New Morning Mercies #333

The person next to you doesn’t need the gospel more than you do; he just needs it differently than you do. All people sin and fall short.

The indictment of Romans 3 puts us all in the same boat:

What then? Are we Jews any better off? No, not at all. For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin, as it is written:

“None is righteous, no, not one;

no one understands;

no one seeks for God.

All have turned aside; together they have become worthless;

no one does good,

not even one.”

“Their throat is an open grave;

they use their tongues to deceive.”

“The venom of asps is under their lips.”

“Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness.”

“Their feet are swift to shed blood;

in their paths are ruin and misery,

and the way of peace they have not known.”

“There is no fear of God before their eyes.” (Rom. 3:9–18)

Yes, we are all sinners. We are all in the same desperate condition. None of us is better off than any other. None of us is more righteous. None of us is more deserving. None of us has anything to point to that would commend us to God. We all need to be rescued from the dark rebellion of our own hearts. There is only one hope for us all—the amazing, forgiving, rescuing, transforming, and delivering grace of Jesus. The problem is that we often don’t see it that way.

Part of the blindness of sin is our tendency to be more irritated by and more concerned about the sin of the people next to us than our own. Because we are blind to our own sin and our eyes are open to theirs, we tend to see our neighbors as bigger sinners than we are. And when you fall into comparing yourself to another person, you almost always conclude that you are more righteous than he is, and when you conclude that you are more righteous than he is, you begin to minimize you own need for grace. In this way, false spiritual comparisons put you in spiritual danger. They make you think that you’re better off than you are and weaken your resolve to seek and celebrate redeeming grace. We must cry out for grace to deliver us from this tendency.

Yes, we all stand before God deserving of his anger. How grateful we ought to be that Christ bore our penalty so that we could bask in God’s grace.

For further study and encouragement: Ephesians 4:17–24