Matthew 7:1 "Do not judge so that you will not be judged. 2 For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. 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? 4 How 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? 5 You 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. 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.
Introduction: Judging hypocritically
Jesus’ words here sound like something out of a comic book.
Matthew 7:3 Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the log in your own eye?
The word log refers specifically to a load-bearing timber in a building. It is a truss beam. So the picture is you have a guy that gets a little speck in his eye and you come along, “Oh, you’ve got a little something in your eye. Let me help you with that” and you walk up with a ten-foot beam sticking out of your eye. That is a figure of speech that is not very hard to interpret. The speck in your neighbor’s eye refers to some flaw in his character – some sin or some problem that needs to be corrected. And of course, the log in your own eye refers to a flaw in your own character. So the point is very simple – do not try to fix someone else’s problem without first dealing with your own.
But that brings up some questions. Why is the other guy’s sin a speck and yours is a beam? That makes it sound like your sin is always way bigger than their sin. But isn’t it possible theirs is bigger? How can Jesus say the same thing to everyone? If Matthew is standing there and he has a huge sin (a log) and Peter has a tiny sin (a speck), then Jesus would tell Matthew, “First get the log out of your eye, then help Peter with his speck.” But what would Jesus say to Peter? Would Jesus tell Peter, “First get the little speck out of your eye, then help Matthew with his log”? No. Jesus says exactly the same thing to everyone. This verse is not like an IRS form where He says, “If you have a log, proceed through verses 3-5. If you have a speck, skip those verses and fill out the speck/log differentiation worksheet on page 99 to see if you are exempt.” No matter what sin Matthew has and what sin Peter has, Jesus tells both of them, “Yours is a log and his is a speck.” How can that be? Are you supposed to just pretend yours is worse even if it’s not?
We have been studying verse by verse through the Sermon on the Mount and we began this section on judging last week. And we found that when Jesus says, “Do not judge” He is not forbidding all discernment and distinctions. He is talking about sinful kinds of judging. We talked last time about six of them: judging legalistically, superficially, self-righteously, unmercifully, ignorantly, or prematurely. All that is forbidden. But now in verse 3 Jesus is going to direct our attention to one more: judging hypocritically.
Get the log out
Hypocrisy: Do you really care about holiness?
I will get to the question of why your sin is always the log in a little bit, but for now let’s make sure we understand the basic principle of hypocritical judging. Even if my brother does indeed have a speck in his eye, if I point my finger at that flaw in my brother without first dealing with the log in my own eye, Jesus calls me a hypocrite in verse 5.
I was reading a book the other day by an author I respect and he defined hypocrisy as “practicing something you tell others not to do.” That is a common misconception. That is not really what the word means. The word hypocrite means actor. This is what Jesus said:
Matthew 7:4 How can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when all the time there is a log in your own eye? 5 You actor! First take the log out of your own eye…
Why does Jesus call us actors? If I am eager to help you with your sin but not so eager about dealing with my own, how does that make me an actor? It makes me an actor because I am acting like I care about holiness and righteousness when I really don’t. I am pretending to be someone who cares about God’s Law when in reality I don’t care about God’s Law. Because if I really cared about holiness and the will of God then I would be just as eager to eliminate my own sin as I am to eliminate my brother’s.
The next time you feel the need to speak negatively about someone because of what they did wrong (or even think negatively about them), ask yourself, “Why am I concerned about this?” Is it because you love the kingdom of God and care about the dishonoring of God’s name? If so, then you will be every bit as outraged at your own sin as you are at theirs. If you justify or ignore or rationalize or blind yourself to your own sin but have an eagle eye toward other people’s faults, obviously your distress over their sin has nothing to do with the honor and glory and name of God.
If not because of a love for holiness, then why?
And that begs the question – what does it have to do with? If I am appalled at my brother’s sin but not my own then clearly I am not appalled because of a love for holiness. So why am I appalled? I can think of a couple possibilities.
You dislike that person
One is that I just do not like that person. I am all upset about his sin not because he is dishonoring the name of Christ, but because I just don’t like him and I have a condemning heart. You are looking for wrongdoing and deep down you are actually glad to find it in him because you want to validate your bad attitude toward him. You are glad to find evidence that he is guilty. The Bible has a word for that. It is malice, and it is forbidden over and over and over in the New Testament.
Ephesians 4:31 Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice.
The reason you see his faults and not your own is because you have malice in your heart toward him. You are not on his side at all. You are against him, not for him.
Pride
That is one possibility. Another one is pride. You are not upset because that person violated the sanctity of God’s kingdom; you are upset because he violated the sanctity of your kingdom. He has insulted you, hurt your feelings, snubbed you, harmed you in some way – caused you pain in some way and the strictness of your judgment is really nothing but vengeful retaliation hiding behind the façade of righteous indignation. You tell yourself that you are offended because God’s Law has been broken but the truth is you are offended because you were hurt. If that is the case you would be better off to just punch the person in the nose. That would be sin, but at least it would be honest. Vengeance and retaliation are wicked enough sins already without making them even more wicked by using the Word of God to justify what you are doing under the guise that it is really righteous anger because you are only upset over the fact that the person has violated the Law of God when they hurt you. Do not drag God’s Word into your revenge. If you want to pay the person back for what they did, and return evil for evil, then at least be honest about that sin in your heart rather than justify it by blaming God’s holy Word for what you are doing.
So always ask yourself, “Is this about principles or personalities? Am I passing this judgment on the person because I care about God’s Law, or am I just mad at what the person did to me?” Or could it be that you are diverting attention from your own sin? Sometimes we try to assuage our guilt by putting the spotlight on someone else’s sin so we can take solace in the fact that at least we are not as bad as someone else. So ask yourself why you care about this person’s sin. If it is because you care about God’s Law then you will care just as much about God’s Law when it comes to dealing with your own sin.
Greater knowledge, greater condemnation
If you are such an expert on the Law of God that you are qualified to judge others, then you have no excuse for violating it yourself. If you are a law expert, that makes your lawbreaking that much worse because the more you know the more strictly you will be judged.
James 3:1 Not many of you should presume to be teachers, my brothers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly.
Your sin should seem worse
OK, so now that we understand what hypocritical judging is – back to this question of why is the sin in your brother’s eye a speck and yours is a beam. That is not usually the way we think of our own sin, is it? Alexander Maclaren had a good observation. He said that every sin has two names – one designed to show how ugly it is and another designed to hide its ugliness and make it sound more acceptable. And when we talk about our own sin we use the flattering and minimizing word, and when someone else commits that same sin we use the ugly word. And so it usually seem like their sin is worse even when it is the same.
But Jesus does not even say it is the same – He makes yours much worse than your brother’s. So what are you supposed to do when your brother’s sin is actually worse than yours? Does Jesus want us to just pretend that is not the case? The answer to that is no – Jesus does not want you to pretend anything.
You can see under the surface in your heart, not theirs
When Jesus calls your sin a log and their sin a speck, the point is not that yours is always worse; the point is that from your point of view, your sin should always seem much, much worse than the other person’s sin because you can see your heart but you cannot see his heart. When you look at your brother all you can see are his wrong actions. But when you look at your own sin you can see not only your wrong actions, but you can see all your sinful motives, selfish attitudes, hidden pride, evil thoughts, dull, cold worship, distracted prayers, numbness to the holiness of God, failure to tremble at His Word, lack of passion – wicked kinds of sins that are invisible to everyone else. You cannot see any of that in your brother because you cannot see his heart and you are not allowed to make any assumptions about what is in there. Sinful actions are the tip of the iceberg. And in your brother all you can ever see is the portion of the iceberg that is above the surface. But in your case you can go under the surface and see the huge mass of sin underneath.
So if you look at things from a biblical perspective, your sin will always look like it is orders of magnitude worse than anyone else’s because of how much of your sin you can see. So if the sins of other people seem worse than yours, that is a really bad sign. That means one of three things (or maybe all three). It might be that you are assuming motives and thoughts in the other person. You are pretending to know what is under the surface, which means you are guilty of judging ignorantly and unmercifully. You are like a Pharisee, who focuses only on externals and not on the heart – which means you are judging legalistically. You do not even think of what goes on in the heart as being all that serious. For a legalist, the heart does not even really matter. All that matters are actions. The third possibility is their sin seems worse than yours just because what you care about most is not holiness, but winning the argument. There is a certain part of this whole dispute where they are in the wrong and you are in the right, and you want them to acknowledge that. Have you sinned in this whole process? Well, yeah, a little bit, but their sin is worse! Or they started it – my sin was only in response to theirs, so they should apologize first.
If you want to guarantee a never-ending conflict and a giant, tangled mess of misunderstandings, offenses, anger, bitterness, and recriminations back and forth just adopt an attitude that justifies your sin on the basis that the other person’s sin is worse. That person thinks your offense is worse, you think theirs is worse, and so it will never end.
And in both cases it is a refusal to really take an honest look at the ugliness of what you should be able to see under the surface in your heart, and to stop assuming what is under the surface in the other person’s heart. So what do you do when your wife is 99.99% to blame in an argument and all you did was make one tiny little unkind remark? Do you roll over in bed before going to sleep and say, “Honey, I need to confess – what I said earlier was wrong. It was unkind and insensitive and I was loving myself instead of loving you because of pride and selfishness. I should have stopped for a minute and looked at it from your point of view. So I’m sorry. Will you please forgive me for my .001% that I was in the wrong?” No. You have not really removed the log from your eye until you have looked under the surface enough to see that it really is a big, giant, truss-beam of sin protruding out of your heart that is a massive problem, and that the speck you can see above the surface in your wife is much smaller than what you see in your own heart.
Example – embezzling
So yes – from your point of view, your sin should always appear worse. Suppose you found out that a leader in this church has been embezzling money from the offering and spending it on prostitutes and gambling. How are you going to measure that sin? You look at your own heart and you see that you sometimes snap at your kids, and you covet a new car, and your worship this morning is a little flat – but those sins are nothing like what that leader has been doing. And you say, “How can I look at my little sin as a beam and his sin as a speck? How can I think of my sin as being more severe than his?” You can look at it that way because based on what you can see, it is more severe. “But he’s stealing God’s money and going to prostitutes!” Yes, and those are terrible sins, but you still cannot measure the severity of them against another sin unless you have a lot more information. I could give you a whole list of factors that impact how serious a sin actually is in God’s eyes, but let me just give you one. You do not know how severely the Lord let that man be tempted by the enemy. Maybe, for His own perfect, eternal, hidden purposes, God allowed Satan to really unload on him with both barrels. And for all you know, the only reason you have not fallen into those same sins is because God has restrained Satan from hitting you with even one-tenth the force that he hit that guy. One writer put it this way: "Judge not. The workings of his brain and of his heart thou cannot see. What looks to thy dim eyes a stain, in God's pure light may only be a scar brought from some well-won field where thou wouldst only faint and yield.” It may be that if the Lord allowed Satan to go after you with even a fraction of the temptation that guy got you would be a murderer on death row right now. And maybe the only reason you have not been tested like that is because someone has been praying for you, and so God preserved you in spite of the fact that you have done thousands of things to provoke God to withdraw that protection.
And that is just one factor you don’t know. You also don’t know how strong and furious that man’s resistance was. For all you know it was ten times the resistance that you offer in fighting against sin. Maybe if the Lord looked at the effort and earnestness that man put into fighting sin in his life, and compared it to how much effort and earnestness you are putting into fighting against the sin of tepid, halfhearted worship, or snapping at your kids, He would find that that man was much more engaged in the battle against sin than you are.
Another thing you don’t know is how intense his commitment to the Lord is (even a very strong commitment can be overcome by various combinations of circumstances. Even David can fall into adultery and murder). You do not know the nature of his worship, what his prayers have been like, his thoughts, attitudes, affections, motives. All you know is the final outcome in his actions. Now obviously, in order for there to be a sinful outcome in the actions there have to be some things on the inside that are messed up, but you do not have any way of knowing how messed up, or in what way. But when you look at your sin you can see firsthand your selfishness, pride, apathy toward God’s kingdom, dullness to the glory of God, indifference toward the lost, flat out rebellion when you knew you should do something or say something and just simply refused, etc.
Since you can see both above and beneath the surface when you look at your sin, but you must only make the kindest assumptions about what is under the surface in your brother’s heart, your sin will always look much more severe to you.
How to perform a logectomy
Now, by this time some of you are thinking, “Wow, I’m never going to open my big mouth again. I’m never going to judge anyone, I’m never going to evaluate anyone, I’m never going to point out a flaw – I’ve got a forest of logs in my eye so I’m just going to shut up and be quiet for the rest of my life.” But Jesus does not give us the option of just walking away with an eye full of lumber. He gives us a very clear command:
Matthew 7:5 take the log out of your own eye
Jesus commands us to perform a logectomy on ourselves. If you see a flaw in your brother, but you have sin in your own life, do not just say, “Who am I to judge?” and take your beam and go home. Get the log out of your eye.
What constitutes log removal?
But that brings up another question: At what point is the log out of your eye? We know Jesus is not saying you have to be perfect. But is there ever a time when you can say, “Right now I have no logs in my eye”? Yes, there is. We know that because Jesus goes on to tell us what to do after we remove the log. So removing the log is possible in this life. So how do you know when your log is gone? Very simple – repent. As soon as you repent of your sin, the log is gone.
“But what if I repent today but then stumble back into that same sin tomorrow?” Unlike a lot of people, Jesus does not require tomorrow’s victory today, nor does He hold you responsible for tomorrow’s failures today. All He requires today is that you do what can be done right now in your battle against sin. And what you do can do now is repent.
Repentance is when you grieve over your sin, turn your back on it and return to God’s way. When you have done that you have removed the log from your eye. Have you completely won the battle? No. Are you now perfect in that area? No. But you have repented so the log is gone.
That is not to imply that repentance is a simple, easy thing. Having something in your eye means you are travelling down a road that leads away from God. Removing that thing from your eye means exiting that highway and getting on the road that goes toward God. And changing highways can sometimes be quite an ordeal. It might require an in-depth study of what Scripture says about how to conquer that sin, reading good books on the subject, listening to sermons, seeking wise counsel, making yourself accountable, slamming the door on future access to that sin, minimizing temptations, etc. Those kinds of things are the stones in the pavement of the highway of repentance. And you are not in a position to help someone else get on that highway if you are not even willing to get on it. But do not think that getting the log out of your eye means you have to have made a certain amount of progress down that highway over a period of time. It just means you are on it, and you can always get on it today.
So if your sin is drunkenness, what can be done about that today? You can dump out all the alcohol in your house. You can call someone in your prayer group and set up an accountability relationship. You can begin memorizing a passage of Scripture – start in on all those steps. But what you cannot do today is be sober for six months – or six weeks, or even six days. All you can do today is be sober from now until bedtime, and take whatever steps can be taken today to strengthen yourself for tomorrow. You do that and you are on the highway and the log is gone.
So really there is only one sin that constitutes a log in your eye – the sin of unrepentance. If you do not have the sin of unrepentance then you do not have a log. And we can also say this – if your brother does not have the sin of unrepentance, he does not have a speck in his eye. If there is some sin in his life that he falls into again and again and again over and over – if he is repentant and is doing what he can to fight against that sin, then there is nothing there for you to rebuke. You can offer your assistance in helping him overcome it, but the only kind of sinner who needs to be confronted with his sin is the unrepentant sinner.
So here is the bottom line on all that – Jesus is not saying, “Go work on your log for six months then come back and help your brother.” Logectomies can always be done right now. Now, sometimes there is some wisdom in taking a little time to communicate your repentance to your brother before rebuking him for his sin. If he knows you have some sin in your life, you want to make it clear to him that you have repented before you call him to repent of his sin. But you do not have to wait until you have long-term victory.
Imagine someone who struggles with swearing. He knows God’s Word prohibits all unwholesome talk, and all profanity and obscenity, and he is determined to clean up his language, but time after time he still stumbles. When he does he repents, and he is doing all he can to work on changing the sins in his heart that generate this kind of language, but for now he still stumbles quite often. He has a co-worker, also a Christian, who also swears, but not nearly as much. The co-worker does it just once in a great while, but he is unrepentant about his swearing. So the first guy swears ten times a week, and the second guy only swears once a month. Should the first guy confront the second guy about his sin? Absolutely. Even though that first guy falls a lot more often, he does not have anything in his eye because he is repentant and is fighting against this sin. But the other guy does indeed have something in his eye because he has not repented. That second guy is in a much, much worse condition spiritually in that area because any unrepentant sin is far more serious than any repentant sin. It is worse to gossip and refuse to repent than it is to murder and repent.
Speckectomy
The importance of removing the speck
OK, so that is a brief rundown on how to perform a logectomy on yourself. Some people seem to think this passage ends right there. Or they think it says, “How can you say to your brother, ‘let me remove the speck from your eye’ when all the time you have a log in your own eye. You hypocrite, just mind your own business and leave the other guy’s eye alone.” It does not say leave him alone, it does not say keep your nose out of your brother’s business, it does not say sweep it under the rug. What does Jesus say?
Matthew 7:5 first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye.
Sometimes people use this verse as an excuse to neglect church discipline. They never confront anyone, never say anything about anyone’s sin, never lift a finger to help a brother or sister who is in sin, they do not want to be involved in any conflict or anything that might make them uncomfortable or less popular, so they just say, “Well, I have logs in my own eye so I’m in no position to help.” But Jesus does not allow us to say that. The whole purpose of performing the logectomy on yourself is so you can then perform a speckectomy on your brother. It is not loving to leave your brother in sin.
Leviticus 19:17 Do not hate your brother in your heart. Rebuke your neighbor frankly
If you fail to rebuke your brother that is an act of hatred. Sin is worse than arsenic. It is more damaging than the Ebola virus. It is more deadly than a loaded gun pointed at your head. If someone is indulging in sin and you do not lift a finger to help either you hate that person or you just simply do not believe what the Bible says about sin.
We need each other’s help
God did not design us to be able to defeat sin on our own. We need each other’s help. That is by God’s design. Even though I have the Word of God and I have the Holy Spirit living in me I still need you. I still need my brothers and sisters in Christ to help me discover and defeat the sins in my life.
Brother
Now, we should also note that this is only for Christians. Notice that Jesus specifies a brother. We do not concern ourselves with removing a speck from an unbeliever’s eye. You do not walk up to a corpse and say, “Hey, you’ve got a little something in your eye – let me help you with that.”
See clearly
So we first remove the log from our own eye, and the reason Jesus gives for that is so that we will see clearly enough to be able to remove the speck from our brother’s eye. We need to help our brother remove his speck from his eye, but that cannot be done without very clear vision. The last person you want operating on your eye is a blind surgeon. Doing this kind of surgery on a brother’s heart requires very clear spiritual vision. You have to understand a lot of things to help someone overcome a sin. You have to understand what his sin actually is. You have to be able to differentiate between symptoms and causes. You have to be able to sort out which parts are actual sin and which parts are not. You have to be able to discover what obstacles are preventing the person from gaining victory. You have to be able to pin down which parts of the inner man have the problem. Is the problem in his thoughts or will or motives or emotions or desires or attitudes? You have to know what the Bible teaches about how to change. It requires very clear vision.
Everyone’s job
At this point you might be thinking, Wow, that sounds complicated. I sure am glad I am not a counselor. Oh yes, you are a counselor – if you are a Christian. No one in the body of Christ gets to opt out of the responsibility to counsel. When Jesus commanded us to remove the log from our own eye and then remove the speck from our brother’s eye He made every one of us eye surgeons.
Colossians 3:16 teach and admonish one another with all wisdom
Romans 15:14 instruct one another.
1 Thessalonians 5:11 build each other up
Hebrews 3:13 But encourage one another daily … so that none of you may be hardened by sin's deceitfulness.
Hebrews 10:24 let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds.
Galatians 6:1 if someone is caught by a sin, you who are spiritual should restore him gently. … 2 Carry each other's burdens
That is all eye surgery. This is one of the main reasons why you come to church. Even if you get nothing out of the sermon, and the singing time leaves you flat, and no one lifts a finger to encourage or help you in your spiritual life – still it is important for you to be here because there are people in your prayer group who need the kind of grace from God that flows through your particular spiritual gift. They need you. If Andrew tries to encourage them, it won’t help. If their prayer group leader says something, it won’t sink in. If I try to help, it will be the wrong approach. God has chosen that in this particular situation He is going to help that person through you. All those passages I read – every one of them say, “one-another.” None of them put the responsibility on the pastors or the leadership or official counselors or the teachers. God wants to dispense His sanctifying grace to His people through all the members of the body in various ways. It is like a spiritual potluck every week. I bring the green beans, someone else shows up with the dessert, someone else has some meat and potatoes. If only a few people bring something then we all go hungry. This is what church is.
And I think most of you have been in a prayer group long enough to understand that. I think we are starting to become aware, as a church, of how important it is for every last one of us to learn how to counsel from God’s Word. Do you feel that? Do you feel the frustration of wishing you knew how to help someone who is struggling? Someone is depressed, and you wish you could find the words that will bring joy back into his life. Someone is consumed with worry, or snowed under with sorrow, or bogged down with apathy, or stuck in an enslaving sin – and what you are saying to them just does not seem to be helping and you wish you knew how to apply the power of God’s Word to their heart. I think most of you understand that Church is not just a place where you come and hear a sermon and leave. We understand that church is a place where you sit down with fellow saints and listen to their spiritual struggles and join them at their side – sometimes for a months or years at a time as they fight for their life against some sin. If you do not feel a sense of urgency in learning how to help people in their spiritual growth, then I have got to wonder if you are even participating in your prayer group. You have to ask yourself if you are even in the war, or if you are AWOL in your own little world somewhere.
But if you are in the war, and you do have a sense of urgency about wanting to get better at helping your brother overcome sin, you want to learn more about how to comfort those who are suffering, you want to improve in your ability to use the Word of God to strengthen those who need strength, or to overcome an addiction, or develop some virtue that they lack – any of those “one-another’s” then I have three suggestions for you. First, go through the Biblical Counseling class. It is the most important class I teach and I would love it if every single person in the church could take it. It will not be oriented mainly toward people who are in official counseling positions. It will be for average, ordinary Christians who want to obey Jesus’ words in this passage. We have that planned to begin April 21. The best biblical counseling conference is the National Association of Nouthetic Counselors, and we have dozens of CD’s from that conference. We are converting them from tapes, so they are not all out yet, but many of them are. So you can go into the library and find a seminar on the exact topic of the problem you are facing and check it out. We are developing an outstanding library of biblical counseling books in the Agape library. Most of them are not in the Counseling section because we put them in whatever category they address – marriage or parenting or whatever. But I have been putting a gold star on the binding of all the ones I have found the most helpful and that I highly recommend.
Those are a few suggestions, but whether you take advantage of those resources or you just study God’s Word on your own – whatever you do, do not forget the reason why Jesus wants you to remove the log from your eye is so that you will see clearly enough to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.
Benediction: Philippians 1:9-11 And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, 10 so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, 11 filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ--to the glory and praise of God.
