There is a dark secret lurking in the heart of performance-based religion. It cannot survive alone. It requires a victim. The Pharisees of Jesus' day could not simply be righteous; they needed someone unrighteous to point at, someone worse to condemn, someone lower to look down upon. Without a sinner nearby, their entire system of self-righteousness would collapse.

This isn't ancient history. The same spirit thrives today in religious circles where worth is measured by comparison, where holiness is calculated by how much better you are than the next person, where peace is found not in grace but in having someone worse standing beside you.

But Scripture cuts through this darkness with a simple truth:

"Charity rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth" 1 Corinthians 13:6.

Love never celebrates when another falls. Love never uses someone else's failure as a stepping stone to feel superior. Love never builds itself by tearing others down.

The Pharisee in Jesus' parable stands in the temple and prays,

"God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican" Luke 18:11.

This prayer reveals the twisted foundation of religious pride: it depends entirely on someone else being worse.

Notice what he's doing. His sense of righteousness isn't coming from God's grace or mercy. It's coming from a mathematical comparison. He has created a spiritual scoreboard, and his worth is determined by how he ranks against others. Without the tax collector standing nearby, looking broken and desperate, the Pharisee's prayer collapses into nothing.

This is the treadmill of comparison-based religion. You can never rest because someone might catch up. You can never feel secure because your security depends on maintaining distance from those "beneath" you. And most tragically, you can never experience real joy because your happiness is rooted in another person's misery.

The system is exhausting because it's never enough to be good; you must always be better than. It's not sufficient to avoid certain sins; you must find someone who hasn't avoided them and point them out. The moment everyone around you starts looking too righteous, you must search for new sinners to condemn.

The story in John 8 exposes another dimension of this spiritual sickness. When the scribes and Pharisees drag a woman caught in adultery before Jesus, their motivations are far from pure.

"They said this to test Him, that they might have grounds for accusing Him" John 8:6.

Her shame becomes their weapon. Her brokenness becomes their opportunity.

The woman is not a person to them; she's a tool. Her sin gives them cover to avoid dealing with their own hearts. As long as her guilt is in the spotlight, their corruption can remain in the shadows. As long as everyone is looking at her failure, no one is examining their motives.

This reveals why religious people often become obsessed with the sins of others. It's not because they're particularly righteous or concerned about holiness. It's because judgment provides the perfect hiding place. When you're busy condemning someone else, you don't have to face your own desperate need for mercy.

The Apostle Paul understood this dynamic perfectly when he wrote,

"Therefore thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou art that judgest: for wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself; for thou that judgest doest the same things" Romans 2:1.

The very act of judgment often reveals the same sin in the judge's heart.

But Jesus shattered their hiding place with a straightforward statement:

"He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her" John 8:7.

Suddenly, the spotlight turned. Their secret sins were exposed. Their stones became too heavy to hold. One by one, they slipped away, leaving only Jesus and the woman.

Grace has a way of doing that. It strips away the masks. It removes the pedestals. It forces us to see ourselves as we really are, not better than others, just broken in different ways.

Perhaps nothing infuriated the Pharisees more than Jesus' statement:

"Verily I say unto you, That the publicans and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you" Matthew 21:31.

This wasn't just offensive; it was system-shattering. In one sentence, Jesus had destroyed their entire hierarchy of holiness.

Grace does not operate on a sliding scale. It doesn't grade on a curve. It doesn't rank sinners from worst to best. At the foot of the cross, the ground is entirely level. There are no big sinners and little sinners, no first class and coach passengers on the grace train. There are simply sinners who need a Savior.

This leveling effect of grace terrifies performance-based religion because it eliminates the advantage religious people think they have. If tax collectors and prostitutes can receive the same mercy as moral, upstanding citizens, then what's the point of all that rule-keeping and image management?

The answer reveals the heart of the Gospel: the point was never to earn God's favor through performance. The point was always to receive God's favor through faith. Grace doesn't reward the deserving; it saves the undeserving. And that includes everyone.

When you truly understand grace, you stop needing someone worse than you nearby. You stop calculating your righteousness by comparison. You stop feeling threatened when God shows mercy to people whose sins look different from yours. Instead, you marvel that the same grace that saved them is the grace that saved you.

At the root of this need to condemn others lies unforgiveness, not just toward specific people, but toward the very idea that someone could be forgiven without "earning" it first. Religious pride says, "If I had to work for my standing, everyone else should too." Grace says, "No one can work for their standing, so everyone must receive it as a gift."

Unforgiveness is spiritual poison. It doesn't hurt the person you refuse to forgive nearly as much as it destroys you. When you hold onto someone else's guilt, when you rehearse their failures, when you define them by their worst moments, you're not protecting righteousness; you're poisoning your own heart.

The Pharisees couldn't forgive the woman's adultery because forgiving her would mean admitting they needed forgiveness too. They couldn't release her guilt because holding it made them feel clean by comparison. But this kind of unforgiveness creates a prison where the jailer suffers as much as the prisoner.

True forgiveness doesn't minimize sin or pretend wrongs never happened. It acknowledges the hurt while releasing the right to punish. It puts the offender in God's hands rather than trying to extract payment yourself. And paradoxically, this release brings freedom, not just to the forgiven, but to the forgiver.

When you forgive, you stop needing that person to remain "worse than you" for your emotional well-being. You stop using their failure as fuel for your self-righteousness. You free yourself from the exhausting work of keeping score.

Love operates on entirely different principles from religious pride. Where pride builds itself up by pushing others down, Love lifts others up even when it costs something. Where pride needs someone worse to feel secure, Love finds its security in Christ alone. Where pride rejoices when enemies stumble, love weeps over every fall and celebrates every restoration.

Consider how Jesus responded to sinners throughout the Gospels. He didn't use the woman at the well's multiple marriages to highlight His own moral superiority. He didn't use Zacchaeus' corruption to make Himself look righteous by comparison. He didn't use the thief on the cross's criminal record to bolster His own reputation.

Instead, Jesus met each person with grace. He saw their sin clearly but didn't use it as a weapon against them. He offered forgiveness without requiring them to grovel or earn it first. He treated their dignity as human beings as more important than His reputation as a moral teacher.

This is what Love does. Love never uses another person's failures to get ahead. Love never celebrates when justice falls on someone else. Love never whispers, "Thank God I'm not like them." Love kneels beside the broken and says, "There go I, but for the grace of God."

The Apostle Paul understood this when he wrote about Love in 1 Corinthians 13. Love

"rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth."

Love doesn't find joy in exposing sin; it finds joy when grace covers sin. Love doesn't celebrate when evil is revealed; it celebrates when mercy triumphs.

At the heart of Christianity stands a cross where Jesus became everything that religious pride despises. He became sin. He became cursed. He became the worst of what humanity could offer, not because He was those things, but because He chose to bear them for us.

The cross proves that God's Love doesn't work on the comparison system. Jesus didn't die for us because we were better than other people. He died for us because we were lost, broken, and without hope, just like everyone else. The cross levels every hierarchy, destroys every ranking system, and eliminates every reason to feel superior to another human being.

If the Son of God had to die for your sins, you have no room to boast over anyone else's failures. If the blood of Christ was required to make you clean, you can't claim to be inherently better than those who need the same blood. If you are saved by grace through faith and not by works, you can't use your works to elevate yourself above those whose works look different from yours.

The cross also reveals what Love actually looks like in action. Love doesn't use sin as a weapon; it bears sin as a burden. Love doesn't expose shame for personal advantage; it covers shame at personal cost. Love doesn't rejoice when evil is punished; it takes the punishment so grace can reign.

The good news is that you don't have to live on the treadmill of comparison anymore. You don't have to build your identity by tearing down others. You don't have to carry stones in your hands, ready to throw them at the next person who stumbles. Christ has offered you something far better than comparison-based righteousness: He's offered you His own righteousness as a gift.

When you rest in Christ's righteousness rather than your own, several things happen.

You stop needing someone worse to feel secure. Your security comes from being "in Christ," not from being "better than others." Your worth is established by God's choice to love you, not by your ability to outperform your neighbors.

You stop taking secret pleasure in others' failures. When someone falls, you feel grief rather than relief. When someone's sin is exposed, you think, "That could have been me," rather than, "Thank God it wasn't me." You begin to see every fallen person as someone Christ died for, not as someone you can use to feel better about yourself.

You start genuinely hoping for others' restoration rather than secretly wanting their continued failure. You pray for your enemies' repentance rather than their downfall. You work for reconciliation rather than division. You become part of the healing rather than part of the wound.

You find freedom from the exhausting work of scorekeeping. You don't have to monitor everyone else's spiritual progress to feel good about your own. You don't have to maintain detailed records of who's doing better or worse than you. You can simply focus on following Christ and leave everyone else's journey in His capable hands.

Living this way requires constant vigilance against the pride that lurks in every human heart. It means catching yourself when you feel that little surge of satisfaction at someone else's embarrassment. It means checking your motives when you feel compelled to point out someone's sin. It means examining whether your concern for "righteousness" is actually a concern for feeling superior.

It means choosing to speak about others the way you would want them to speak about you if your worst moment were on display. It means extending the same grace you hope to receive when you inevitably stumble. It means remembering that everyone you meet is fighting battles you know nothing about and carrying burdens you can't see.

Most practically, it means stopping yourself from using phrases like "At least I never..." or "Thank God I'm not like..." or "Can you believe they..." when discussing others' failures. It means choosing mercy in your private thoughts, not just in your public words. It means training your heart to grieve over sin rather than celebrate it, even when it's not your sin.

The alternative to comparison-based religion isn't lower standards or moral relativism. It's something far more beautiful: a community of forgiven people who extend the same grace they've received. It's a family of former enemies who've been reconciled to God and therefore can work for reconciliation with each other.

In this community, confession is safe because everyone understands their own need for mercy. Failure isn't weaponized because everyone remembers their own failures. Growth is celebrated because everyone wants to see grace work in every life. Love thrives because it's no longer competing with pride for space in the heart.

This is what the early church experienced in its best moments. Tax collectors and zealots sat at the same table. Former prostitutes and former Pharisees worshipped the same Lord. Slave and free, Jew and Gentile, moral and immoral, all found themselves equally in need of grace and equally recipients of it.

The ground was level at the foot of the cross, and they never forgot it.

In the end, the choice is simple: you can build your life on comparison or on grace. You can find your worth in being better than others or in being loved by God. You can rejoice in others' failures or in Christ's triumph over all failure.

Love never rejoices in evil because Love has seen something better than evil's exposure; it has seen evil's defeat. At the cross, every sin that religious pride uses as ammunition against others was carried by Christ. Every failure that comparison-based religion exploits for advantage was borne by the Savior. Every shame that self-righteousness uses as a stepping stone was covered by perfect Love.

The stones can finally drop from your hands. The scoreboard can finally be thrown away. The treadmill can finally be turned off. In Christ, the comparison game is over, and grace has won.

Love never rejoices in evil. Love rejoices in the truth, and the truth is this: mercy triumphs over judgment, grace is greater than sin, and at the cross, Love has spoken the final word.