Pride is sneaky. It doesn’t always strut. Sometimes it whispers, “At least I’m not like them.”
But in that moment—right there—you’ve already forgotten grace. You’ve stepped outside of the miracle that covers you and started measuring your worth by someone else’s wounds. Pride turns holiness into performance. It turns grace into competition. And it’s killing the witness of too many so-called faithful ones.
God doesn’t rank sin the way we do.
He doesn’t look at the addict and the gossip and say, “One of you is worse.” He doesn’t hold a scoreboard. He holds out His hand.
We’re the ones who build pedestals with one hand and push people off them with the other.
But grace?
Grace makes you weep for another’s pain.
Grace makes you say, “That could be me. That was me. That sometimes is me.”
There is no holiness without humility.
And there is no humility without remembering: everything good in you is a gift.
You didn’t earn it. You didn’t craft it. You didn’t rise above. You were rescued.
“But for the grace of God,” the old saints used to say, “there go I.”
Not in pity. Not in superiority. In sober gratitude—the kind that bends low, not to judge, but to help lift someone up.
We live in a culture addicted to comparison, even in the church. Especially in the church.
The quiet arrogance of “I don’t struggle with that.”
The smug theology of “They should’ve known better.”
The false righteousness of “I would never…”
But grace has a way of stripping all that away.
It levels the ground. It reminds us that nobody gets in on merit. Not one of us.
The gospel isn’t about getting better so you can belong.
It’s about being broken and still being loved.
Still being chosen.
Still being covered.
So when you see someone stumble, don’t clench your jaw.
Don’t climb up your ladder of moral superiority.
Let it break your heart.
Because grace doesn’t say, “I’m better.”
It says, “I’ve been forgiven.”
And that changes everything.
Let us be faithful not in proving we’re good, but in remembering who is Good.
And letting that remembrance make us merciful.