Matt. 7.1-6
Do not judge
(matthew 7.1-6)
Jason Procopio
If you’ve been with us since the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, you know that the subjects we see in chapters 5 and 6 go together, each subject building off the previous one. At the beginning of chapter 7, Jesus takes a bit of a left turn. He’s going to give a series of teachings which seem unrelated. Some people think this is because the Sermon on the Mount as Matthew relates it is actually a compilation of several different sermons Jesus gave; others think it’s because…well, because Jesus just wanted to teach on all these different things at the same time. (Which is absolutely his right, as the Son of God: he doesn’t have to do expository preaching if he doesn’t want to.)
At any rate, the first subject he touches on in chapter 7 is a hefty one, because it’s so fraught with cultural baggage. In our day, one of the ultimate sins a person can be accused of is judging someone else. The moment a Christian speaks out against a certain behavior, they are accused as being judgmental—and didn’t Jesus tell us not to judge?
This subject is a minefield in our day, because our society has confused desire and behavior with identity. Whatever I want, whatever I do, that’s who I am. So if you speak about about any particular behavior, you’re not attacking the behavior, you’re attacking the person.
With unbelievers, this kind of thinking is perfectly normal—because they don’t have much else on which to base their identity, except what they think and feel and do. But for believers, this kind of thinking—that if you talk to me about my sin, you’re attacking me, you’re condemning me, you’re judging me—is fundamentally flawed, because according to the gospel, our identity is in Christ now. We’re not defined by what we want or what we do, but by what he did for us.
So this subject needs to be a lot more nuanced than it often is, and if we’re going to understand what Jesus is saying here, we have to accept to deal with that nuance.
Judge Not (v. 1-2)
So just a reminder: Jesus is talking to his own disciples here—they were his primary audience. But he is aware that one of the main struggles his disciples will face is the example of the religious leaders. Because these religious leaders—the Scribes and the Pharisees—were viewed as the summit of piety in Jewish culture. It would have been tempting to automatically see them as examples to follow.
But Jesus tells his disciples many times in the gospels, “No, don’t be like them. Don’t think like them. Here are their weaknesses, and here’s how to avoid them.” (And we know he’s talking about them because he uses the same word later on that he used to describe the religious leaders in chapter 6—he calls them ‘hypocrites’.)
V. 1:
Judge not, that you be not judged.
I’m going to say something a bit risky here: people quote this verse all the time, and at least half of those times, it drives me crazy. I love it when people quote Scripture…as long as they quote it well. (Silence is better than Scripture quoted poorly.)
So often, people quote this verse in one specific context: you will tell them what the Bible says about sin—about those acts and attitudes and thoughts which, according to the clear teachings of Scripture, go against God’s will for his people. And one of the things you say will bother someone, because it’s something that they do, and that they don’t want to stop doing. So they say, “How dare you judge me! You’re sinning too—didn’t Jesus say, ‘Judge not, that you be not judged’?”
It is incredibly difficult to show someone that something they think is judgment actually isn’t. The do-not-judge card is played far too frequently, like a Joker that can get you out of anything—and that’s not what it’s there for.
So before we look at what Jesus means by this, let’s first ask what he doesn’t mean—what judging is not. (We’re going to see this quickly, and there’s a lot more to be said, which we’ll get to a little later. So if I make you mad, just wait until the end. If you’re still mad, come and see me after.)
First of all, judging someone else does not mean refusing to pronounce judgment on another person’s behavior. We are told to do this.
14 If anyone does not obey what we say in this letter, take note of that person, and have nothing to do with him, that he may be ashamed.
So Paul is calling the Thessalonians a) to remember the commandments he gives in his letter; b) to take note of anyone who doesn’t obey; c) to actually shun that person if he continues, so that he might be ashamed.
At first glance, that sounds like the opposite of what Jesus says. But Paul follows it up more carefully in v. 15, saying,
15 Do not regard him as an enemy, but warn him as a brother.
So this kind of right “judgment” means looking at someone’s behavior, coming to the conclusion that that behavior is wrong, based on what we see in the Bible, and exacting a consequence for that sin, even to the point of bringing shame to the person. But the goal of this judgment, and the way it happens, isn’t confrontational, but brotherly—it’s not a judgment of the person himself (that person is still considered and loved as a brother), but rather on the behavior.
(And by the way, you may be wondering if we’re talking about how to deal with believers or unbelievers. The answer is both; but today I’m concentrating more on the way we speak to believers about their sin, because really, the main way we do this with unbelievers is evangelism. It’s tricky to talk about specific sinful behavior with unbelievers if we can help it, because the reason we believe certain behaviors and attitudes are wrong is because the Bible tells us so. Why would they care about what the Bible says about sexuality? With unbelievers, we share the gospel—because the gospel reveals the imperfections in all of us, which we can all objectively see, and gives us God’s solution to that problem.
So I’m mainly talking about believers today, because with unbelievers, we can go deeper, into more detail. Because believers claim to believe what the Bible says—including what it says about specific sinful behaviors.)
So you can see why I talked about nuance earlier. In one sense, we are called to judge. But we are called to judge the behavior of a fellow Christian, not to judge the Christian. If we never make a judgment on whether or not someone is acting in a way that is contrary to the Bible, how will we ever obey this command to rebuke a brother if he is in sin? At some point we have to take an objective look at what the person is doing, and what the Bible says, and compare the two; and we have to decide at that moment that yes, what this person is doing is indeed sin according to the Bible, and bring it to their attention, to bring them to repentance.
Secondly (and this is going to sound really harsh), judging someone else does not mean refusing to treat someone as an unbeliever, if all the available evidence says that’s what they are.
Look at v. 6, which we read earlier:
Do not give dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you.
This sounds incredibly brutal, and it is: Jesus’s language is so harsh here that we may be tempted to stop listening to him altogether (which weirdly sort of proves his point).
So what does he mean?
In the preceding verses (which we’ll see in a minute), Jesus has given us guidelines to help us not to judge. It involves a lot of patience and a lot of humility. But it is possible to reach a certain point in a relationship where you see that no amount of patience or humility on your part is going to bring that person to repentance.
John Calvin explained it like this: “It ought to be understood, that dogs and swine are names given not to every kind of debauched men, or to those who are destitute of the fear of God and of true godliness, but to those who, by clear evidences, have manifested a hardened contempt of God, so that their disease appears to be incurable.”
I’ve fallen into this trap several times. A few years ago I spent weeks speaking with another Christian about his sin, even though it became clear very early on that he would not be swayed. I gave him every Scripture I could think of (and the sin in question was one the Scripture is very clear about, involving behavior that was destructive for other Christians), but he excused it every time—not because he couldn’t see or understand what the Bible said, but because he wanted to keep doing what he was doing.
Finally, after a very long time, we (the elders) came to the point where we had to look at the facts in front of us, of what he was doing, then look at what the Bible tells us to do (particularly Acts 20, and a little later on in this chapter, texts which speak of wolves coming into the midst of the assembly to harm it), and ask this man to leave, because he was living his life in a way which was completely “anti-Christ”.
If we had taken v. 1—“Judge not, that you be not judged”—at its most basic and superficial meaning, we would have been forced to let this guy continue what he was doing, for fear of being judgmental. That’s not what Jesus is talking about when he says not to judge. He’s telling us to use our minds, and to use the Word, to make an honest estimation of whether or not we are using our time wisely, or exposing ourselves or the church to danger, in the way we deal with others.
So judging does not mean never speaking out in love against a wrong behavior; and it does not mean never deciding to treat someone as an unbeliever if someone lives in an unbelieving way.
But it does mean something. And Jesus gives us a beginning of an explanation in v. 2. Let’s read v. 1 again, then continue:
Judge not, that you be not judged. 2 For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you.
This can throw us off, because (sort of like we saw in the Lord’s Prayer, on the subject of forgiveness) it seems as if Jesus is saying that God’s judgment of us is determined by our judgment of others. And just like in the Lord’s Prayer, I think Jesus is using this extreme language to show a link between the two—not to imply a cause-and-effect relationship.
We know from the rest of the Bible that the basis of the gospel is that Christ was judged in our place, for our sins, and he has given us his perfect righteousness. So now, if we are in him, we are judged on the basis of his life, not ours. So Jesus isn’t saying that if we judge others for their sins, everything he did for us is no longer valid.
He’s saying rather that people who have been forgiven, people who have received grace (and not condemnation for their sin) will be inclined to show the same grace, and not condemn others. If we are quick to judge others—to condemn them for their sin, real or perceived—it is likely we haven’t experienced grace ourselves, and so we can expect to be judged with the same swiftness we showed them. At the very least, it shows that our understanding of the grace God showed us is terribly weak, and needs to be strengthened.
Our understanding of the grace we have received is very important here, because when God saved us, he took us out from under the demands of the law, and put us under grace. But when we judge others, when we condemn them for their sin, we (at least in our minds) put ourselves back under the law; we say, “I know the law, and I obey the law, so I have the right to judge you when you don’t.”
If I condemn you according to that standard, then I apply that standard to myself…when the reality is that according to that standard, I would be condemned too—the only reason I’m not is because God showed me grace, in the person of his Son.
Again, this does not mean we shouldn’t talk to each other about the sin we see in one another. Rather, it means that we’re all on the same playing field. When I talk to you about your sin, I’m also holding a mirror up to myself.
The only one who is above the playing field, who is actually qualified to be our judge, is God himself. But even God, who is able to judge rightly, has compassion on us; he shows us grace, and brings us to repent of our sin rather than persist in it. In the light of his compassion to us, how could we do any different? The compassion we have received from God should motivate the judgments we render to others; or, as we saw a couple weeks ago in the Lord’s Prayer, the forgiveness God has given us should drive us to forgive others in the same way.
Obedience, Humility and Understanding (v. 3-5)
We got our first picture of what it looks like to “judge not” in v. 2: it means realizing that the standards to which we hold others apply to us as well.
The second picture Jesus gives us of what it looks like to “judge not” is similar, but goes into more detail. It’s one of my favorite pictures in all the Bible—because here, Jesus basically tells a joke. He takes a highly exaggerated picture (likely from his carpentry background, where there was always sawdust in the air, getting in your nose and eyes) and applies it to the way we go about helping one another fight our sin. V. 3:
3 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? 4 Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? 5 You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.
Imagine what it would be like to be talking to someone, and to see that that person literally has a splinter in her eye (maybe she feels it and is hurting, maybe she hasn’t even realized it yet).
How would you help her at that moment? You wouldn’t say (at least I hope you wouldn’t say), “You idiot! How could you let that splinter get in your eye?!”
No—you’d say, “Freeze! Don’t move…you’ve got something in your eye. Don’t worry, you can’t see it, but I can. Let me help.” You’d speak calmly, and gently, and reassuringly. And you’d very gently go in to get the splinter out. That person wouldn’t feel attacked by you or judged by you; they’d say, “Thank God you saw the splinter!”
To put this very simply, living without judgment means realizing that whatever sin I see in someone else, my own sin is greater still. Jesus isn’t saying we have to finish dealing with all our sin before we try to help others—or else we’d never help anyone. He’s giving us this strong image to remind us that whatever sin my brother’s dealing with, I’ve got sin too. He may have a speck in his eye, but I’ve got a plank in mine.
We shouldn’t forget that when Jesus says this, he’s speaking to his disciples, who were just learning about this new brand of Judaism (which would soon be called Christianity) that Jesus teaching them. They were, to put it in our modern church language, “baby Christians.”
So Jesus knew it would be incredibly easy to learn all these things, to hear everything Jesus says in this sermon about Christian ethics and morality, and to turn these teachings into the lens through which they saw other people. He knew it would be easy for them to turn these teachings into diagnostic tools with which to filter people: these people are clearly good, and these people are clearly bad.
The truth is far simpler than that. The truth, Jesus says, is that we’re all clearly bad. As my dad used to say, everyone poops. Everyone is sinful. Everyone has sin in their hearts which is just as serious as whatever they’re seeing in someone else. Yes, you may see a speck in your brother’s eye; but you’ve got a plank sticking out of yours.
So what do we do then? How can we help each other, if we’ve all got the same problem?
Jesus’s answer is beautiful, because it’s a simple answer which still allows greater nuance in our understanding: he says, work on yourself first, so that you can help others. Learn to obey, so that you can help others obey. Be aware of their fight, so that you won’t judge them for theirs. Notice that Jesus doesn’t tell us not to take the speck out of our brother’s eye; he says to deal with the plank in our own eye, so that we can see well to help our brother.
Jesus’s teachings are not first and foremost a window through which we examine other people; they are first and foremost a mirror in which we are called to examine ourselves.
You see, it’s not about whether or not we will talk to others about their sin; we’re called to do that. It’s about whether or not we do it with humility—not as a general berating a petty officer, but as fellow soldiers in the same fight. Jesus calls us “hypocrites” if we see the speck in our brother’s eye without realizing we have a plank in our own—if we see the sin in our brother, and somehow imagine that makes him different from us.
When we know our own sin well, when we confront our own sin and fight our own sin, that doesn’t disqualify us from speaking to others about their sin; on the contrary, it equips us for that work. We notice it in them because we can see the same thing in ourselves; we recognize it in them because we’ve learned to recognize it in ourselves. And we can help them fight their sin, because we’ve learned to fight our own.
When I understand my own sin, and I work diligently on dealing with my own sin, I am able to help my brother—not because I’m no longer a sinner, but because my understanding of my sin makes me come to my brother in an understanding way: humbly, and not harshly. Harsh reproach is an attack; humble reproach is a gift.
Edouard Nelson, a dear friend and fellow pastor who died last year, was one of the holiest, most humble men I’ve ever known. Edouard confronted me more than once on sinful behavior he saw in me. But I never once felt attacked by him; I never felt accused by him; I never even felt defensive. On the contrary, every time he brought something to my attention, I felt loved and protected, because he never put himself over me; rather, he came beside me, knowing he was no better. And he could help me, because he’d been fighting his own sin for longer.
He could see well to take the speck out of my eye, because he knew was humble enough to know there was a plank in his own. And as a result, when he came to take the speck out of my eye, he did so carefully, humbly and lovingly.
In other words, his humility—his understanding of his own sin—caused him to come to me in an understanding way. Because he knew what it was like to be a sinner. And that’s the second essential element we see here—understanding. We don’t judge our brother for the speck in his eye, because we know how easy it is to let one fall in—after all, we have a plank in ours.
If you look at your own life, you know that every sin is committed in a context. For every wrong choice someone makes, other things are happening in their lives that might help understand why they did what they did. Knowing that every sin is committed in a context won’t excuse the sin—we’ll still need to deal with it—but it will help us to have compassion for the person who committed it. And it is precisely this compassion which motivates Christ in his dealings with us. Remember what Matthew saw in Matthew 9.36?
When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.
Whom did Jesus see when he looked out at the crowds? He saw sinners. He saw failures. He saw people, many of whom would reject him. But at the same time, being God, he knew their context. He saw that they were “harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” So even if their context didn’t excuse their sin, it drove him to compassion for them.
If you’ve ever had the chance to speak to someone who’s been abused, you know what I’m talking about. People who have been abused or traumatized will often have reactions that would probably be sinful in other contexts. They won’t want to be in the same room with their abuser. They’ll refuse to speak to them. If I refused to speak to a member of the church, someone could legitimately call me to task because of my anger and bitterness, because of my refusal to forgive. But an abuse victim isn’t thinking that way; she’s just dealing with the fact that simply thinking about having a conversation with the person who wounded her causes her to have a panic attack. It’s not sin, but trauma, which is motivating her. So rather than rebuking her for sin, we’ll want to come alongside her, and do our best to help her heal from that trauma.
That’s an extreme example, but it’s just to say that every sin—or every behavior that might be perceived as sin at first—happens in a context. And when we are humble, we won’t be inclined to judge that person, because we’ll want to know more. We will more readily ask questions like, “Is there something I’m unaware of, that might explain this behavior? Is it possible that this person doesn’t know that what they’re doing is sinful? Is it possible that they’re not actually committing a sin, but simply responding the best they can to a situation that’s too big for them to handle?”
Only people who understand their own sin, and who work diligently to put their own sin to death, can see clearly enough to help others with theirs. Only people who understand their own sin will confront sin in others without harshness or judgment, but rather with love.
Tools
So what do we do with all this? To close, I’d like to be a little more practical than I usually am (to my shame). If we take into account the attitude Christ calls us to have, and his commandment to not judge, here are six things we can do to nourish this instinct in ourselves.
Firstly, remember how God has treated you. Immerse yourself in the gospel. Become experts in the grace God has shown you in Christ. Learn from the Bible what sin is, and what God did to pay the penalty for yours. Learn who you are now, in Christ: an imperfect human being who has been declared perfect by God, because Christ was perfect for you. Remember the grace that God has shown to you.
Secondly, work diligently to put your sin to death. Learn from the Word, and from your brothers and sisters, how to kill your sin. Learn how to fight your sin. If we don’t know how to fight our own sin, we’ll never know how to help someone else fight theirs. We have to work to take the plank out of our eye before we can see clearly enough to help someone get the speck out of theirs.
Thirdly, confess your sin regularly to God. Come to him daily and confess to him all the ways you can think of—as many as you can—in which you have sinned against him. We confess our sins to God in order to teach our hearts that we need a Savior, and to teach our hearts to respond to his grace with thanksgiving.
Fourthly, be open with others about your sin. Don’t say everything to everyone, but be generally open. Someone who clearly understands his own sin is someone who is easy to listen to, because you know that they know that they’re not better than you or looking down on you.
I was pretty open with you guys last week about my struggle with anxiety; if you watch the video, you can hear me stuttering when I talked about it, because it wasn’t a pleasant experience (I stutter when I get nervous). Part of the reason I did that, it’s true, was because I knew I’d feel like a hypocrite if I didn’t. But it was also because being open with you about my struggles will help me be a better pastor to you. If I come alongside one of you who is, for example, struggling with anxiety, and I remind you that Jesus commands us not to worry, you’ll know that I’m not judging you, you’ll know I don’t think less of you for having that struggle, because you’ll know I’ve struggle with the same thing. It feels good to talk to someone who understands what you’re going through, who knows why your struggle is difficult.
Be open with others about the plank in your own eye, so they won’t be offended when you talk about the speck in theirs.
Fifthly, build relationships with your brothers and sisters. If someone already knows that you love them, then they’ll know you’re not attacking them if you speak to them about their sin. This is why Edouard was so good at this: he could occasionally speak to me about my sin because he was always showing me that he cared for me.
The thing is, this won’t happen overnight. It’s not enough to just say, “You know I love you,” before lighting them up. If you want someone to know you love them when things are going badly, you need to show them you love them when everything’s going well. Build relationships with your brothers and sisters, and let your love for them be evident, no matter what is going on.
Lastly, respond to reproach, not with defensiveness, but with humility. Recognize that if you needed a Savior before you ever realized you had a sinner, you likely still have some blind spots, some areas in your life that others can see better than you. Even if someone is less than gentle with a criticism, don’t go on the defensive and point out their lack of gentleness; consider what they’re saying, speak to God about it in prayer, and repent if necessary.
We have all received the humble help of our Savior, who did not condemn us even though he had the right and the authority to do so. If we have received such understanding and grace from Christ, let us show the same understanding toward others, and humbly help one another with our sin.
