Judgement

I have spent a lot of my life moving between different denominations before landing on what I generically call "non-denominational." I was raised in a Lutheran Church, but attended a Church of Christ with my grandparents more often than the Lutheran Church. While in High School, I started attending a Pentecostal Church, but that was relatively short-lived. From there, I attended a Baptist Church, where I was when I eventually went off to Bible College and Seminary. I was an Independent Baptist for many years before I started to struggle with how easily my local church found it to judge people. They didn't know the circumstances, they didn't even ask about the circumstances, they just passed haughty judgement. When it came my turn to be judged, I'd had enough. And yes, I realize how much of a hypocrite that made me.

From there, I attended everything from Unitarian to Methodist and everything in between. But everywhere I went, I seemed to struggle with the exact same attitude: judgement. it seemed to me that, as a sinner saved by grace, I should be the last person passing judgement on others. But the opposite side of that is the reality that we are told to share the gospel and share our truth. How do I do that without it seeming like I'm judging others? My seminary training would tell me to love the sinner but hate the sin. Honestly, that felt like a cop-out most of the time.

So, where does that leave us?

In my opinion, Matthew 7.

One of the things that I am actually OCD about when I study or teach or preach is context. Without context, someone can take a single verse of Scripture and make it say just about anything that they want it to. So, as we begin in Matthew Chapter 7, we need to put it into context. This is Jesus' first major public address. It is directed to his followers, so we know that this is mostly a friendly audience. If there is a theme that follows this speech, I would sum it up as, "it's more about attitude than it is action." Jesus spends quite some time looking at the letter of the law, and saying that they law is so much more than just the action. He makes it very clear that what he is doing is not getting rid of the law, but fulfilling it: completing it. The religious leaders of the time were so focused on the minutia of the law that they were missing the spirit of the law. As we know, he spends a huge part of his Earthly ministry fighting this idea that works are more important than attitude.

So, in Matthew 7, he begins another part of his discourse on the importance of having the right attitude. He begins by telling us not to judge others because we do not want to be judged. In fact, He tells us, that we will be judged in the same manner that we are judging others.

Hard Theological Stop. Whenever we read Scripture, it is critical that we understand the difference between a Promise and a Principle. Since we know that our Capital-J Judgement will based on our faith, then we need to conclude that this is a principle for our lives here on Earth.

So, then what is this principle? If we judge others, we will end up on the receiving end of the same type of judgement from others. I'm going to give just one of many possible examples: If we're standing on a street somewhere and someone drives by in a plain-looking 2-3 year old Toyota, no one really takes notice. But if someone drives by in a huge black stretched limousine, it grabs our attention. We think that someone important must be in that car. We think that someone rich must be in that car. If a stranger stepped out of that car, we would instantly treat them differently than the driver of the Toyota. Why? because we have made a judgement about that person without any knowledge. James Chapter 2 spends quite a bit of time warning us not to do this.

But how does that affect us? It's now been made clear to others that we are going to judge people based on their money or stature. Very soon, that kind of judgement becomes known and people start gossiping about us being stuck-up or money-hungry. When we hear that, it hurts because we don't think that we are. But...is that true? Or has our judgement of others come back to judge us?

Matthew goes on to record Jesus' next words, asking why we look at the speck or sliver in our brother's eye while we ignore the plank that is in our own eye? We judge others and completely ignore our own imperfections. He was talking about individuals, for sure, but I believe that he was also talking about the entire state of religion at the time. The religious folks spent their time so focused on their own good works that they began to think of themselves as righteous. This is why Jesus has spent this entire address telling them that keeping the ceremonial laws was not enough. If they were going to seek after righteousness, that would be found in their attitude toward the moral laws.

If anyone is curious when the Pharisees started hating Jesus, I'd guess that the foundation was laid right here. And if anyone is curious why the Pharisees were so bad, it's because they were judgmental to everyone while still full of inward sin. If you want to know what a Pharisee would look like in modern Christianity, most of us would only need to look in the mirror.

In essence, we judge because we're self-righteous. While we may have found salvation through faith, we have now sought to feel justified in our own minds by how "good" we are. This eventually leads to comparing ourselves to others and then judging those that we find to be lacking. But this isn't the teaching of Jesus. In fact, Jesus, in Matthew 7:5, tells us that this is the thinking of hypocrites. We need to work on ourselves in light of God's love and God's grace and God's expectations of our lives. Only then will we really see that we have no room to judge anyone.

Like the woman taken in adultery, when Jesus looked at the crowd and said that anyone without sin could cast the first stone, no one could cast a stone, because no one was innocent. It's the same with us. Our pet sins may be different, but they certainly exist. So, let's spend time working on ourselves instead of judging others.

~steve