God has been teaching me that I don’t get to pick and choose who deserves grace. Of course, I want lots of grace for myself—desperately. But when it comes to someone else’s failure, I often catch myself keeping score instead of extending mercy. That double standard doesn’t come from my born again soul or my spirit. It comes from the flesh, which loves to elevate itself by tearing someone else down. The Bible is blunt about where every single one of us stands:
For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. (Romans 3:23)
Not most people. Not “them” or “those public figures we love to criticize.” All. That includes me, and it includes you, and it includes every historical figure whose failures are replayed repeatedly while their contributions are quietly erased or canceled.
Think about King David. He committed adultery and then arranged a murder to cover it up. By any modern standard, his sin was abhorrent—the kind that ends careers and legacies. And yet, when he genuinely repented, look at what he wrote:
Have mercy upon me, O God, according to Your lovingkindness; according to the multitude of Your tender mercies, blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my transgressions, and my sin is always before me. (Psalm 51:1-3)
God, the only One fit to judge David, didn’t erase him from Scripture. He didn’t disqualify him from being called “a man after God’s own heart.” He forgave him, restored him, and gave him the privilege of being in the lineage of Christ. How can we, then, apply a stricter standard of judgment to each other, than God applied to David? Haven’t we made ourselves judges above God Himself?
Look, there is no doubt that we all struggle with judging each other and, in doing so, completely discounting any good that has been done by the person we’re judging.
For example, we can look at Martin Luther King Jr. and his moral failures, including well-documented struggles with infidelity. These are real and shouldn’t be minimized or hidden, but if we let those failures erase his historical contributions—his leadership that reshaped a nation’s conscience toward justice—we’re applying a standard none of us could survive if it were applied to us. The question isn’t whether he sinned. Of course he did. The question is whether one part of a person’s story should cancel out everything else God used him to accomplish.
John Newton’s story carries the same weight from a different angle. He spent years as a slave trader, participating in a trade built on cruelty that is almost impossible to reconcile with the man he later became. After his conversion, he spent the rest of his life in ministry and wrote the hymn, “Amazing Grace,” now sung more than almost any other, confessing plainly that grace had saved “a wretch like me.” He called himself a wretch, not to wallow in shame, but because he understood exactly what he’d been forgiven for.
Grace and forgiveness are among the greatest opportunities to demonstrate what God does for us. For example, in 2015, nine members of Emanuel AME Church in Charleston were murdered during a Bible study by a young man consumed by racial hatred. Just days later, in the courtroom, family members of the victims stood and spoke directly to him. Through tears, one woman whose mother had been killed told him she forgave him, and that she prayed God would have mercy on his soul. That forgiveness didn’t pretend the crime was small. It was an act of God’s grace offered amid unbearable pain, and it was powerful.
Consider also Corrie ten Boom, whose family hid Jews from the Nazis during World War II. They were eventually caught, and she and her sister were sent to Ravensbrück, where her sister died. Years later, after speaking at a church about God’s forgiveness, she came face to face with a former guard from that very camp, a man who had treated her and her sister with great cruelty. He asked for her forgiveness. She later described that moment as one of the hardest choices of her life, as she had to consciously decide, through the power of the Holy Spirit, to extend her hand toward the man who had helped destroy her family.
Here’s where it becomes personal instead of historical. Jesus ties our willingness to forgive directly to our own relationship with the Father:
For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. (Matthew 6:14-15)
That’s not a suggestion. Unforgiveness is a barrier we build between ourselves and the mercy we depend on every single day. And Jesus goes further, warning us about the specific temptation to focus on someone else’s failure while ignoring our own:
And why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, “Let me remove the speck from your eye”; and look, a plank is in your own eye? Hypocrite! First remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye. (Matthew 7:3-5)
I’ve been the person with the plank, confident that I was just being discerning about someone else’s speck. God has had to correct that in me more than once. Paul gives the practical instruction that ties this all together:
Bearing with one another, and forgiving one another, if anyone has a complaint against another; even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do. (Colossians 3:13)
“Even as Christ forgave you” is the whole standard. Not as much as feels comfortable. Not as much as the person seems to deserve. As much as Christ forgave you — which, if you’re honest about your own record, was a debt you could NEVER have repaid. Not ever. If Charleston’s families could forgive a murderer within days, and Corrie ten Boom could forgive a camp guard face to face, we have no honest excuse for withholding forgiveness for far smaller offenses.
Unforgiveness is the failure to give grace, and it poisons everything it touches. It breeds bitterness, and bitterness chokes out the very fruit we’re privileged to produce as children of God:
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law. (Galatians 5:22-23)
You cannot hold on to resentment toward someone’s failure and produce longsuffering, kindness, and gentleness at the same time. The two are incompatible.
Every ounce of energy spent keeping score is energy not spent bearing fruit.
I’m learning that grace was never meant to be a resource I hoard for myself and ration out to others. It was given to me precisely so I’d have something to give away.
Prayer: Father, thank You for the mercy You’ve shown me when I didn’t deserve it and couldn’t earn it. Forgive me for the times I’ve kept score against others while quietly excusing my own failures. Teach me to see people the way You see them — flawed, forgiven, and still capable of bearing Your fruit. Reveal any bitterness I’ve been carrying, and replace it with the kind of grace that reflects Yours. Let me forgive freely, the way You have forgiven me, so that my life produces the fruit of Your Spirit instead of the poison of unforgiveness. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
