Grace really is a hard thing to give when you have spent your life judging and comparing yourself to others and others to yourself. Because you know what you’ve been through, you are so much more inclined to give yourself grace and others judgment. You have no empathy for anybody else because you don’t want to take time to see their side of things. Instead? You cling voraciously to how YOU see things. The residue of a lifetime of unworthy makes you hug your opinion to you like so much ickiness.

But that is the BEAUTY of Christ, who put on our flesh, our temptations, our struggles, our sins. He showed the ultimate grace, giving his life for things he had not done, thoughts he had not thought, choices he had not made. All so that we too could walk in the light of freedom and love. He felt the feeling of our infirmity while bowing to no temptation, died a criminal death though never having the nature of sin, and faced death, hell, and the grave despite not earning the penalty. He became a curse so that we could be called blessed, the first born of God’s sons in the resurrection so that we too could be resurrected.

And this is Grace: to look beyond self and see the need. To meet it and not expect a single recompense – in fact, it is to BECOME the reparation, the restitution.

So how can we not offer to others the grace so sweetly—so vehemently offered to us? Even now, God withholds judgment because Jesus Christ covered the cost. When God looks at us, God looks at us through the blood–that continuously washes. We are covered, and in being so graced are commanded to be as He is in this world, a covering rather than a crucible for condemnation.

And while we puff up our giftings and judge others’ anointing (or at least what we mislabel anointing), we miss the complete mark embedded in salvation: that our worth is not in us but in Christ, and is equal for us all because of Christ. All God sees of me is Christ; and God sees of you is Christ. This means, quite clearly that I am you and you are me, and we only exist as a piece of Christ. The same grace I need is what is required for you to survive and thrive. We are one body, even as we live lives in different vessels.

This Valentine’s Day, I implore you to heed the call of LOVE. Not the lustful, self serving love we enjoy. No, the debt of love that sees others how God sees us—through the beauty of Christ’s holiness, and sacrifice, and blood.