As Yourself (Part B)

 What Is Love? | Day 3, Part B

 

"I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted." Luke 18:14 (NIV)

 

Good morning. Yesterday we looked at the first way the phrase "as yourself" gets misread, the cultural argument that self-generated love is the prerequisite for loving the neighbor. Today we stay in the same five words and look at a second error, one that lives closer to home for many who have walked with God for a long time. It is the error of the person who knows God's love well enough to have quietly begun measuring their devotion against the person beside them.

 

The Pride That Wears Devotion as a Coat

Jesus told a parable about two men who walked into the temple to pray. One was a Pharisee, a man whose religious credentials were beyond question. The other was a tax collector, a man whose profession made him a social and spiritual outcast in his community. "The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: 'God, I thank you that I am not like other people, robbers, evildoers, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.'" (Luke 18:11-12, NIV). The Pharisee was not lying. He fasted. He tithed. His religious practice by every external measure was exemplary. But he stood before God with his record in one hand and his neighbor in the other, and he used both to build himself up. His prayer was not addressed to God so much as it was a report card submitted to God, with grades already filled in.

 

The tax collector took a different posture entirely. "But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, 'God, have mercy on me, a sinner.'" (Luke 18:13, NIV). No record to present. No comparison to make. Just honest, open-handed need before a God of mercy.

Jesus delivers the verdict without softening it: "I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted." (Luke 18:14, NIV). The man with the better record went home empty. The man with nothing to offer went home justified. That is not how the world scores things, and it was not how the Pharisee expected God to score them either. But it is exactly how grace works.

 

Now bring this back to the phrase we have been examining across both parts of this devotion. "Love your neighbor as yourself." (Matthew 22:39, NIV). The Pharisee loved himself in exactly the wrong way. Not the cultural way, not the self-help way, but the religious way. He measured his worth against the neighbor and found the neighbor wanting. That measuring is not love for the self rooted in God. It is self-elevation dressed in the language of gratitude. And from that elevated position, the neighbor is never quite a neighbor. The neighbor is a contrast, a foil, the person who makes the Pharisee's standing look better by comparison. That is the precise opposite of what the commandment requires.

 

Sober Judgment and the Ground Where Love Grows

Paul names the corrective with precision. Writing to the church in Rome, he says: "For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you." (Romans 12:3, NIV). Sober judgment. Not self-contempt, not the erasure of all sense of worth or dignity. But an honest, clear-eyed assessment of who we are before God, one that begins and ends with grace rather than with our own record. The faith Paul references is itself a gift distributed by God, not a credential we earned. Even the capacity to believe is received, not achieved.

This is where the two errors this devotion has examined converge at the same root. The culture says generate love from within. The religious proud say generate standing from within. Both put the self at the source. Both end in the same place: a love that is actually about the self rather than the neighbor, and a God who is being used to confirm what we already think about ourselves rather than being worshipped for who he actually is.

 

The psalmist offers the right foundation. "For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well." (Psalm 139:13-14, NIV). Fearfully and wonderfully made. That worth is declared before any record exists, given by the hands of God before we had accomplished a single thing. Devotion, worship, the reading of his Word, fellowship, and the sacraments are not how we construct that value. They are how we stay close to the God who gave it, how we feed our spirit and remain rooted in the love that claimed us. The Pharisee's error was not that he fasted or tithed. Those are faithful acts. His error was using them to measure himself against the tax collector beside him, to grade his own worship and find it superior. That comparison is what turned devotion into pride, and pride into a wall between himself and the very grace he was standing in.

 

The tax collector's prayer is the posture from which genuine love for the neighbor finally becomes possible. Humbly, with hands open and eyes cast down, nothing to prove and nothing to protect, only the honest need of a person who knows they are standing before a God of infinite mercy. From that place, the neighbor is not a comparison. The neighbor is a fellow recipient of the same grace that reached us. And from that place, loving them as ourselves stops being a calculation and starts being the natural overflow of a heart that knows what it has been given.

 

Jesus Christ came for people with nothing to present. Not a polished record, not a spotless religious resume, not a prayer that grades well by comparison. He came for the broken and the proud alike, for every person who has stood in both of those places across a single lifetime, and he loved them all with a love that did not wait for the record to improve before it arrived. That love is the only ground from which genuine love for the neighbor grows. Received humbly, held gratefully, and carried outward freely toward the person beside us who needs the same grace that reached us first.

 

Prayer

Father, I confess that I have stood in the Pharisee's place more times than I would like to admit. I have measured myself against others and found comfort in the gap. I have dressed that self-elevation in the language of faithfulness and called it gratitude. Forgive me. Thank you that your verdict over me does not depend on how I compare to the person beside me but on the mercy of Jesus Christ, who gave everything so that I could come to you with nothing and leave justified.

 

Lord Jesus, give me the tax collector's posture today. Let me stand before you humbly, with open hands, no record to present, no neighbor to measure myself against, only the honest acknowledgment that everything I have and everything I am comes from you. From that place, let me love the people around me not as foils that make me look better but as fellow recipients of the grace that reached us all. I pray this in your name. Amen.

 

The ground of Christian love is level. No one stands higher than the mercy that claimed them. From that level place, the neighbor is not beneath us or above us but beside us, and the love this commandment calls us to flows freely from there. Tomorrow we step into another of the specific words Scripture uses for love, one woven into the fabric of life before we had words for anything at all. Come back and we will look at it together.

 

To God be the glory

 

Pray, praise, and give thanks, for God is good and His mercy endures forever.

 

If you received this message and are not on the daily distribution for them via text or know someone you would like to share these messages with, just have them text "add" to 833-779-8793.