A check-out clerk once wrote columnist Ann Landers a letter of complaint: she had seen shoppers with food stamps buy luxury items like birthday cakes and bags of shrimp. The angry woman went on to say that people on welfare who treat themselves to non-necessities were “lazy and wasteful."
A few weeks later Lander's column was devoted entirely to people who responded to the grocery clerk with letters of their own. One woman wrote:
“I didn't buy a cake, but I did buy a big bag of shrimp with food stamps. So what? My husband had been working at a plant for fifteen years when it shut down. The shrimp casserole was for our wedding anniversary dinner and lasted three days. Perhaps the grocery clerk who criticized that woman would have a different view... after walking a mile in my shoes.”
Another woman wrote:
“I'm the woman who bought the $17.00 cake and paid with food stamps. I thought the check-out woman would burn a hole through me with her eyes..... The cake was for my little girl's birthday. It will be her last. She has bone cancer and will probably be gone within six to eight months.”1
When you make such judgments, you never know what others are dealing with. To be shocked at the gross error of our opinions is a vivid form of God’s correcting grace, preserving us from taking on divine prerogatives and giving us time to repent. After listening, I am often forced to say, “I was wrong about this person. Forgive me, Lord.” We are all invited to forsake the role of judge for something more humble, less omnipotent. Jesus’ words are not just wise human relations advice; they are a law of the universe, as unbreakable as gravity, “Judge not, that you not be judged.” It is a command plus a warning: a command because we are under orders, a warning because we are on probation, “Judge not, that you not be judged.” Behind visible actions lie invisible motives; beneath hidden motives lie tangled histories and issues of the heart to which we are not privy. Only God knows people at that level. Making judgments in the sense of issuing condemnations from a place of superior moral surveillance is just not in the job description of followers of Jesus Christ. We have other important tasks, things like prayer and service and patience and kindness, and we learn through painful correction to leave such verdicts to God. P.J. O’Rourke was right on the danger of having a critical spirit, “It is a small step,” he wrote, “from looking down on others to looking up to oneself.”2 And pride, we are told by church tradition, is what made a once loyal archangel into the devil he now is.
Lorraine Hansberry’s play A Raisin in the Sun became a movie of the same name. It explores the dreams and struggles of a 1950' s black family in Chicago. After Walter Lee gets cheated out of a large sum of money, he makes the demeaning decision to accept a buy-out of their new home from a white community association that didn't want blacks in the neighborhood.
Beneatha tells her mother Lena, "He's no brother of mine. That individual in that room from this day on is no brother of mine!" Lena corrects her daughter, "You're feeling that you're better than he is today? Yes? What did you tell him a minute ago, that he wasn't a man? Yes? ... You've wrote his epitaph, too—like the rest of the world? Well, who gave you the privilege?"
"Momma, will you be on my side for once? Now, you saw what he did. You saw him down there on his knees. Wasn't it you who taught me to despise any man who would do that? Who would do what he's going to do?"
"Yes, yes, I taught you that. Me and your Daddy. But I thought I taught you something else, too. I thought I taught you to love him."
"Love him? There's nothing left to love."
"There's always something left to love. Have you cried for that boy today? Now, I don't mean for yourself and the family because we lost the money. I mean for him, what he's gone through.... Child, when do you think is the time to love somebody the most? When he's done good and made things easy for everybody? Oh, no. It's when he's at his lowest and he can't believe in himself because the world done whipped him so.” And then this great line, “When you start measuring somebody, measure them right, child. You make sure you take into account the hills and valleys he's come to, to get to wherever he is."3
Until we see people through the merciful eyes of God the Father, until the risen Jesus shows us worth and beauty amidst the crud and compromise, until the Holy Spirit corrects our sight with divine revelation, we do not understand one another at any depth. It is our ignorance that makes us arrogant, critical, and judgmental. And Christ forbids it.
The passage before us was not conceived as general wisdom for the crowds listening around the edges but as specific counsel for disciples who were already living in close community and already seeking the kingdom of God displayed in the person of Jesus. It answers questions like: How are Peter and Andrew to live on the road with their old fishing rivals James and John? How is Matthew, the-sell-out-to-the-Romans-tax-collector, to sleep around the same camp fire with Simon the-freedom-fighter-Jewish-zealot? Should Mary Magdalene be on the road with us? How to deal with the bumps and bruises of living in close community and having no way to get away from one another? Same issue on a sports team or a submarine crew or a blended family or a mission trip or a church board or a marriage. How do we get along with people just like us? The first rule is: give up judgments. Focus on my character before God, not theirs before me.
If we live close enough that our flaws become visible, how do we get along without tearing each other to bits though a thousand secret, and sometimes spoken, judgments? In our following of Christ, how do we keep from becoming intimate enemies with one another? It’s a good question. These six verses from Matthew 7 are an advanced lesson in the communitarian ethics of Jesus. He had to live with them (it was his mission to create a new community), and they must learn from him how to live with one another. It will go much smoother if we leave the judging to someone more competent. Dr. John Stott makes this comment about who is Lord and who is not:
“The secret of our relationships with one another, especially when we have differences, is (the confession) ‘Jesus Christ is Lord.’ To despise or stand in judgment on a fellow Christian isn't just a breach of fellowship. It is a denial of the Lordship of Jesus.... Who am I, that I should cast myself in the role of another Christian's lord and judge? I must be willing for Jesus Christ to be not only my Lord and Judge, but also my fellow Christian’s Lord and Judge. ... I must not interfere with Christ's Lordship over other Christians.”4
If we give up our searchlights and stand under God’s spotlight, if we become more self-critical than others-critical, if we go to God before we go to others, if we turn in our policeman’s badge and quit issuing verbal citations, and if we learn, as Jesus counseled, to watch over one another in love, then we may have a chance in the church to enter a new world in the midst of the current one, a place where it is safe not to be perfect or to have to play like you are for religious reasons, where fear ceases and love grows, and where people can actually learn what it means to live a holy and a happy life in partnership with Christ and in communion with the saints, all of whom are still in process.
Having a critical spirit is not a gift of the Holy Spirit. It comes up from hell rather than down from heaven. A judgmental attitude is acid that eats away at love and the kind of help that actually helps people grow past their sins and out of bad habits. A critical spirit is the mother of gossip, and its bitter offspring is a divided church where everyone is complaining about others. So if you are one of those people who is always making mental notes of what is wrong with others and marking what they could do better if only they followed your shining example, listen carefully to what Jesus says. His words are for your healing and to preserve you from judgment, now and at the end. My conscience was stung by the words the martyred Catholic bishop Carlo Carretto, who observed, “We are not happy because we are unforgiving, and we are unforgiving because we feel superior to others.”5 When I judge you I may be absolutely right about your moral deficit, but I am always wrong about mine because I am not superior, and God has not appointed me as interim judge.
TURNING TO THE TEXT
a) vv.1-2 Leave The Ultimate Judging To God Alone.
Verse 1 consists of three related parts. First, an absolute command, “Judge not.” Then a reason for the command that takes the form of a warning and appeals to our self-interest, “that you not be judged.” Then thirdly an explanation of the just process behind the reason, “For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged,” which is followed by a parallel phrase, “and the measure you give will be the measure you get.”
Notice that Jesus did not merely issue commands; he gave reasons and explanations. His appeal is to obedience, self-interest, and reasoned understanding. And since I can judge people with words, “for with the judgment you pronounce,” or without words through deeds, “and the measure you give,” both are included so that the silent are not off the hook and the verbal alone condemned. In each of the parts the use of the passive voice indicates that the one who acts upon us is God, as in “Judge not, that you not be judged (i.e. by God).
The cast of characters in this process of moral correction are therefore five:
1) me, the self-appointed, self-righteous judge;
2) the one I am condemning in word or action;
3) the God who judges my judging as wholly presumptuous and out of place;
4) the Jesus who is kind enough to alert me to the seriousness of the process, now and at the Last Judgment; and
5) other disciples who are hearing the same words and coming under the same inward conviction of sin.
That the word judge implies condemnation and not just casual observation is clear from the parallel in Luke, "Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned.”6
Behind this complex statement of Jesus are a range of other commitments that help it make sense:
* That all our thoughts and deeds are recorded: God is all-seeing and allknowing and all-remembering.
* That loving God and not the neighbor is a disconnect and a fraud: God desires deep integrity among followers of his Son.
* That we are headed towards a reckoning that is building up from each day’s decisions: the truth about us will be known and told and dealt with.
* That Jesus claims to know the mind of God which has doctrinal implications for who he is: he is uniquely God with us in flesh; his words are God’s words.
* That conflicts are expected with sinners like us: the test of faith is how we work it out with one another.
* Finally, that God honors our freedom to the point that he lets it shape his response to us.
This is a supremely personal and interactively Triune God who responds to my responses, as in a chess game or tennis match. God’s character is unchanging, and one of God’s unchanging decisions is that divine mercy is intended to make us merciful and divine patience intended to make us patient. If it does not, meaning that if I resist the grace of God, things do not stay as they were before; there is judgment. Relating to this God is not static but dynamic on both sides. Both now and ultimately, God treats me as I treat others. Grace welcomed is blessing; grace resisted is already judgment. God cares that much about us learning to love one another. Jesus’ words make sense within this larger network of biblical convictions.
This last insight is played out most clearly with my closest neighbor, my wife Lori. When I am unkind to her in any way (when I grunt and don’t listen, when I don’t give her time, when I am verbally harsh), I sense a nearly immediately a change in my relationship with God. Clouds roll in and the sun grows dim. What I give her, I soon get in return from God, which is why the Apostle Peter (himself a married man) said in his first letter:
“Likewise you husbands, live considerately with your wives, bestowing honor
on the woman as the weaker sex, since you are joint heirs of the grace of life,
in order that your prayers may not be hindered.”7
Where did this insight come from? From Peter getting on his knees one morning and meeting a brass heavens. He asked; there was no answer. He sought; there was no finding. He knocked; no one opened. So he asked, “What’s wrong?” God answered, “If you are wrong with your wife, Peter, then you are wrong with me. You know what you did; now humble yourself and make it right, then we can talk.”
The quickest way to re-open the heavens over your life is to go and fix any broken relationships. Humble yourself. Even if they don’t respond at first, God will! If there is no flow of provisions, perhaps you have been cheap with others. If no joy, perhaps you have become a grouch with those closest to you at work and at home. We can’t help but see in others the flaws that are unaddressed in our own soul. We see the world as we are. The lenses inside our heads are clouded; sin blinds us to the truth. So when you condemn someone in the privacy of your thoughts, even more if you hear it come out of your mouth in an unguarded moment, recognize that it says more about your spiritual pride and sickness than about any flaw in the other person. Let it be a warning that something is wrong. It is time for self-examination. D.A. Carson paraphrases verses 1 and 2 in these words:
“Do not assume the place of God by deciding you have the right to stand in judgment over all- do not do it, I say, in order to avoid being called to account by the God whose place you usurp.”8
What goes around comes around. It’s not impersonal karma; it’s God getting your attention! A doctor chatting at a party with a lawyer was interrupted by a woman who insisted on telling about a pain in her leg and asking for advice. The doctor advised her, then, after she went away, asked the lawyer, "Do I have a right to send that woman a bill?"
"Certainly," the lawyer replied.
The next day the doctor sent the woman a bill. That same day he also received a bill from the lawyer!"9 “And the measure you give will be the measure you get.”
b) vv.3-5 The Cartoon Of The Speck And The Log.
Good communicators know that humor gives comic relief. Pressure on, then pressure off. Serious material is woven with lighter material, which is just was Jesus does in the next section, verses 3 through 5. He backs them up against the Last Judgment in verses 1 and 2, then takes them into the carpenter’s shop for a good laugh in verses 3 through 5.
For decades he had been a woodworker in Nazareth. No goggles in those days. Jesus knew the annoyance of getting a piece of shavings in his eye. It hurt; it watered; the more you rubbed it the worse it got. Often you couldn’t get it out without help. The one you asked to perform minor eye surgery had better see well, or they could do more damage than good. So when Jesus asked, “Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?” everyone smiled. Mechanics tell car jokes, preachers tell church jokes, and Jesus told tall tales from his life as a carpenter. It was a deliberately ridiculous question. For years Charles Schultz, creator of Peanuts, used the same tactics.
In one episode Linus has his security blanket in place and his thumb resting in his mouth; he looks troubled. Turning to Lucy, he asked, “Why are you always so anxious to criticize me?”
“I just think I have a knack for seeing other people’s faults.”
Linus threw up his hands, “What about your own faults?”
Without hesitation, Lucy explained, “I have a knack for overlooking them.”10
Which is precisely the answer to Jesus’ question, the operative words being see and notice. One of the effects of sin is that it distorts our perception of ourselves in relation to others. “Why do you see the speck in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?” And what we see, that is then what we say, “Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye, when there is a log in your own eye?”
In one of the early communities of monks in the Egyptian desert a brother committed a serious sin. The council met and requested the Teacher to attend. When he refused to come, they sent an urgent delegation.
“Since you insist,” he said, “I will come in half an hour.”
When he arrived, the Teacher entered the room carrying a leaking water jug on his back. Members of the council asked, “Teacher, what is this?”
“All day long,” he replied, “my sins run out behind me and I am unaware of them. Yet despite my blindness to my own sin, today I am asked to judge the error of another.”
When they saw what he was saying, they forgave the brother and said no more.11
It’s not that the brother did need correction and help. Only that they rushed to judgment without first taking time for self-correction.
While visiting a neighbor, five-year-old Andrew pulled out his kindergarten class picture and began describing each classmate. "This is Robert; he hits everyone. This is Stephen. He never listens to the teacher. This is Mark. He chases us and is very noisy." "And this is me. I'm just sitting here minding my own business."12
We are Lucy. We are the monks. We are Andrew. We are laughing at others, but Jesus is laughing at us. And we deserve it. “You hypocrites,” he says to his closest friends, “You bunch of play-actors. First take the log out of your own eye, only then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.” Jesus’ words are meant to sting and embarrass us so that we remember them every time a judgmental thought crosses our mind or breaks the sound barrier of our lips. It is not that the brother or sister does not need help with small moral flaws. It is that the one to help them must be merciful and first see them the way God does, which is through eyes of love; that takes time to develop and only comes through introspection with God’s help. Most issues we should simply overlook, but when they are so destructive that they cannot be ignored without doing greater damage, we should first look at ourselves and let the Lord perform eye surgery on us first. Only then (and who knows how long this will take in self-examination and repentance?) are we ready, if the Lord allows, to go to another with correction and the offer of help. Leo Tolstoy wrote, “Everybody thinks of changing the world, and nobody thinks of changing himself.”13
During the 1930's a woman came asking the great Gandhi to get her little boy to stop eating sugar; it was doing him harm. He gave a cryptic reply: "Please come back next week."
The woman left puzzled but returned a week later. The Mahatma said to the young fellow, "Please don't eat sugar. It is not good for you." Then he joked with the boy for a while, gave him a hug, and sent him on his way.
The mother, unable to contain her curiosity, lingered behind, "Bapu, why didn't you say this last week when we came? Why did you make us come back again?"
Gandhi smiled. "Last week," he said, "I too was eating sugar."14
There can only be healing discipline in the church to the same extent that there is love and a sense that we are all in this spiritual growth thing together. Perhaps there was a time when discipline was abused and became overly intrusive, but in our day it is totally neglected.15 One of the marks of the early Methodists was their class meetings where they practiced self-examination, mutual correction, watched over one another in love, and kept each other on the royal road of salvation.16 Each week you were asked questions like, “How is it with your soul?” and “What known sins have you committed since our last meeting?” Now we gossip and ignore problems and dare not speak because it’s not our job anyway, while people drift farther away from the faith they once believed. How is that love? The recovery of the discipline we need is dependent on a recovery of love which is dependent on us getting close enough to one another on a regular basis to uncover one another’s gifts and see one another’s sins, and that only happens in small groups that weave their lives together over time. An hour on Sunday is just not enough to build genuinely Christian community. A gathering is not yet a movement. This is not an observer but a participant religion. Most of what people go to professional counselors for could be handled in such face-to-face groups where love was real and accountability and support genuine. We need each other in order to follow Christ. The worst of individualism is weakening us and killing us. We are afraid to be found out and have no where to go. But when we go to Christ, he binds us to himself and sets us in the midst of others who are on the way. Most of the ‘you’s in the New Testament are plural; that we read them as singulars says much about our love of the myth of individualism and our isolation. The world is not impressed.
Obeying verse 3 through 5 would change every life in this room. If every time a critical word crossed your mind or lips you went before God with an open Bible and said, “Lord, first show me where I’m wrong.” God would tell you, and then what would you do? It’s precisely what Jesus advised for all his followers, and it is a revolutionary way to live. What would this do to struggling marriages? To conflicted neighbors? To old grudges?
a’) v.6 The Continuing Necessity Of Discernment.
You and I live in a world of either/or thinking. Either this or that, which is it? Tell me! Make it clear and easy. We are leery of paradox, allergic to mystery, and resistant to ambiguity. But not Jesus. As a Jew and a mystic he was as comfortable with both/and thinking as we are uncomfortable with it.
Verse 1 is clear, “Judge not,” but in the parallel section in verse 6 Jesus in effect says, “Either judge or get abused by people who trample like pigs and attack like dogs.” And if you asked him, “Which is it, judge or not judge?” the answer is both. The truth is found not in the one or the other but in the right use of each at the right time. And that requires subtle skills like judgment and discernment as well as intuition and an openness to the illumination of the Holy Spirit. We are not to assume God’s throne and issue final pronouncements; but neither does that relieve us from exploring the resistance and receptivity of whoever stands before us. Tolerance is not moral indifference. Not all evaluations are judgments. And to tell the one from the other takes practice.
There are some, Jesus acknowledges, who are currently so hardened in their opposition to the knowledge of God that it is counter-productive, even dangerous, to work with them until they are made more receptive by the work of the Spirit readying them through pain and consequences. No Jewish priest in his right mind would give meat off the sacrificial altar to a pack of mangy dogs.17 Only an idiot would throw pearls in front of pigs instead of acorns. Such people, if you do not meet their expectations, may attack you because you were such a dunce in the first place. Do not engage such people. Pray for them. Wait for receptivity to increase, but not expose yourself to unnecessary danger. Leave them to the dealings of God. And in this plain sense you are judging them. You can’t teach algebra to one who can’t add or subtract. Pigs and dogs were derogatory terms Jews used for pagans, and that is spiritually where some people are today. They are at the level of animals appetites only and behave as such. Food and drink and sex and sleep are all they consider important. They are brutish, and of them Jesus said plainly:
“Do not give to dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under foot, and turn to attack you.”
Some are so deep in the devil’s grip and in the bondage of their sins. Some have to hit the bottom hard and more than once before their sin-dulled consciences come to life again. Perhaps you know someone like this; perhaps you have been such a person. Our time is to be spent with the receptive. We wait on green fruit; we do not try to pick it ahead of its time. The message of Jesus is to be attractively displayed, not force fed to the resistant.
The story is told is told of a farmer who received a visit from one of his city relatives. Before dinner the farmer bowed his head and said grace. His relative jeered, "This is old-fashioned; nobody with an education prays at the table anymore.”
The farmer admitted the practice was old and even allowed that there were some on his farm who did not pray before eating.
The relative chuckled, “Enlightenment is finally reaching the farm. Who are these wise ones?”
“My pigs,” the farmer replied.18
I suspect it was quiet the rest of the meal. Conversation moved to contemplation. One hopes two heads were bowed at the next meal.
CONCLUSION
I have written a summary of these six verses to read each morning for the next week:
I am not the judge; God is. Ignorance leads to arrogance, so beware. Verse 1.
God may be as hard and unreasonable with me as I am with others. Verse 2.
God will me as merciful and forgiving with me as I am with others. Verse 2 again.
Because I don’t see so good, and since I see you better than me, I need regular, private, eye exams with God. Only love sees 20/20. Verses 3 and 4.
If my brother or sister does not welcome my gentle help for minor flaws, then I may not have yet spent enough time alone with God. Doctors are a relief to the sick, even if pain in involved. Verse 5.
If it oinks and barks, don’t preach to it but keep praying! It is finally not your responsibility. Only God can crack tough nuts. Verse 6.
That’s all I know to say. You ponder the mystery and figure the rest out with God. Let me know how it works. I need the help. You see, I have a log in my eye.
1. Edited from Terrie Williams, The Personal Touch (Warner Books, 1994).
2. The Weekly Standard, Nov. 25, 1996.
3. Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun.
4. PreachingToday.com search under Matthew 7:1-6.
5. Idem.
6. 6:37.
7. 3:7.
8. “Matthew,” The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Volume 8 (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1984), 183.
9. James Hewett, Illustrations Unlimited (Wheaton, ILL: Tyndale, 1988), 311.
10. Our Daily Bread, August 4, 1991.
11. Edited from William White, Stories for the Journey (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg, 1988), 47.
12. PreachingToday.com search under Mt. 7:1-6.
13. Albert M. Wells, Inspiring Quotations (Nashville, TN: Nelson, 1988), 180.
14. Located at www.salsa.net/peace/conv/8weekconv2-3.html
15. See the four part series by Marlin Jeschke, “How Discipline Died,” www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2005/008.
16. On the Methodist class meeting, see Philip Hardt, The Soul of Methodism (New York: University Press of America, 2000); for contemporary adaptations, see Michael Henderson, A Model for Making Disciples: John Wesley’s Class Meeting (Nappanee, Indiana: Francis Asbury Press, 1997); Denise Stringer, How Is It With Your Soul? (Nashville, TN: Abington, 2004).
17. Charles Talbert, Reading the Sermon on the Mount (Columbia, SC: USC Press, 2004), 134.
18. Hewett, Illustrations Unlimited, 483.