Matthew 7:1-6
Judge ye not
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7:1 “Judge not, that you be not judged.” Who’s heard that before? It’s a well know verse from the Bible. It’s a well known saying of Jesus: “Judge not, that you be not judged.” But what does it mean? You know this verse has confused people down through the centuries - what does it mean to judge? Does it mean that we shouldn’t have courts, lawyers and judges? Does it mean we should just let anything happen and never call anyone to account? On the one hand this verse has confused many people as to what it means.
On the other hand this verse has also been used and quoted a lot, usually quite out of context, and used by people to stop others passing judgement on them or their actions. I’m sure I’m not the first person who has had that verse quoted at them as I’ve voiced some sort of opinion.. People have quoted this to me - “judge not – lest you be judged.”
So what does Jesus mean when He says, “Judge not, that you be not judged.”? I guess the first question to ask is – what does the word “judge” mean here? In English, “judge” can mean all sorts of things. Anything from passing a sentence at court – that is, condemning someone, to making a value judgement, to making a decision about something or to choose one thing over another, or just forming an opinion about something. In English it has a pretty wide meaning, and the Greek word has a similarly wide meaning as the English word too. Anything from condeming someone, to making a decision - that is choosing something - or even to have an opinion about something. Pretty broad meaning.
So is Jesus telling us that we can’t do any judging? No choosing, no forming value judgements, not even having an opinion about various things? Well, is that what Jesus is saying? Some people say that it is. and therefore we shouldn’t condemn or judge anyone for anything. We shouldn’t even form an opinion. We should leave all the judging to God. We are just to love and accept people unconditionally. And if you just read Matthew 7:1 on its own you could think that.
But we need to take into account other things that it says in the New Testament about judging. For example, in Matthew 7.1 it says, “Judge not, that you be not judged,” but then if we pop over to 1 Corinthians 5, we have the situation of someone in the Corinthian church who had been committing sexual immorality. The church had been tolerating this person - that is,. they had not been judging this sinful person, but then Paul writes to them:
1 Corinthians 511 But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler—not even to eat with such a one. 12 For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? 13 God judges those outside. “Purge the evil person from among you.”
There we have it. Paul is saying we should judge those who are inside the church, and it’s the same Greek word for judge here as it is in Matthew 7. That is – we are to judge those in the church who sin and don’t repent and continue in their sin even after being warned. Ah … so how does that fit in with Matthew 7.1 where it tells us not to judge? Well, we can go even further. Even within Matthew there are instructions from Jesus about judging .
Matthew 1815 “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. 16 But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. 17 If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.
That passage doesn’t have the word “judge” in it, but it’s certainly a judgement that is happening. It outlines a process where a sinning brother who refuses to repent is to be treated as a Gentile or tax collector - that is, as an unbeliever. Now if that isn’t judging then I don’t know what is!
So how do we reconcile that with Matthew 7.1 where it tells us not to judge? Well the answer is that verse 1 is not all that Jesus is telling us about judging. We need to read the next verses, and as we do so we will see that Jesus is not telling us not to judge at all, but to be very careful when we do judge, and that there is a certain way we must judge, and we shall also see that that matches up very nicely with those other passages that we have looked at today. So let’s look at what the rest of the passage has to say. We’ve already seen verse 1:
7:1 “Judge not, that you be not judged.”
And then Jesus tells us in more detail why we shouldn’t judge:
Matthew 72 For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you.
What Jesus is reminding us here is that we need to be careful when we judge. Why? Because we are also liable to judgement! You know, as people we can be very self-righteous, we can be very one-eyed and very biased. That is, we find it very easy to see the faults of others but find it difficult to see our own faults, or if we do recognise our own faults we tend to brush them off as unimportant. But this verse two is a sober reminder to us that in the same way we judge others, so too will be judged. So before we even think of judging someone we need to be really careful that the finger we point doesn’t turn around and point back at us. And it reminds us of that last part of the Lord’s Prayer that we looked at a few weeks ago
Matthew 6 12 and forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
We ask for God to forgive us our sins, but if we expect God to forgive us, then we need to forgive others of their sins against us. And what would happen if God didn’t forgive us our sins? If God judged us, condemned us as we deserve, we would incur the wrath of God and we would pay the penalty for our sins which is eternal separation from God in Hell. Thanks be to God who forgives of us our sins! But God can only forgive us of our sins if we recognise that we are sinners - that we do have sin and that we deserve His judgement. And you know – that’s half the problem We often don’t think we are sinners, or if we do realise we are sinners, we don’t think we are really really bad sinners - just small “s” sinners.
And if you are here today and you haven’t come to that point of recognising your sin before God, and how that offends Him, then I urge you to do so. It’s only when you can confess your sin, that you can ask Him to forgive you and come into a right relationship with Him. And it’s this whole thing with us people, that we find it easy to find fault with others, while ignoring our own faults, that Jesus then goes on to say
Matthew 73 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? 4 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 see the biggest problem with judging is that we are blind to our own faults while the faults of others are obvious to us. We are quick to accuse others of their problems and issues without seeing our own problems and issues, let alone doing anything about it. And you can see this in every area of life. We have two kids, which means there’s always two sides of the story. One of them tries to beat the other one up for doing something wrong and doesn’t realise they do the very same thing. But it’s not just kids. As someone who’s worked in Christian leadership for a while, from time to time I’ve been caught in the middle of conflict. You hear the same story but from completely different points of view. The fact is we all seem to be much better at seeing the the speck in other peoples’ eyes than the logs in our own.
It’s an interesting analogy Jesus uses here – this specks and the logs in eyes. Now before Jesus entered ministry full time He worked as a carpenter - that was His job. And this speck here is probably that sawdust that is always hanging around carpenter’s shops. A tiny speck of sawdust was pretty easy to get in your eye, but a tiny speck of sawdust is pretty hard for someone else to see. Yet, we seem to be so good at noticing specks in other people’s eyes!
Jesus contrasts that to the logs in our own eyes. Logs are another thing you find in carpenter’s shops, but it’s pretty hard to get a log in your eye. But even if you did get a log in your eye, you would think it would be so obvious that you would see it. Well, trouble is, that we do tend to see the little faults in other people without seeing the big faults in ourselves! So what are we to do? Well Jesus tells us what to do in verse 5
Matthew 75 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.
Yep – we can help our brother with the speck in our own eye, but first we need to look at ourselves. We need to look at what’s in our own eye, and get the log out of our own eye. That is – we need to deal, with God’s help, with the sin in our own life. And in fact it’s that log in our own eye, that sin in our life, that mars our judgement so much. Jesus says that once we take the log out of our eye we will be able to see the speck in our brother’s eyes clearly.
But before we take the log out of our own eyes - that is – before we deal with the sin in our life, we can’t really see that speck in our brother’s eye properly. And in fact, oftentimes, what we think is the speck in our brother’s eyes, is actually the log in our own eye! That is – it’s not the other person who is the problem, but it’s us! But if we deal with our own sin, that is - repent of it, and ask our Heavenly Father to forgive us our sin through what Jesus did on the cross, and then turn away from that sin, dealing with it, getting it under control, then we’ll be living a life that is pleasing to God and we’ll be able to see clearly to help our brother take the speck out of his or her eye.
So in other words, there is a place for judging others, but only after we have really and truly judged ourselves. But there is more to it than that, and that’s where some of these other verses about judging come in handy. You see – how do I know if I’ve judged myself properly? How do I know if I’ve really got the log out of my own properly? You see, the problem is that very often we actually think we don’t have logs in our eyes. Yep – we actually have them, but we don’t think we have them, so we think we see specks in other people’s eyes, and try and remove them, thinking it’s okay to judge them because we’re okay. But the problem is that we are often our own worse judges as to whether or not we have logs in our own eyes. And part of Christian maturity is to recognise when we have logs in our eyes. Part of Christian maturity is that when we are in conflict to recognise that most likely we are part of the problem, and to look at ourselves before we blame others.
And as we look at the other passages, we will see that one of the greatest safeguards when judging is needed is not to do it alone, but to do it with others. What do I mean? Well let’s look at that passage later on in Matthew chapter 18:15-17. It talks about what to do if someone does something against you. Verse 15 says
Matthew 1815 “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother.
So first step, if someone does something against you, before you go and judge them, go and talk to them – just you and that person. As much as depends on you, go and have a polite Christian discussion with them. Much of the time you will find that the source of the conflict is a misunderstanding or something that you can sort out. In fact, the gathering of information helps a lot with conflict. Very often we judge wrongly because we make premature judgements based on only part of the story. Don’t judge anyone until you’ve heard their side of the story from them in person. And if you speak with that person and if you can sort it out at that stage, as Jesus says, you have gained your brother. But if that doesn’t work, if from your point of view the issue is unresolved then you go to the next step which is:
Matthew 1816 But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses.
That is so important. Take one or two others along. Why? Well – our own interpretation of the facts can be very clouded, very biased, the log in our eye might be so big we don’t even notice we have it. And this is another step in the process of getting all the facts and not making a premature judgement. But also notice Galatians 6:1 has something to say about our approach too:
Galatians 6:1 Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness.
This verse tells us a couple of things. Firstly, don’t just take just anyone alone with you to the other person, but take along a spiritual person, someone who is a strong, spiritual Christian, such as an elder, deacon or other godly Christian. Get one or two other mature Christians brothers or sisters involved, ask them to be honest with you
say to them, “do you reckon I’ve got any part to play in this?” “Is there some log in my own eye I’m not seeing?” Then if in their opinion you’ve still wronged go along with them to the brother or sister who has wronged you and talk to that person again.
And the second thing to notice from this verse is that we are to attempt to restore the other person in a spirit of gentleness. What does this mean? It means acrimonious, vindictive words are out. Be gentle, kind, watch your words, and in this day and age with email we have to be really careful of this. When we are worked up about something it is very easy to send of an email with inflamatory words, and unfortunatly with email, perhaps because we are not face to face with the person, it seems to be much easier to say really nasty things by email. And from time to time I am on the receiving end of these inflamatory emails as I’m sure many of you have, and it’s not pleasant to get those emails. The person on the other end of your email has feelings too. If you are upset about something read and re-read your email before sending it, and perhaps get someone else to read it too. I often do that if I feel I have to send a strong email. You know sometimes we can be right, but go about expressing our concerns in all the wrong ways. As it says in Galatians we need to restore the other person in a spirit of gentleness.
But even if after all that the other person doesn’t listen, then you go to the next step in Matthew 18:
Matthew 1817 If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.
That is – tell it to the church. Now that doesn’t mean go and gossip it to everyone in the church - the Bible tells us elsewhere not to gossip. But go and talk to the church leadership about it. Come and talk to me or one of the other elders and if it is someone in the church we can arbitrate. If it is another Christian outside this church we can try and do what we can to help. And if necessary we can bring the matter formally to the whole church. And this process is very similar to the one in 1 Corinthians 5 that we mentioned before, where a decision to judge the immoral person was made together, it wasn’t just one person.
There are some important principles here about judgement, and that is accountability, and working together. When we make judgements, if we are making them on our own, then the logs in our own eyes can hinder us from judging well. I personally know that’s true of myself as it is for everyone of us here today. One of the reasons that we have elders in this church is so that one man – the pastor - doesn’t make all the judgements on his own. But important decisions – or judgements – about the church, about people in the church if necessary, about docrine, about whatever, can be decided in council together with 2 or 3 or in our case 4 people can establish something.
So let’s get back to our passage in Matthew 7 - what does it mean for us in everyday life? In everyday life we have to make judgements about all sorts of things. About doctrine. About right Christian behaviour. And sometimes about people. Sometimes we judge when we are part of the dispute - for example – someone has done something against us personally. Other times we judge as an outsider. We hear about something someone has done to someone else, and we make a judgement about that person. How terrible it is, as unfortunately sometimes happens, when someone in the church is judged on the basis of hearsay and rumour when the correct process hasn’t been followed.
Now the Bible tell us that in some cases we are called upon to judge others, but our passage today tells us to be very careful about judging. It tells that
1. Before we judge someone – have a good hard look at ourselves.
2. It also tells us that after we’ve done that – there is a process to be followed. Look at Matthew 18 to see that process.
3. It tells us that judging is not something we do ourselves but we do together with others. And something we should to to and ask advice and help of spiritual Christians, those showing in their life and speech that they are Christ- minded people. Why? Well – we can make mistakes, and other people can often see our own faults better than we can ourselves.
4. We should get all the facts and research something thoroughly before making a judgement. And
5. We should do all this in a spirit of gentleness, with the ultimate aim of helping ourselves and our brothers and sisters in Christ to live righteous lives, seeking first God’s kingdom and His righteousness.
But before we close off we need to deal with the last verse of our passage:
Matthew 76 “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.
Wow – where did that verse come from and what does it mean? And what’s this with dogs and pigs? Well back then dogs were not seen as the cute and cudly pets we see them as today, but they were wild dogs who were regarded as unclean animals that were often a dangerous pest. Dogs and pigs were symbols of gentiles or pagans - that is, people who rejected God and His laws. So when Jesus says – do not give dogs what is holy, and do not throw pearls before pigs – pearls were the most valuable precious stone back in those days. Jesus is talking about Gospel truths, about the things of God. We’ve just been talking about judging and trying to bring reconcilation, and looking at ourselves long and hard before trying to remove any specks from our brothers’ eyes. But there are people in this world who just won’t listen to anything to do with God. Yes, we must evangelise and tell people about Jesus and what He has done for us. But there comes a time when some people won’t listen and they completely reject God and won’t have anything to do with him. They won’t accept correction, even if humbly given by a number of wise, mature and spiritual people. And in that case after we’ve followed the right process we have to come to a judgement that, well – we have done our best, and we don’t need to try and persuade them anymore. Don’t cast your pearls before pigs or the holy things before wild dogs, because they treat them with disrespect and try and rip us to shreds.
But in the case of our fellow Christians and people who do listen, don’t be quick to judge. Get the facts. Judge yourself first. And when conflict or disagreements or the potential for judgement rises, our overriding concern should be for God’s glory and His righteousness and for the restoration of good relationships between each other if at all possible. And ultimately in serving each other by watching out for each other and helping each other on the path to be being more righteous and more like Christ.
