Through The Bible in a Year - September 15, 2026

“Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice… But sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you… Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving.” - Ephesians 4:31, 5:3-4

There are two ways to establish your standing before God without actually depending on God: celebrate what you know, or celebrate what you do.

In Ephesus, the Greek believers celebrated the intellect. The Jewish believers celebrated religious practice. And both groups ended up playing the same game: the religion of comparison. I build myself up by making you smaller. My sophistication versus your simplicity. My devotion versus your paganism.

It sounds innocent enough—after all, the Bible does call us to worship God with our minds and to pursue holy lives. Still, the core problem doesn’t reside in one’s intellect or devotion. The problem – for our relationship with Jesus – comes when we begin to think that our knowledge or behavior is the basis for our standing before God rather than the grace Jesus provides for us. Inevitabley, when we diminish our dependence on his grace, then we begin to believe and act as though our standing with God is maintained by how favorably we compare with the beliefs or behaviors of others.

The examples Paul provides are not pleasant to consider, but they are important: Crude speech that reduces or objectifies other people; anger at others who make us feel less important; bitterness that refuses to release the debt of someone who diminished us. All these are the consequence of striving to maintain our standing with God, with others, or with our own self-estimation by reacting to whatever diminishes the status we had on the basis of some comparison with others.

Paul says in verse 5 that covetousness (comparing what we have to what others have) is idolatry—worshiping something for your happiness that God didn’t intend for you to have. We immediately think of material things. But you can covet a reputation. You can covet the regard of others. You can covet the right to be seen as more sophisticated, more devoted, more right than the people around you.

And when such comparison-religion operates in a church community—even subtly—it produces exactly what Paul lists: bitterness and wrath and anger and slander. Because comparison always eventually becomes resentment. The person who threatens your standing must be diminished. The group who thinks differently must be ridiculed.

The antidote Paul offers is not effort—it’s identity. You are a beloved child of God. Your standing is not earned by comparison. It is given. Therefore you have no need to doubt your status and no person you need to diminish.

Respond: Where is the religion of comparison operating in your heart? Where are you establishing your value by knowing more or doing more than someone else? Where is quiet contempt—for someone’s beliefs, someone’s practices, someone’s failures—maintaining your sense of worth by comparison?

Though it may be hard for you, I want to ask you to identify one person or group you’ve been comparing yourself to favorably to give yourself a sense of worth or spiritual value. Ask God to show you how that comparison has shaped your attitude toward them. And then claim the identity that makes comparison unnecessary: you are already beloved.

Prayer: Father, expose in me the religion of comparison I didn’t know I was practicing. I too easily build myself up by diminishing others—their lack of knowledge, their insincere devotion, their consistent inconsistency. You call me not to compare but to walk in love, as Christ loved me and gave Himself for me. Let the gospel dismantle my comparison religion and replace it with the security of a beloved child who has nothing to prove and no one to diminish. In Jesus’ name, Amen.