Reflect God in Self-Awareness

How many of you spent time in front of the mirror before you came here this morning? Now, I’m not going to embarrass anyone by asking how MUCH time you spent in front of the mirror.

Let me just say that I spent a couple of minutes there while I was brushing my teeth, but the amount of time I spent actually paying attention to myself in the mirror was quite brief.

Maybe it’s obvious to you as you look at me, but the truth is that I really don’t spend a lot of time looking at myself in the mirror.

Mostly, I glance at myself, make sure that I’ve still got eyes where they’re supposed to be, a nose and a mouth arranged in such a way as to seem somewhat counterproductive to good health and hygiene, and at least a little hair where there used to be quite a bit more, and then I get on with my day.

But something struck me this week while I was looking in the mirror, and it was this: In the mirror, I have never seen the Res Spears that you all see every week. In order to see myself as you see me, I have to look at a photograph.

In 1786, the Scottish poet, Robert Burns, wrote a couple of lines about this:

“Oh, would some Power give us the gift To see ourselves as others see us!”

Now, the truth is that I’m not sure I would want such a power. I think that I might be disappointed to learn that I’m not as handsome as I’d like to think and that I’m not the wonderful person I like to think I am.

H.A. Ironside, who pastored at Moody Church in Chicago during the first half of the 20th century, told a story about a bishop from New York who learned this valuable lesson.

Bishop Potter booked passage to Europe on one of the great trans-Atlantic ocean liners of the early 20th century, and when he came aboard in New York, he learned that he would be sharing a cabin with another passenger.

He went to his cabin to get a look at his accommodations, and then went down to the purser’s desk to ask whether he could have his gold watch and other valuables locked up in the safe for the duration of the voyage.

“I don’t normally worry about this kind of thing,” he said. “But after going to my cabin and meeting the man who will be sharing it with me, I am afraid that, judging from his appearance, he might not be a trustworthy person.”

The purser took Bishop Potter’s valuables and placed them in the ship’s safe. Turning back to the bishop, he said, “It’s all right, bishop. I’ll be very glad to take care of them for you. The other man has been up here and left his for the same reason.” [H.A. Ironside, Illustrations of Bible Truths]

There’s two things that little story should remind us. First, we can never really see ourselves the way others see us. And second, we aren’t really all that good at seeing ourselves for the way we are.

I’m sure that bishop wanted to see himself as kind and charitable, but as he pondered what the ship’s purser had said to him, he must have realized that he had judged his cabin-mate just as unfairly as he himself had been judged.

Self-awareness is a hard skill to master, but it is essential to the Christian life.

We who have followed Jesus Christ in faith — we citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven to whom the Sermon on the Mount is addressed— serve a God who introduced Himself to Moses as “I AM.”

We are subjects of the King of Kings and Lord of lords, who described Himself in seven great I AM statements in the Book of John: I am the bread of life, He said. I am the light of the world. I am the gate of the sheepfold. I am the Good Shepherd. I am the resurrection and the life. I am the way, the truth and the life. And I am the true vine.

Jesus always knew who He was. He was completely self-aware.

He knew that He was the unique and eternal Son of God, sent to earth to demonstrate the perfect character of His Father in heaven and to show us how it would look for a man to live in perfect submission to and in perfect fellowship with God.

He knew that He was the one through whom sinners could have eternal life — life the way it was meant to be in perfect fellowship with God.

He knew that He was the source of life and light in a dark and dying world, cursed because of mankind’s rebellion against God. He knew that He was the Good Shepherd who would lay down His life for His sheep. He knew that He was the true vine in whom fruitful branches abide.

As we have studied through the Sermon on the Mount during the past couple of months, we have seen that Christians — those who have followed Jesus in faith — are called not to reflect the world, but to reflect God.

We are to be like our heavenly Father who adopted us as sons and daughters when we placed our faith in Christ and His sacrifice on our behalf at the cross.

We are to reflect God in our hearts and in our relationships. We are to reflect God in our public worship, in forgiveness and in our private devotions. We are to reflect God in our desires and in our ambitions.

And this week, we will see that we are to reflect God in our self-awareness.

But there’s one great difference between us and God and between us and His Son, Jesus, and that is what?

We are sinners.

Each one of us has sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Each one of us has rebelled against the Creator-King who made us in His image to reflect His perfect and righteous character throughout the world.

And, as with any rebellion against any king, the penalty for our rebellion against God is death — both physical death and spiritual death, which is eternal separation from God and His goodness and mercy.

Furthermore, there is nothing any of us can do to repair the damage our sins have caused to our relationship with God.

In fact, the separation created by our sins is so complete that only God could repair it. And He did that through the willing sacrifice of His Son at the cross. Jesus paid the debt that we never could repay. The innocent one died for the guilty ones.

2 Corinthians 5:21 (NASB95)

God made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

Jesus took our sins upon Himself at the cross so that those who put their faith in Him as their only means of salvation could have His righteousness imputed to them.

We who have placed our faith in Jesus stand before God clothed in the perfect righteousness of Jesus, even though we are still sinners.

But there’s a danger that Christians must be aware of as they seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and that is the danger that we forget whose righteousness we have. It’s the danger that we begin to think of ourselves as righteous.

And when we start thinking of ourselves as righteous — when we lose the awareness that we are sinners saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone — then it becomes all too easy to fall into the self-righteous trap of becoming judgmental.

And that’s what Jesus warns about in the first part of today’s passage from Matthew, chapter 7.

Let’s read the first five verses of this chapter together, and then we’ll talk about eye surgery for a bit.

Matthew 7:1–5 NASB95

“Do not judge so that you will not be judged. “For in the way you judge, you will be judged; and by your standard of measure, it will be measured to you. “Why do you look at 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,’ and behold, the log is 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.

Now, the first thing we need to understand in this passage is that the word for “judge” here has a broad range of meanings in the Greek language in which the Gospel of Matthew was written.

So, just what does Jesus mean when He says, “Do not judge so that you will not be judged”?

Let me tell you that the lost world loves this verse. And Christians who are caught up in sin love this verse.

“Don’t judge me,” they say. “You’re not the judge of me.”

People who are walking in sin don’t want to be confronted with the truth, so their reaction is often to quote this Scripture out of its context. Jesus said not to judge, they’ll tell you.

But later in this chapter, He also said to beware of false prophets, whom we’ll know by their fruits. In other words, judge them by their fruits.

And in the Gospel of John, He said:

John 7:24 NASB95

“Do not judge according to appearance, but judge with righteous judgment.”

“Judge with righteous judgment.” That’s the mistake Bishop Potter made on that trans-Atlantic cruise. He judged according to appearance, not with righteous judgment.

So, clearly Jesus expects His followers to be discerning people, judging right from wrong and distinguishing between the moral and the immoral.

Based on the context of this passage within the Sermon on the Mount, I think it’s appropriate to conclude that the meaning of “judging” here comes closer to criticizing, finding fault with or condemning, and I think one of the keys to recognizing this as the meaning Jesus had in mind is His use of the word “hypocrite” in verse 5.

Judging in a hyper-critical manner was a sin of the Pharisees, and “hypocrites” was one of Jesus’ favorite ways to describe them.

We see their judgmental attitudes in the story Jesus told in the Gospel of Luke of the Pharisee and the tax collector praying in the temple.

Luke 18:9–14 NASB95

And He also told this parable to some people who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and viewed others with contempt: “Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. “The Pharisee stood and was praying this to himself: ‘God, I thank You that I am not like other people: swindlers, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. ‘I fast twice a week; I pay tithes of all that I get.’ “But the tax collector, standing some distance away, was even unwilling to lift up his eyes to heaven, but was beating his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, the sinner!’ “I tell you, this man went to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

Who was more self-aware in the temple that day? The Pharisee or the tax collector?

The tax collector knew he was a sinner and humbled himself before God, praying for God’s mercy.

But the Pharisee exalted himself. In his comparison, he magnified both his own virtues and the tax collector’s vices. [John R. W. Stott and John R. W. Stott, The Message of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7): Christian Counter-Culture, The Bible Speaks Today (Leicester; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1985), 178.]

And this gives us a clue as to what Jesus is getting at in this passage.

“The disciple who takes it on himself to be the judge of what another does usurps the place of God and therefore becomes answerable to him.” [D. A. Carson, “Matthew,” in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary: Matthew, Mark, Luke, ed. Frank E. Gaebelein, vol. 8 (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1984), 183.]

“The command to judge not is not a requirement to be blind, but rather a plea to be generous. Jesus does not tell us to cease to be men (by suspending our critical powers which help to distinguish us from animals) but to renounce the presumptuous ambition to be God (by setting ourselves up as judges).” [John R. W. Stott and John R. W. Stott, The Message of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7): Christian Counter-Culture, The Bible Speaks Today (Leicester; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1985), 177.]

If we’re going to judge — and remember that Jesus clearly said there are situations where our judgment is appropriate and even required — then we must first judge ourselves.

We must be painfully self-aware of our own shortcomings and our own sins, and if we desire to be judged righteously, then we should judge righteously.

That’s the point of the little parable Jesus tells in verses 3 through 5.

How many of you go to the eye doctor? OK, how many of you go to a blind eye doctor?

I was thinking about this last night, and it occurred to me that the eye doctor might be the only doctor you really wish had not experienced the same problems you’re having.

We might appreciate getting care from a podiatrist who had problems with her feet or a dentist with cavities or a heart doctor with high blood pressure. We could imagine that they’d be especially sensitive to our problems, right?

But if you need eye surgery, wouldn’t you prefer to know that your doctor had pretty good vision before he picked up the scalpel?

If someone wants to help me get a speck of sawdust out of my eye, they’d better not have their vision impaired by a log in their own eye.

It’s an absurd picture that Jesus paints for us here, but He does it to show us how absurd it is for to go around pointing out everybody else’s sins when we aren’t dealing with our own.

Just like that Pharisee in the temple, “We have a fatal tendency to exaggerate the faults of others and minimize the gravity of our own.” [John R. W. Stott and John R. W. Stott, The Message of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7): Christian Counter-Culture, The Bible Speaks Today (Leicester; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1985), 178.]

So, take care of that log in your own eye. Judge yourself first. Remove your own sins, and THEN you are in a better position to help your brother with his sins.

“A bit of dirt in his eye is, after all, rightly called a ‘foreign’ body. It doesn’t belong there. It is always alien, usually painful and sometimes dangerous. To leave it there, and make no attempt to remove it, would hardly be consistent with brotherly love.” [John R. W. Stott and John R. W. Stott, The Message of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7): Christian Counter-Culture, The Bible Speaks Today (Leicester; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1985), 179.]

As Christians, we are to be neither critical, condemning judges nor hypocrites who heap blame upon others while excusing ourselves from the responsibility for our own sins.

Instead, we are to be loving brothers and sisters who attend to our own need for correction before constructively and lovingly helping others get rid of the foreign bodies that are causing them pain and suffering.

Warrren Wiersbe wrote that “the Pharisees judged and criticized others to make themselves look good. But Christians should judge themselves so that they can help others look good. There is a difference!” [Warren W. Wiersbe, The Bible Exposition Commentary, vol. 1 (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1996), 29.]

But there’s another danger that Christians face as they navigate this world, and Jesus warns about it in verse 6.

Matthew 7:6 NASB95

“Do not give what is holy to dogs, and do not throw your pearls before swine, or they will trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces.

As we follow Jesus’ commands to love our enemies and not to judge in a critical, condemning manner, it would be easy for us to take the other extreme and just set aside our discernment.

But, as Charles Spurgeon once said, “Saints are not judges, but saints are not simpletons,” either.

In our obedience to Jesus regarding judgment, we must not be naive. We must be discerning, especially when it comes to things that are holy and of great value.

In the context of this passage, we might remember the words of Paul to his pastoral protege, Titus:

Titus 3:10–11 (NASB95)

Reject a factious (or contentious) man after a first and second warning, knowing that such a man is perverted and is sinning, being self-condemned.

If you’ve dealt with your own sin and are trying to lovingly and constructively help a brother or sister in Christ with their sin and they insist on being hostile and belligerent, then they have condemned themselves in their sin. Walk away.

Otherwise, you might get bitten, and the kingdom of heaven, which Jesus describes elsewhere as a pearl of great price, might be trampled into the mud.

We are called to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, but there are some Christians who have given in to their depravity and care nothing for the kingdom. Be aware of this, and be discerning in how you engage them.

I like how Wiersbe puts it: “Christians must exercise discernment; for not everyone is a sheep. Some people are dogs or hogs, and some are wolves in sheep’s clothing! We are the Lord’s sheep, but this does not mean we should let people pull the wool over our eyes!” [Warren W. Wiersbe, The Bible Exposition Commentary, vol. 1 (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1996), 30.]

Are you self-aware? Are you aware of your standing before God? Are you aware of the state of your soul?

Jesus calls Christians to be self-aware.

Remember the beatitude? Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. In other words, blessed are those who recognize that they have nothing to offer God, no treasure of good deeds or self-righteousness that they can use to buy their way into His kingdom.

Blessed are those who realize that they can only become citizens of His kingdom by His grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.

The tax collector in that parable about the prayers in the temple was poor in spirit. “God, be merciful to me, the sinner,” he cried out, unwilling even to lift his eyes to heaven.

Jesus said this man went home that day justified. He who was a sinner was now declared righteous by God.

But it started with an awareness of who he really was and a recognition that his only hope for salvation was by God’s grace and mercy.

The kingdom of heaven can be yours if you will admit what you are — a sinner — if you will believe in who Jesus is — the Son of God and the one in whom there is resurrection and life — and if you will commit to following Him.

You can do this today. Don’t wait another day. Now is the time for salvation. Your savior is calling.