Judging Others – 3

6“Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and then turn and tear you to pieces.

Is the command to not judge a universal command that applies to all of life?

What does Jesus mean, when he says, “Do not judge”?

Is there ever a time where one can judge?

We’ll look into these areas and more, the Lord willing.

Matthew 7:3 (NIV84)

3“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?

[Jesus] used exaggeration (hyperbole) to drive home the truth that people are often blind to their own faults while keenly focused on weaknesses in others.

Our natural human tendency is to see shortcomings in others and to be judgmental of their sin while ignoring, minimizing, or excusing our own sin.

Most would view their sins as the speck of sawdust and others’ sin as the plank.

Sadly, many minimize their own sins and magnify the sins of others. They flag the sins of others and miss their own.

Ephesians 4:32 (NIV84)

32Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.

God is the consummate forgiver. And we depend every day on His ongoing forgiveness for our sins. The least we can do is emulate His forgiveness in our dealings with one another.

Yet there is a natural, sinful tendency for all of us to minimize our own sins and magnify our blame of others—to treat ourselves with mercy and demand retribution against others.

If we would only learn to be more repulsed by our own sin than we are at the wrongs others commit against us, we would be well on the road to spiritual health.

John MacArthur: On the one hand, we urgently need forgiveness. On the other, we desperately need to forgive.

John 8:1–11 (NIV84)

1But Jesus went to the Mount of Olives.

2At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them.

3The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group

4and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery.

5In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?”

6They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him. But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger.

7When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.”

8Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.

9At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there.

10Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”

11“No one, sir,” she said. “Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”

Adrian Rogers: Now, our Lord is not saying that we’re not to judge, and the Lord is not saying that sin is not to be punished. But what He did say is, “Let him who is without sin first cast a stone.”

What was Jesus saying? “You are not fit to pass judgment on someone else when you have the same kind of sin in your own heart.”

Even the Old Testament law required that when a person was stoned, those who were witnesses and those who did the stoning had to be free from the same crime.

What Jesus is doing is not requiring perfection because then there could never be any judgment in any matter, but what Jesus is doing is disallowing hypocrisy.

These people were filled with hypocrisy, and Jesus knew it.

V. 6, Wrote on the ground (κατεγραφεν εἰς την γην [kategraphen eis tēn gēn]). Imperfect active of καταγραφω [katagraphō], old compound, here only in N. T., to draw, to delineate, to write down. (A little technical; emphasis only appearing once in the New Testament.)

Katagraphō is found only once in the New Testament, at John 8:6.

Exodus 32:15 (NIV84)

15 Moses turned and went down the mountain with the two tablets of the Testimony in his hands. They were inscribed on both sides, front and back.

Inscribed (LXX) = καταγεγραμμεναι katagegrammenai = having been written, having been written down, having been inscribed.

κατά (kata) = a preposition/prefix that can have senses such as “down”

καταγεγραμμεναι katagegrammenai = kata + gegrammenai, literally something like “write down,” hence “write down, record, inscribe.”

Jesus wrote on the ground with his finger; God inscribed the Ten Commandments with his finger.

Many speculate that Jesus wrote the command, “Do not commit adultery.”

John 8:8 (NIV84)

8Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.

Jeremiah 17:13 (NIV84)

13O LORD, the hope of Israel, all who forsake you will be put to shame. Those who turn away from you will be written in the dust because they have forsaken the LORD, the spring of living water.

The IVP NT Commentary: Written in the dust: the opposite of being written in the book of life; those who have turned away are consigned to death because they have rejected the one who is the source of the water of life.

It appears that Jesus is associating his opponents with those whom God condemns for forsaking himself and whom he consigns to death.

The judgment that they suggest Jesus execute on this adulterous woman is in fact the judgment that he visits upon them for their rejection of him—the one who has offered them God’s living water.

When Jesus calls for the one without sin to cast the first stone, he accomplishes several things:

It relieves him from the charge of having instigated a stoning;

It ensures there will not be a stoning, since none of the accusers will want to take responsibility for it;

It causes them to reflect on their own sinfulness before God.

Romans 2:1–3 (NIV84)

1You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge the other, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things.

2Now we know that God’s judgment against those who do such things is based on truth.

3So when you, a mere man, pass judgment on them and yet do the same things, do you think you will escape God’s judgment?

Pass judgment = κρίνω krinō = to evaluate: to form a critical opinion of something (either positive or negative) by examination or scrutiny.

To judge, to assume censorial power over, to call to account.

Krinō, refers to condemning someone. Those who judge inappropriately assume a role that belongs to God.

Whenever we find ourselves feeling justifiably angry about someone’s sin, we should be careful. We need to speak out against sin, but we must do so with a spirit of humility.

Often the sins we notice most clearly in others are the ones that have taken root in us.

If we look closely at ourselves, we may find that we are committing the same sin.

The unrighteous excuse themselves while condemning others. The truly righteous overlook faults in others but try to see their own faults.

God judges according to truth. God judges things as they really are, but the Jews wish to condemn the Gentiles and exempt themselves for doing the very same things. Truth applies the same standard to the same things for all people.

Human judgment is based on prejudice and partial perception.

God’s judgment is based on the truth—he judges on the basis of the facts about what we do.

We only know in part, but God knows fully.

Whereas our judgment of others is imperfect and partial, His is perfect and impartial.

HOW CAN WE ESCAPE GOD’S WRATH? We cannot escape God's righteous judgment by avoiding or resisting it. We find our only hope in submitting to his verdict.

If God says we have sinned, we must agree. When we agree with his judgment, we obtain his mercy.

When we agree that we are lost, we find a savior. We escape God's judgment by accepting it and claiming God's mercy and grace that wait for us.

As a result, those who have experienced God's forgiveness overlook the faults in others while they recognize their own faults.

On the other hand, those who have not yet received forgiveness are prone to excuse themselves while condemning and blaming others. This last group of people have not escaped God's judgment.

R.C. Sproul: There were many Jews who came to the conclusion that redemption on the last day would not come on the basis of individual performance, so much as on the basis of membership within a privileged group, or within a privileged class.

Those who were part of the covenant community of Israel had nothing to fear for they were children of Abraham automatically.

That may seem outrageous to us, but many people do think that because they are members of a church, or some special group, their membership will get them into the kingdom of God.

Membership in a particular human group will not guarantee our exclusion from the judgment God has appointed at the end of the age.

No matter how many groups we are members of, there is one thing we must keep before our eyes constantly: in the final analysis, when we stand before Almighty God, we stand alone.

I cannot appeal to the righteousness of my father, or to the righteousness of my mother, or to the righteousness of my sister, or to the greatness of the church to which I belong.

I have to answer for my life by myself before the throne of God.

Matthew 7:4 (NIV84)

4How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye?

Speck = κάρφος karphos = a small piece of straw, chaff, or wood; speck, splinter, chip.

karphos (speck) is not a tiny piece of dust or soot but a small stalk or twig, or possibly a splinter.

Though small in comparison to a log, it is not an insignificant object to have in the eye.

Jesus’ comparison, therefore, is not between a very small sin or fault and one that is large, but between one that is large and one that is gigantic.

The primary point is that the sin of the critic is much greater than the sin of the person he is criticizing.

“Let me take the speck out of your eye”—let me tell you what is wrong in your life and let me straighten you out.

Self-righteousness. The wretched and gross sin that is always blind to its own sinfulness is self-righteousness, the sin that Jesus repeatedly condemns in the scribes and Pharisees, not only in the Sermon on the Mount but throughout His ministry.

Almost by definition, self-righteousness is a sin of blindness, or of grossly distorted vision, because it looks directly at its own sin and still imagines it sees only righteousness.

The log in this illustration represents the same foundational sin of self-righteousness that Jesus has been condemning throughout the sermon.

The very nature of self-righteousness is to justify self and condemn others. In so doing people play God, because they judge themselves on the basis of their own standards and wisdom.

Self-righteousness is the worst of sins because it is unbelief.

It trusts in self rather than God.

It trusts in self to determine what is right and wrong and to determine who does what is right or wrong.

Self-righteousness claims to be both lawgiver and judge, prerogatives that belong only to the Lord.

“What is that in you that sees that in me?”

Matthew 7:5 (NIV84)

5You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.

Hypocrite = ὑποκριτής hypokritēs = hypocrite (actor): a person who professes beliefs and opinions that he or she does not hold in order to conceal his or her real feelings or motives.

One who pretends to be other than he really is.

Matthew 23:25–28 (NIV84)

25“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence.

26Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean.

27“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men’s bones and everything unclean.

28In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside, you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.

The Pharisees were hypocrites who looked good on the outside but inside they were full of sin: greed, self-indulgence, wickedness, hypocrisy, and everything unclean.

2 Corinthians 2:17 (HCSB)

17For we are not like the many who market God’s message for profit. On the contrary, we speak with sincerity in Christ, as from God and before God.

Sincerity = εἰλικρίνεια eilikrineia 3x (1 Cor. 5:8; 2 Cor. 1:12; 2:17) = the quality of being honest and straightforward in attitude and speech (the absence of affectation or pretense).

A.W. Pink (1886-1952): Sincerity is the opposite of counterfeit and dishonesty, of pretense and imposture. It is to be genuine, to be in reality what we are in appearance—frank, true, unfeigned, conscientious.

The Greek word for sincerity in our text properly means “that which is judged in the sunshine, that which is clear and manifest.”

Our English word sincere is derived from the Latin sine cera, which means “without wax,” and the origin of that Latin expression approximates very closely the etymology of the Greek word.

The ancient Romans had a very delicate and valuable porcelain, exceedingly fragile, and only with much trouble could it be fired without being cracked.

Dishonest dealers were in the habit of filling in the cracks that appeared with a special white wax, but when their ware was held up to the light the wax was evident, being darker in color than the porcelain. Thus it came about that honest dealers marked their ware sine cera, “without wax,” having sun-tested it.

Sincerity is opposed to mixture: of truth and error, of godliness and worldliness, of loveliness and sin.

A sincere person has not assumed Christianity as a mask, but his motives are disinterested (unbiased) and pure, his conduct is free from double-dealing and cunning, his words express the real sentiments of his heart.

He is one who can bear to have the light turned upon him, the springs of his actions scrutinized by God Himself.

Matthew 15:7–9 (NLT)

7You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you, for he wrote,

8‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.

9Their worship is a farce, for they teach man-made ideas as commands from God.’”

R.C. Sproul: The people of God were giving God only lip service—praising His name, singing hymns, and praying, but not loving Him from their hearts.

They obeyed the external traditions, but internally there was nothing but decay and spiritual death.

They taught manmade rules as God’s commandments. The spirituality of the Scribes and Pharisees was pointless and empty.

Colossians 2:20–23 (AMP)

20If then you have died with Christ to material ways of looking at things and have escaped from the world’s crude and elemental notions and teachings of externalism, why do you live as if you still belong to the world? [Why do you submit to rules and regulations?—such as]

21Do not handle [this], Do not taste [that], Do not even touch [them],

22Referring to things all of which perish with being used. To do this is to follow human precepts and doctrines.

23Such [practices] have indeed the outward appearance [that popularly passes] for wisdom, in promoting self-imposed rigor of devotion and delight in self-humiliation and severity of discipline of the body, but they are of no value in checking the indulgence of the flesh (the lower nature). [Instead, they do not honor God but serve only to indulge the flesh.]

All these religious externals do not change the inside.

Once can be conformed to a religious sect (even that which is called Christianity) and still not be transformed.

Many people talk the talk but do not walk the talk.

You can be well-versed in church lingo and still not be a Christian.

Matthew 7:21–23 (NIV84)

21“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.

22Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?’

23Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’

Hell will come as a surprise to many!

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