Working Out Our Own Salvation.
Relationships
Living in Relationship
HOLD YOUR JUDGMENT
PROVERBS 30:12–13; MATTHEW 7:1–5; LUKE 16:15; LUKE 18:9–14; ROMANS 2:1
Criticism; Faultfinding; Judging Others; Self-righteousness
A grocery store checkout clerk once wrote to advice-columnist Ann Landers to complain that she had seen people buy “luxury” food items—like birthday cakes and bags of shrimp—with their food stamps. The writer went on to say that she thought all those people on welfare who treated themselves to such nonnecessities were “lazy and wasteful.”
A few weeks later Landers’ column was devoted entirely to people who had responded to the grocery clerk. 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 I made was for our wedding-anniversary dinner and lasted three days. Perhaps the grocery clerk who criticized that woman would have a different view of life after walking a mile in my shoes.
Another woman wrote:
I’m the woman who bought the $17 cake and paid for it with food stamps. I thought the checkout woman in the store would burn a hole through me with her eyes. What she didn’t know is 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.
You never know what other people are dealing with.
Citation: Terrie Williams, The Personal Touch (Warner Books, 1994); submitted by Danny Smith
this opening command and its explanation function as a warning against overly harsh critique and criticism. God will not let that go unpunished. Reciprocity is evident earlier in 6:14–15, where Jesus teaches that the disciples are only forgiven when they have forgiven others.
There is no prohibition against judging others. Jesus is concerned with how the disciple administers a critique and, later in the Gospel, details how a disciple is to confront another (18:15–17).
In Matt 7:1–5, Jesus is calling his followers to be aware of their own shortcomings before they take it upon themselves to help others with their faults. Humility and authenticity are to characterize Christian community (Phil 2:3–4), so much so that Jesus warns his followers that the excessiveness with which they judge another, without first having their own house in order, God will accordingly judge them. It is a call for discerning one’s own life first and foremost.
The disciples must be mindful of those to whom they minister, as these can squander the message or even harm the disciples. Although Jesus teaches that hostility will come, v 6 could be a call to mitigate those encounters, if possible, by deciding not to preach the gospel if it is not wanted.
The invitation to ask in vv 7–8, coupled with the affirmation of the goodness of the one to whom they ask in vv 9–11, reiterates how the disciples are to pray, as evident in the Lord’s Prayer (6:9–13).
What Jesus’ followers are to do to others is to be shaped by the preceding ethical content in the Sermon on the Mount thus far (Nolland 2005, 330). God is a heavenly Father who gives “good gifts” to those who ask (v 11). The disciples, so in everything, must treat others as they would want to be treated (v 12).
which is evident in hearts filled with love for one another. Love like this reflects the holy love of the heavenly Father (→ Matt 5:17 and 5:48). Jesus confirms this later when he states that loving others, as well as God, are the precepts upon which hang “all the Law and the Prophets” (22:40).
