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“Judge not, that you be not judged. For with what judgement you judge, you will be judged; and with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you. And why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye?”
As humans, we love to judge things. We judge books by their covers, ice cream flavors by the tiny spoonful, and even who won the Nathan’s hotdog eating contest by how many franks each contestant was able to shove down their gullet without reintroducing us to ten pounds of mangled meat. And, who hasn’t watched an episode of Judge Judy and determined the guilt or innocence of the accused before Her Honor can even render her own judgement? Judgement is just part of who we are as a species and it sets us apart from the rest of God’s creation. When used appropriately, it’s a mechanism given to us by God to evaluate the circumstances around us and determine the best course of action. But what happens when we begin to judge the character and intentions of one another?
Quick confession: I judge people much of the time. Often, it’s quickly upon meeting them and usually by utilizing unfair criteria. I judge my friends and family regarding the choices they make, strangers by the lifestyles they live, and even the guy at Dunkin Donuts who calls me boss, who I really like. We all do, right? (I hope you said “yes” or this just got really embarrassing for me!) We just can’t help ourselves. We look at another person, evaluate their decisions and way of life compared to our own, and determine who’s doing it right. And surprise, it’s usually us. But as we just read in Matthew, Jesus gives us a command to refrain from judging others, or we will be judged by the same measure. What if someone is breaking the law of God and in our opinion making a complete mess of their life? How come we can’t just call them out and render judgement on their life choices?
Simply put, we shouldn’t judge others because we’ve many times broken the law of God and made a complete mess of our own lives. Romans 3 does a great job of explaining the human condition when it says, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” So, save for the work of Christ on Calvary’s cross, I myself would remain a wanderer enslaved to my sin. Paul, the man who wrote thirteen books of the New Testament and brought the Gospel to the Gentiles, captured this truth when he wrote about himself, “This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief.” What Paul came to understand by his condition, and the same truth which we must grasp, is that repentance and forgiveness for our sins should lead us to desire to unshackle the chains of sin that hold others captive, not to bind them with a heavy burden. With that as our foundational truth, how have we become bearers of judgement and how do we unburden ourselves from the weight of this hypocrisy?
To unpack this reality, let’s do something slightly different. We’ll use each letter in the word “Plank” to take us on a journey to discovering how we fall into and dig our way out of our faithfulness in faultfinding.
Pride
Proverbs 16:18 tells us that, “Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.” What kind of pride is this that leads us to our own destruction? It’s the same pride that led Eve to eat the apple, Moses to strike the rock, and Paul to persecute the Church. It’s a strong belief in our own righteousness, or the sense that we are morally justified in the actions that we take based on our own carnal assessment of the situation. It’s the reason for the separation that exists between man and God. It’s the brand of self-righteousness that leads us to believe that we have the ability to overcome sin all on our own. And, because of our unwavering belief in our ability to be better than the common man, we’re able to justify our judgement on the basis of the pride we feel in our own moral superiority. So, if pride leads to a fall, how do we overcome our prejudice and show love where we believe judgement is warranted?
L… let’s save this one for the end!
Assessment
Before you walk out the door in the morning to work, or to go about your daily activities, you look in the mirror to ensure that everything is in order. In other words, you take an assessment of yourself before you let the world see you. Looking at our outward appearance in a mirror is a surface-level assessment, but from time to time we also need to take an assessment of the internal. In his book, Ordering Your Private World, pastor and author Gordon MacDonald calls this our inner or private world, and says of it that, “The order of our private world is an inside-out matter, not an outside-in matter.” We must be willing to dive deep below the surface to ensure that at a heart level how we view what’s around us aligns with God’s goodness and intentions for the world that He loves. The very best way that we can do this is to allow God himself to search our hearts. In Psalm 139, David implores the Father to, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; Try me, and know my anxieties; And see if there is any wicked way in me, And lead me in the way everlasting.” David knew that if left to him, he would make a mess of heart things. But, if he let God do the searching, any and all wickedness would be brought to the surface and burnt away as chaff in God’s refining fire.
Newness
Did you ever play with a boomerang as a kid? The whole purpose of the boomerang is to throw it away from you as hard as you can, and if you do it right, it will return to you. Fun, right? For a while—but if you keep it up long enough, it loses its appeal. This is how judgement or any other sin of the heart can be in our lives. Just when you thought you’ve finally gotten rid of it, it comes back around and hits you when you least expect it. We’ve already seen that if we let God take an honest assessment of our lives, He will pull all of the sin and selfishness to the surface and remove it from our lives. But, how do we ensure that we don’t fall back into our same old patterns? After all, they say people don’t change. This is where we need to accept the newness that God puts on our heart. In 2 Corinthians 5:17, we read, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.” If we open ourselves up fully to the new creation that we are in Christ, and accept that the old us has perished, then and only then can we be content to live our lives without the worry that our willpower will wane. This is a solid segway into the next point.
Keep Going
We’ve seen what causes the judgment in our lives, how to recognize that it’s there and open ourselves up to change, but life is long and the journey hard, so how do we remain people who live out love rather than justifying our judgement. The answer lies in a relentless pursuit of the One who holds the power to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. The more we pursue Jesus, the greater the chance that we’re able to live a life of limitless love. In John 15, Jesus tells us to “Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me.” This is the only way to ensure that we never fall back into being a person preoccupied with the condemnation of others, but instead live life through the lens of the God of Glory. And when we do let God cover us in His grace, He promises us that we can be confident “that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ.”
And, with all of that said, we’ll return to the letter we previously left out:
Love
In John 15:13, Jesus laid bare His identity when He said, “Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends.” And, because of the greatest Love of all time, we have become new creations in Christ, with access to sanctification in the Son through the goodness and grace of God the Father. But, it’s His work on the cross that gives Him the sole right to judge the sins of the world and not our redeemed status as adopted sons and daughters. For us—being forgiven much—to judge another is the redeemed taking on the role of the Redeemer and attempting to raise our own status to that of the Savior rather than the saved. Put another way, judging others when we’ve been gifted grace and saved from the same judgement is sinful.
Let me be clear, I’m not advocating for what some might deem toxic empathy, or the heretical practices that we see in some modern churches today. Hebrews 13:8 tells us, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.” If something was a sin then, it’s a sin now, and we’re called to be set apart. Don’t think that I’m telling you it’s OK to make concessions for the sin in peoples’ lives. I’m only saying that there’s a difference between judgment and bringing light to a brother or sister’s sin, in earnest love.
But, again, love. In 1 Peter 4:8, it says, “And above all things have fervent love for one another, for ‘love will cover a multitude of sins.’” You see, when we let God take an assessment of our lives, accept newness through nearness to His heart, and keep seeking His goodness through grace, only then can we learn to live in love like the One who laid down His life for His friends. Only then will the plank be plucked from our pupil and we’ll be able to see lovingly the world our God so loves.
