Not long ago, a friend told me about a conversation he had with his therapist. He had spent years trying to work through the damage caused by some very painful experiences with the leadership of a church he once attended. The wounds were real, the failures were serious, and the effects had followed him much longer than anyone involved probably understood.
One day, he was telling his therapist about the self-righteousness he had seen in some of those leaders. Then his therapist quietly asked, “So, it’s all right for you to be self-righteous about their self-righteousness?”
BOOM!
“I thought I was being an objective, insightful analyst,” my friend said. “He showed me I was committing the same sin. It was a very helpful epiphany.”
The Sin We Can See and the Sin We Cannot
It is a very helpful epiphany for all of us.
Please don’t hear what I am not saying. The failures of those church leaders were real. My friend was not imagining what happened to him, and recognizing his own sinful response did not make their conduct acceptable. Someone else’s sin does not become less sinful simply because we respond to it sinfully. Truth still matters. Accountability still matters. When leaders abuse authority, wound the sheep, protect themselves, or refuse correction, those things must be recognized and addressed.
But there may be two sins in the room.
There is the self-righteousness of the person who caused the injury, and there may also be the self-righteousness of the person who can now see the injury so clearly. We can become proud of our ability to recognize someone else’s pride. We can feel morally superior because we have detected another person’s moral superiority. We can despise people for being judgmental and then congratulate ourselves for having judged them correctly.
Sin has a strange way of changing clothes without leaving the room.
Self-righteousness does not always sound like, “I am a wonderful person.” Sometimes it sounds like, “I would never treat people the way they do.” It may say, “At least I can admit when I am wrong,” “At least I care about people,” “At least I understand grace,” or “At least I am not one of those Christians.” That little phrase, “At least I,” should make us pause.
Jesus described this very posture in the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector. The Pharisee stood and prayed, “God, I thank You that I am not like the other men, swindlers, evildoers, adulterers, or even like this tax collector” (Luke 18:11, BSB). His prayer sounded as though it were directed toward God, but it was really a celebration of himself. He thanked God, but his confidence rested in the difference between himself and the man standing nearby.
That is the natural language of self-righteousness. “Thank You that I am not like them.” The Pharisee’s specific categories may change, but the Pharisee’s prayer lives on.
The Mirror Hidden Inside the Magnifying Glass
It is much easier to use Scripture as a magnifying glass than as a mirror. We read a passage about pride and immediately think of someone who needs to hear it. We hear a sermon about controlling leadership and mentally take notes for our pastor. We study the Pharisees and picture the legalists we know, never considering that our certainty about their Phariseeism may itself be Pharisaical.
James tells us that anyone who hears the Word but does not carry it out is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror, walks away, and immediately forgets what he looks like (James 1:22–24). Yet we can use that same Word to diagnose everyone except ourselves. We become skilled surgeons when examining someone else’s heart and untrained interns when examining our own.
Jesus asks why we notice the speck in our brother’s eye while failing to notice the beam in our own. Then He gives us the order: “First take the beam out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye” (Matthew 7:5, BSB). Jesus does not say there is no speck. He commands us to deal honestly with ourselves first so that we can see clearly enough to help someone else.
The problem is not discernment. The problem is discernment without self-examination. It is correction without humility, truth without love, and moral clarity without any awareness that we stand by grace alone.
Our Own Version of the Same Sin
We criticize a leader for refusing correction while refusing correction about the way we criticize him. We condemn someone’s harshness while speaking harshly about him. We resent someone for caricaturing us while caricaturing her. We are offended that they never gave us the benefit of the doubt, but we assign the worst possible motives to everything they do.
We accuse others of wanting control while trying to control the story told about them. We denounce their lack of compassion while feeling very little compassion for their spiritual condition. We condemn their tribalism while creating a new tribe composed of people who despise their tribe.
We may even build part of our identity around being the one who sees what everyone else has missed. We are the discerning one, the courageous truth-teller, the one who understands the leader’s pathology and the church’s dysfunction. We may be right about many of the facts while becoming increasingly wrong in spirit.
That is what makes self-righteousness so dangerous. It can attach itself to a legitimate concern. It can feed on real injustice. It can quote accurate Scripture and point to undeniable evidence. It does not need to invent another person’s sin. It only needs to convince us that because we see their sin clearly, our own heart must be clean.
Paul warns us, “So the one who thinks he is standing firm should be careful not to fall” (1 Corinthians 10:12, BSB). Galatians 6:1 gives the same warning while calling us to restore someone caught in sin with gentleness: “But watch yourself, or you also may be tempted” (BSB).
Watch yourself. Watch your motives, your tone, and the satisfaction you feel when another person’s faults are exposed. Watch how eagerly you tell the story. Watch whether you desire repentance and restoration, or vindication and defeat. Watch whether you are grieving over the person or enjoying being right about the person.
Jonathan Edwards put his finger directly on the issue: “Spiritual pride is very apt to suspect others; a humble saint is most jealous of himself.” He said spiritual pride speaks about another person’s sins with bitterness, levity, or contempt. Christian humility speaks, when it must speak, with grief and pity.
When I speak about someone’s sin, do people hear grief or contempt? Do they hear the sorrow of someone who longs for repentance, or the excitement of someone who has finally gathered enough evidence to prove his case?
The Difference Between Discernment and Self-Righteousness
Discernment says, “This is wrong.” Self-righteousness says, “Because I can see that it is wrong, I am better than the person doing it.”
Discernment wants truth to come into the light. Self-righteousness wants to be recognized as the person who turned on the light.
Discernment protects people from harm. Self-righteousness uses their pain to establish its own moral credibility.
Discernment can speak firmly, but it remains grieved. Self-righteousness may pretend to grieve, but somewhere beneath the words it enjoys the verdict.
Discernment remembers, “There but for the grace of God go I.” Self-righteousness quietly assumes, “I could never become what they have become.”
Paul destroys that illusion in Titus 3:3–5. “For at one time we too were foolish, disobedient, misled, and enslaved to all sorts of desires and pleasures, living in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another. But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, He saved us, not by the righteous deeds we had done, but according to His mercy” (BSB).
“We too.” Those two words leave no room for moral superiority. Whatever difference now exists between us and another sinner is not evidence of our innate goodness. It is evidence of God’s mercy.
Charles Spurgeon wrote, “To receive all as a free gift preserves the mind from self-righteous pride, and from self-accusing despair.” Grace rescues us from both errors. It keeps us from standing above others in pride, and it keeps us from lying beneath our sins without hope.
As Tim Keller often expressed it, “We are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe, yet at the very same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope.” When I forget the first half, I become self-righteous. When I forget the second half, I become hopeless. The gospel permits neither.
When the Holy Spirit Shows Us
What should we do when the Holy Spirit shows us that we have become self-righteous about someone else’s self-righteousness?
First, stop defending it. Our instinct will be to return immediately to the evidence against the other person. “But what they did really was wrong.” Perhaps it was. That is not the question currently before us. Their guilt does not establish our innocence. David prayed, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my concerns. See if there is any offensive way in me; lead me in the way everlasting” (Psalm 139:23–24, BSB).
Second, name the sin plainly. Do not soften self-righteousness into “frustration,” “discernment,” or “having strong convictions.” If there is pride, contempt, bitterness, malice, or a desire for someone’s humiliation, call it what God calls it. “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9, BSB). Confession is not explaining why our sin was understandable. It is agreeing with God about what it was.
Third, distinguish the wrong done to you from the wrong growing within you. Forgiving someone does not mean denying what happened. Repenting of self-righteousness does not mean withdrawing every legitimate concern. We can still seek truth, protection, accountability, and appropriate consequences, but we must do so without hatred, superiority, or vengeance.
Fourth, ask whether your words are aimed at restoration. Ephesians 4:15 calls us to speak “the truth in love.” Both words matter. Love without truth may become sentimentality, but truth without love often becomes self-righteous cruelty. Biblical correction seeks to win a brother, protect the vulnerable, restore the repentant, and honor Christ. It does not merely seek to win the argument.
Fifth, pray for the person you have begun to despise. Jesus said, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:44, BSB). Prayer has a way of exposing contempt. It is difficult to ask God sincerely to grant someone repentance, healing, wisdom, and grace while privately enjoying the thought of that person’s destruction.
Sixth, invite correction from someone who is not afraid to tell you the truth. My friend’s therapist gave him a gift by asking one honest question. “The wounds of a friend are faithful, but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful” (Proverbs 27:6, BSB). If everyone around us simply confirms our version of events, our understanding may become more certain without becoming more true.
Seventh, make things right where necessary. If we have slandered someone, exaggerated the story, assumed motives, recruited others into bitterness, or spoken with contempt, repentance may require more than a private prayer. We may need to return to people who heard us and correct what we said.
That confession could sound like this: “What happened was wrong, and I still believe it needs to be addressed. But I have also recognized pride and contempt in the way I have spoken about it. I have judged motives I could not know, and I have sometimes seemed more interested in proving that I was right than in seeing everyone involved brought to repentance and healing. That was wrong. Please forgive me.”
That confession does not erase the original wrong. It simply refuses to add another one.
Hard on Sin, Tender Toward Sinners
John Newton said that a believer who lives upon the grace and pardoning love of Christ develops “an habitual tenderness and gentleness of spirit.” The more deeply we understand our own weakness and God’s mercy toward us, the more tenderly we will deal with the weakness of others.
Tenderness is not weakness. Jesus was perfectly humble and perfectly courageous. He confronted Pharisees, exposed hypocrisy, protected the vulnerable, and never compromised truth. Yet He also wept over Jerusalem. He restored Peter after Peter denied Him. He prayed for His executioners while they crucified Him: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34, BSB).
That is the spirit we want. We want enough clarity to recognize sin, enough courage to confront it, and enough humility to remember that we also stand in need of mercy. We want to be hard on sin without becoming hard toward sinners. We want to protect those who have been hurt without allowing hurt to transform them, or us, into the very thing we oppose.
Sometimes the Holy Spirit uses a sermon to reveal our hearts. Sometimes He uses Scripture, a spouse, a friend, or even a therapist who asks one very inconvenient question: “So, it’s all right for you to be self-righteous about their self-righteousness?”
Boom.
It is a painful question, but it is also a gracious one. The Holy Spirit does not expose our sin merely to shame us. He exposes it to free us. He leads us out of pride, bitterness, contempt, and our endless attempts to prove ourselves right. He leads us back to the cross, where no one stands above anyone else, where boasting is excluded, and where every redeemed sinner must say the same thing: “I am here because of the mercy of God.”
So, when we recognize self-righteousness in another person, we should respond truthfully, wisely, and courageously. But before we point our finger, raise our voice, or present our carefully assembled case, perhaps we should stop and pray:
Pray: “Lord, show me what is true about them. But first, show me what is true about me.”
