The Sermon on the Mount: Judging Others

Introduction

Read Matthew 7:1-6

Matthew 7:1–6 (ESV)

“Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. 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? 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? 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.

“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.

The verses we have looked at over the last couple weeks since returning to this sermon has focused on where we place our trust and our treasures.

Jesus warns us not to store up treasures here on earth, to not love or hold on too tightly to things that are temporary. Rather we are called to love Him and trust Him to provide and care for us.

Now He turns to this topic of judging. This is actually another way of placing our heart and our trust in something other than God. When we judge we are actually placing our trust in our own self-righteousness and we have fallen in love with our own religious zealousness instead of loving God.

James Boice quoted someone he knew by writing, “If the devil is not able to destroy a Christian’s witness by making him apathetic, he will try to do it by making him a fanatic.” He goes on to explain that while we are called to zealously love and treasure Christ, there is a “type of zeal that can ruin a believer’s witness. That is a zeal for self-righteousness and self-justification. It is harmful because it will turn him into a sharp and unjust critic of his Christian brothers.”

Do Not Judge Others

What does Jesus mean here by “judging”?

This first verse of chapter seven is a well-known verse to many people. It might be the best known verse as it is so often quoted whenever discussion of right and wrong come up.

The first question we have to ask as we examine what Jesus is talking about is what does He mean by “judging”?

What it does not mean

Let’s first talk about what judging does not mean.

It does not mean that we should not be concerned about what God’s Word says about truth, right and wrong, or sin.

We have to daily make judgments about right choices, about who or what to listen to, about what is truly right and good.

As it concerns judging what others teach, we are called to test the spirits.

1 John 4:1 (ESV)

Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world.

In Acts 17, on their missionary journey, after Paul and Silas left Thessalonica, they went to a town called Berea. They went to the synagogue to preach the gospel to the Jews there. Luke writes about the Jews who lived in Berea stating,

Acts 17:11 (ESV)

Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica; they received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so.

Here we see the people receiving the word that Paul preached, but they didn’t receive it blindly. They essentially “judged” Paul and Silas according to the Scriptures to make sure what they were teaching was accurate. They “tested the spirits” to ensure they were not false prophets.

In the same way, even as I am preaching up here, you ought to be judging me on what I say by the Word of God. This is a good and right judging that you must do week in and week out.

We are called to have a proper critical spirit that seeks to rejoice in what is true and right and to correct what is wrong for the good of ourselves and for those around us.

What it does mean

So what does “judging” mean? It means adopting a hyper-critical spirit towards others. It means refusing to properly judge what is right and wrong because we want to see someone else entirely in the wrong because of our unloving spirit towards them.

“Judging” here in this sense is passing condemnation upon someone because of our unloving spirit.

We judge people based on a comparison with ourselves… “I’ve never done that before.”

We judge people based on their circumstances. Maybe they are poor or simply do not have influence that can benefit me. So I ignore them and pass judgment because they have no value in my sight.

This is the kind of judging that James the brother of Jesus talks about in James chapter 2. We are told not to show partiality because of someone’s background.

Judging is essentially us making a determination about someone’s worth based on who they are or what they have done.

How do we end up judging?

There are ways this actually plays out for us as we end up wrongfully judging others.

Gossip

This is probably one of the biggest ways we end up wrongly judging each other. We end up gossiping about others. We might even do it in the name of “sharing prayer requests.”

Hey did you hear about what Sally did the other day? She’s gotten herself in trouble and we really need to pray for her.

It is seeking to share information that destroys their character and reputation in front of others. While praying for them is good, sometimes our motivation might be to bring them down in the eyes of others.

Hyper-critical spirit

We can also adopt a hyper-critical spirit towards someone else. They did something that we just didn’t like and so now we view everything they do with a hyper-critical spirit.

Yes, we are to exercise a proper critical thinking towards what is said and done. But the hyper-critical spirit is not looking at how things are, rather it is trying to find something wrong with everything they do.

Prejudice

Prejudice is again like what we looked at in James 2. It is making a determination about someone based upon circumstances and outward appearances. Judging their worth based on what they can or can’t do for you. These are all ways we end up sinfully judging others.

Examine Yourself

How do we prevent a judgmental or hyper-critical spirit towards others?

Keep our eyes on ourselves more than on others.

The problem with judging others is that we become more focused on and worried about others rather than ourselves.

As one who has spent time as a children’s pastor for nearly 15 years, and as a bus driver, and also as a father to four wonderful children, I have seen that this is something that just comes naturally to all of us. It is much easier to worry about and focus on the problems others have rather than focusing on ourselves. Children gladly share about how their friend or sibling has broken the rules. Children can be the best police ever when it comes to enforcing the law for others. But they can be selective about reporting how they themselves keep the rules like they should. It’s always much more fun to see someone else get in trouble rather than deal with the consequences of our own misbehavior.

Learn to see yourself as the chief of sinners

But to guard our hearts against judging others, we must first learn to keep our eyes directed towards us first and foremost.

Matthew 7:3–5 (ESV)

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? 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? 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.

We are called to help one another and to keep each other accountable. But we make for a lousy helper when we are blinded by our own sin. Often what we deem to be a terrible sin in someone else is small in comparison to what we are actually dealing with.

So we must first look at ourselves and see the desperation of our own condition. We must see the log coming out of our own eye first and learn to deal with that. Which means we must learn to recognize our own sinful state.

Understand that you are just as desperately in need for the sacrifice of Christ as anyone else you know.

You see, even the Apostle Paul saw his own desperate state before God. The greatest missionary and theologian to ever live, outside of Christ, and Paul knew the depths of his own sinfulness.

1 Timothy 1:15 (ESV)

The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost.

Even as Paul shared the gospel and preached repentance from sin, he recognized his own sinfulness. He was able to be a better missionary calling people to repentance because he recognized his own failing and understood that the message of the cross he proclaimed to others was just as much for him as it was for the people to whom he was preaching.

Our attitude towards others changes when we understand that it is as much for my sin as for anyone else that Jesus died. It is not as though I deserve His grace anymore than others. It is that I stand just as condemned as any other and that Christ has come to rescue me along with everyone else that I am so quick to pass my own personal judgment on.

Speak Truth in Love to Others

There is a right kind of judgment that we are called to exercise.

Matthew 7:5 (ESV)

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.

But there does come a time for right judgment. Not the condemning kind, but the kind that recognizes that God has called us to help others struggle and fight against their sin.

It is loving to speak truth to someone living in sin.

First, we have to understand that as we seek to be loving to others, this does not mean that we allow known sin in others to continue on.

We live in a culture that believes that if you love me you will blindly agree with me on all my choices and never try to change the things I am doing.

However, the Bible actually defines love on God’s terms.

1 Corinthians 13:4–7 (ESV)

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

We like the first part of that definition. However, we ignore where Paul says that love does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.

If you truly love someone, you will speak the truth to them if what they are doing is against God’s Word and they are actually harming themselves physically and/or spiritually.

It is not love to allow someone to do things that will end up doing great spiritual harm to themselves. The reason why, as Christians, we want to speak out on moral issues, such as abortion, sexual morality, marital faithfulness and divorce, should not be to look down on those who practice such things, but to actually deliver them from the pain and destruction that these things can cause in their life and to point them to Jesus who can give them true joy, freedom, and identity.

To fail to speak the truth on these issues is like a doctor who has found cancer within his patient. However, because he wants to protect their emotional and mental health, he figures it is best not to tell them about the cancer diagnosis. He wants them to remain happy. This would not be right nor loving for a doctor to hide this information, for while it might upset the patient emotionally, receiving the truth about the situation would allow for the opportunity to treat the cancer and find healing and life. To simply keep them happy would mean to allow them to experience an early death.

We should speak as boldly, yet as gently as possible when addressing sin.

So as we address these issues in the lives of our brothers and sisters and friends, we want to be bold in what we share, but we also want to have a spirit of gentleness.

It is no accident that Jesus is using the image of removing a speck from someone’s eye. The eye is a very sensitive spot which requires great care and gentleness.

Again, we must first examine ourselves before we try to address the speck in our brother’s eye. The unaddressed sin in our own life will make it impossible for us to lovingly care for the place our brother or sister is in.

However, once the log is removed, we will be able to properly see and care for our brother as we address the sin in his life.

And we will be able to do so gently and lovingly as we recognize how difficult the sin in our own life was to address.

Going back to our example of the doctor, while it is true and right for him to speak the truth of the cancer so they can begin a plan of treatment, there’s also a right and a wrong way for him to inform the patient of the cancer diagnosis. There was a medical show a couple decades ago about a brilliant doctor who was able to find the diagnosis of these very rare and uncommon problems, but he had a terrible bed side manner. Dr. House. He is one that is fascinating to watch but you would hate to have him as your doctor because of how he treats people around them. He may have spoken truth, but he did not do so in a loving and understanding way.