Moment (Bible blog)

I was reading John 21 yesterday, and as I read this passage, I was reminded of it.

Paul told the Philippians,

Therefore, my dear friends, just as you have always obeyed, so now, not only in my presence but even more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.

For it is God who is working in you both to will and to work according to his good purpose. (Philippians 2:12-13)

“Work out your own salvation.”

Those words “your own” really struck me. So often we are looking at others and comparing ourselves with them.

We look at them and envy their gifts or position.

We look at them and criticize their faults.

We see the things God wants us to do, but we point at others and say, “What about them? Aren’t they supposed to do something?”

But all this comparison and criticizing leads to the disunity that Paul speaks against at the beginning of this chapter.

So he says, “Work out your own salvation.”

Don’t waste your time comparing yourself with other people. Look at what God’s doing in your life.

Look at what he’s telling you to do and do them.

Look at the sins in your own life that he is convicting your heart about and turn from them.”

Or as Jesus told Peter, “What is your business what my plans are for John? You follow me.”

The thing is, as we work out our own salvation without looking at other people, it strips away a lot of our excuses and a lot of our criticisms of others. Instead, we are face to face with Jesus and our own weaknesses and sins.

And that should cause us to tremble. Because then we realize just how much we are reliant on his grace: in our battles against sin, in our ministry, in everything we do.

We realize we would be nothing if God were not working in us to will and to act according to his own good purpose.

And with that comes humility.

Instead of attacking other people for their weaknesses and criticizing them for their faults, we start extending to them the grace we ourselves have received.

Instead of envying them, we thank God that just as he is working in us, he is working in them. We are grateful for their gifts and what God is doing through them.

Instead of competing with them, trying to prove ourselves better than them, we start seeing them as more important than ourselves and start looking out for their interests ahead of our own.

Lord, help me to see your grace in my life…and tremble. I deserve nothing from you but death and condemnation. And yet you saved me. Let me live each day by that grace.

Don’t let me waste me time looking around at other people and criticizing or envying them. Help me to look toward you and follow you.

May your whole church be that way, remembering your grace, and then extending that grace to each other. Rejoicing in each other’s victories. Supporting each other when they fall. Treating each other as more important than themselves.

But again, start with me. Let me be that way. In Jesus name, amen.

Remembering grace

In the first part of this chapter, Paul tells us that when others are caught in sin, we are to restore them with gentleness.

So many times, however, this is simply not done. Instead, often times, Christians do this with a spirit of condescension. Why is that?

I think a lot of it is due to the fact that we forget that we too stand by grace alone. And because we forget that, we get caught up in comparing ourselves with others.

You see this at the tail end of chapter 5, Paul told the Galatians,

Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another. (Galatians 5:26)

When we are conceited, we inevitably compare ourselves with others.

In some cases that leads us to provoke others by our pride because we see ourselves as better than them. In other cases, we envy them because they have what we don’t.

Either way, when they fall, it gives us the chance to knock them down a peg. But that is not the spirit we should have.

We need to remember that we are all really nothing apart from Christ. All we are, all we have, is by his grace. And Paul says that if we forget that, we deceive ourselves. (Galatians 6:3)

So grace doesn’t rejoice when others stumble because it somehow makes us look better. Rather, it causes us to look with compassion on the one who falls, and to want to help them out from under their burden of sin.

Grace reminds us that we are judged not on a sliding scale based on how others perform. Rather, we are judged on God’s scale. And we are called to account for our own load of sin, regardless of how others “perform.”

All this leads to humility and gratefulness at the grace we have received, so that we don’t boast in ourselves, but in the cross of Christ and what he has done.

Grace also reminds us that none of our value comes from what we do, even in ministry. One of the reasons that the Jewish Christians wanted to get the Gentiles circumcised was so they could boast about what they had done among the Gentiles.

How many Christians get their value from their ministry? And because of this, they are always pointing at the people they have converted or discipled, and all the other things they do for Christ.

But Paul says,

But as for me, I will never boast about anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. (Galatians 6:14)

Important as ministry is, it is not where our worth comes from. We stand, not because of what we do, but because of what Christ has done. And so Paul says,

For both circumcision and uncircumcision (nor any other things you might boast about) mean nothing; what matters instead is a new creation. (Galatians 6:15)

And becoming a new creation is not something we did. It’s what God did.

So let us boast not in what we do, or who we are. Rather, each day let us boast in who Jesus is and what he has done.