Grading on a curve in the classroom and competing in the marketplace for a job against others of similar skill sets and abilities, sports team tryouts. In so many areas of life, we get compared and graded based on the performance of our peers. And we benefit from their failures. This dynamic can feed in us a toxic pride when those failures of others will advance us.

So how do we seek the good of others when others are our rivals? It's a very good question today from an international high school student named Clara. Dear Pastor John, thank you for your ministry. I'm writing because of a problem that disturbs my following of Christ. I'm a high school student living in South Korea.

I read in scripture about the self-conceit and pride that is really sinful, especially looking down on others and trying to be better than someone out of pride. However, the high school grading system in South Korea is based on comparative evaluation, where I get better grades when others fail. So how do I love my neighbor in this atmosphere of comparative evaluation, where I benefit from the failures of my neighbor?

Even though Clara doesn't ask my opinion about this grading system, I'm going to make a comment about it before I answer her more important question about how to love people. A system of student evaluation that only communicates a person's competencies in relation to other students is not useful, it's not helpful in preparing a student for life in the real world.

And the reason is that such a system of evaluation doesn't communicate to the student or the parents or the future employers what the student's competencies really are. There may be a class of 50 math students, all of which are weak in math, some more weak than others. If grades are given out only in relation to the other members of the class, then weak students in math, the least weak but still weak, will be given As.

That's not a way to communicate anything clear or helpful to the student or the family or their employer because it does not communicate the truth about the student's weakness in math. On the other hand, there may be a class of 50 students, all of which are very bright in math, just some a little brighter than others.

And in that system, the slightly less bright students will be given low, low grades, which will communicate nothing true to the student or the parents or the employer because they're really very, very bright in math. But that's my opinion about that. I just that's the way I feel about grading.

She wants to know how to love her neighbor who is less competent than she is in a specific field and whose lower competence accents her superior competence. Now, that question is a real life question because that's the situation in which all of us live all of the time. We we will always be relating to people who are inferior to us in some skills and competencies and who are superior to us in other ways.

Now, how are we supposed to love people in real life? So I just want to commend to Clara four passages of Scripture to think about on her way to humility and love. Number one, 1 Corinthians 4, 6 and 7. "I have applied all these things," Paul says, "to myself and Apollos for your benefit, brothers, that none of you may be puffed up in favor of one against another.

For who sees anything different in you? What do you have that you did not receive? And if you received it, why are you boasting as though it were not a gift?" In other words, if we're going to love others, we must be done with pride, self-exaltation, boasting. And Paul says one key to that self-humbling is to realize that absolutely everything we have, every competency we have, every advantage we have is a free gift of God.

It is a gracious gift of God, which we do not deserve. If we are better in some subject than someone else, God made us better, and his reasons for doing so are not pride and boasting and elitism. His reason for doing so is that we might use our competencies for the good of others.

That's the point of 1 Corinthians 12 through 14, where the differentiation of the gifts is made crystal clear for the sake of the building up of the body of Christ, not exalting over other members in the body, but building other members up with our distinct gifting. Number two, Jeremiah 9, 23, "Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom.

Let not the mighty man boast in his might. Let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who practiced steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth, for in these things I delight," declares the Lord.

In other words, if you are wise or strong or rich, you will only be pleasing to God and useful to people if you cease to boast in the wisdom and the strength and the riches, but instead value God more than you value your superiority in any particular competency. So let's fix our focus on the all-satisfying superiorities of God and not ourselves or any vaunted skills we think we have that are better than others.

They come from God, and God is infinitely superior to all of them. Number three, Galatians 6, 2-5. Here's a paradox in this text. It often has baffled me what this text means, but I think I've got it now, so let me try it out. On the one hand, it says, "Bear one another's burdens," and on the other hand, it says, "Bear your own burdens." Listen, this is Galatians 2-2.

"Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. For if anyone thinks he has something when he has nothing, he deceives himself. But let each one test his own work, and then his reason to boast will be in himself alone and not in his neighbor, for each will have to bear his own load." Now, I think the point is this.

If you're going to really be a person who bears the burdens of others by serving them and helping them, you must stop puffing yourself up by comparing yourself with them, looking for your superiorities. You will give an account of yourself to the Lord, just yourself. The Lord has given you your distinctives.

You don't boast in the way you compare to another. If you boast, you boast that God made you the way you are, just for you. So stop comparing. Bear your own load. That is, own who you are for yourself as God made you, not who you are in superiority or inferiority to other people.

Then you can be about the business of loving others, which we are to do. Number four, finally, Philippians 2, 3-4. This may be the most immediately relevant text. It's so powerful. "Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves." There's the key phrase.

"Count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interest, but also to the interests of others." I used to really stumble over this text, thinking with the old King James translation, "Count others better than yourselves," that if I'm an A student in math and my sister's a C student in math, then I have to look at my sister and think, "She's a better math student than me." Well, that's just plain self-deception.

That's not what the text means. That's not a very helpful translation. The newer translations are right to say, "Count others more significant than yourselves," which I think means this. When Clara looks on the students in her classes in high school and finds that she is making some better grades than they are, she is supposed to look at them as worthy of her service, because that's the context.

Jesus emptied himself, didn't count equality with God a thing to be grasped. He came and he served us, even though we didn't deserve it at all. He counted us as more significant than himself, and he got under us and put on a towel and served us. So, Clara, the pathway to loving those who are less competent than you in one subject or another is, number one, gladly acknowledge that all your competencies are free gifts of God.

You don't deserve them. Number two, delight yourself in the Lord above all your competencies and superiorities. Number three, be done with measuring your worth by your superiority or inferiority to others. And number four, use all of your competencies to serve other people. Take the very things that elevate you above them and use them to go down under them and lift them up.

Amen. And these principles carry over into so many comparative scenarios in life, not just academics. Thank you, Pastor John. And Clara, thank you for the question, and thank you for listening and supporting this podcast. You can subscribe to our audio feeds and search our past episodes in our archive and send us an email of your own, even questions related to the comparison pressures that you face at work and at school.

You can do all that through our online home at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn. Well, if our faith was stronger, would we be healthier? Would we be more financially secure? Would we be made more happy? Does Jesus say that our sorrow is traced back to a lack of faith on our part? That's the question up next when we return on Monday.

Until then, I'm your host, Tony Reinke. Have a great weekend. We'll see you then.