Do you ever feel like other people’s failings are worse than your own? It’s an easy trap to fall into. Most of us are quite capable of explaining away our shortcomings while seeing looming devastation in the shortcomings of others. We tend to see others’ failures as “big” while ours are “small.” But at the end of the day, a failure is a failure, and sin is sin. James 2:10-11 says, “For whoever keeps the entire law, and yet stumbles at one point, is guilty of breaking it all. For he who said, ‘Do not commit adultery,’ also said, ‘Do not murder.’ So if you do not commit adultery, but you murder, you are a lawbreaker.”[1]
We may think someone else’s sin is worse than ours. But our sin is bad enough. Our sin, “small” as we think it is, separates us from God and makes us unholy sinners. And that means we need God’s mercy just as much as anyone else.
[1] CSB