We Christians can be such "dorks" sometimes. We have a tendency to build our own little holy huddle, with our own special words and secret handshakes. If a person shows up who doesn’t know our special words, they feel like a fish out of water. No wonder so many unchurched seekers are deeply attracted to Jesus Christ but repelled by the Christian Church.
When I talk to my unchurched friends in the community I usually hear two complaints about the Christian Church. The first is that the church is full of hypocrisy, and the second is that churches tend to be very judgmental. In fact, I think the Bible verse "Judge not, lest you be judged" (Matt 7:1) is probably the Bible verse most frequently quoted by irreligious people to Christians.
Sometimes we even try to defend our judgmental attitudes. We point to biblical examples of people who proclaimed judgment, people like the Old Testament prophets Amos and Elijah, people like John the Baptist in the New Testament. We say, "I’m not being judgmental; I’m just telling the truth."
Yet the judgment game is a dangerous game to play. Why should Christians avoid a judgmental attitude toward other people? We’ve been in a series through the New Testament book of Romans called GOOD NEWS FOR OUR TIMES. Last week we looked at the mess the entire human race is in, and we saw that the root of this mess is our rebellion against our creator. This universal human rebellion has unleashed God’s judgment in our world, and because of God’s judgment we’re captive to our own desires, drawn to unnatural behavior, and live in a society characterized by moral chaos. When we talk about how bad human sin can be, it’s very tempting to be judgmental, so today we’re going to look at three reasons why its spiritually dangerous to judge other people. In Romans 2:1-16 we’re going to see why judging other people is so dangerous spirituallly.
1. A False Sense of Security (Romans 2:1-4).
After presenting a vivid description of human sin, Paul sets his sights on those of us who are tempted to be judgmental. There’s a sense in which Paul set us up in chapter one, because he described human society at its worst, and those of us who aren’t as bad as we could be were silently applauding his description. In fact, chapter two of Romans is for those of us who liked chapter one a little too much. In chapter 1 Paul told us that all humans are without excuse before God because we’ve all rebelled against our Creator. Some of us silently thought when we heard those words, "Yeah, that’s true of most people. But I’m a law abiding, home-loving, family values, clean-living, decent person. Surely Paul can’t mean me." We conclude that Paul’s talking about bad people, but not good, moral, upstanding citizens like us. So here Paul turns his attention to the moral person, to the good, upstanding church member.
Now it’s vitally important to define the word "judge" in v. 1. This is the exact same word Jesus uses in Matthew 7:1 where he says "Judge not, lest you be judged." In fact Paul is probably alluding to Jesus’ teaching there (Dunn 1:80). "Judge" is a legal word that means "to judge a person to be guilty and liable to punishment" (Louw and Nida 56.30). As Paul’s using this word here, he’s talking about setting ourselves up as a judge over another person.
Paul’s talking about a judgmental, arrogant, hypercritical attitude that makes ourselves to be better than the person we’re judging. Paul’s not talking about making moral judgments. After all, in the previous chapter Paul made the moral judgment that all humans are under God’s judgment. In chapter one Paul made the moral judgment that certain attitudes and actions are sinful. You see the opposite of being judgmental isn’t tolerance of everything but it’s humility. People who exalt tolerance as the supreme virtue are usually extremely intolerant of people who don’t share their belief in tolerance. For example Tufts University celebrates its tolerance of diversity on campus. But earlier this year when the Christian club at Tufts refused to allow a practicing lesbian become president of the Christian club, the university did a very intolerant thing and banned the Christian club from campus. The leaders of the Christian club said they simply were following the Bible on this issue, and they’d do the same thing with any person involved in sex outside of marriage. Now eventually the University had to reinstate the Christian club, but that case is a prime example of just how intolerant tolerance can be.
So this passage isn’t telling us to suspend our moral judgment. If you hire a new baby sitter and she shows up to your house with green hair, a pierced nose, a cigarette hanging out of her mouth, and a six pack of beer in her hand, it’s not judgmental for you to decide not to leave your kids with her. If we witness a person run a red light and plow into another car, it’s not judgmental of us to tell the police officer what we saw. It’s not judgmental to say, "having an affair is morally wrong" or "stealing is immoral." Paul’s talking about a judgmental, hypercritical attitude that exalts ourselves as judges over people. That’s what Paul is condemning here.
When we’re judgmental we condemn ourselves, because we’re guilty of the same kinds of sins we condemn in others. It’s not the act of judgment that’s wrong, it’s just that we’re not very good at it because we’re as guilty of sin as anyone else is. The "same things" in v. 1 looks back at that list of 21 different sins in 1:29-31 (Moo 131). These various sins are as prevalent among religious people as they are among irreligious people. Both moral and immoral people struggle with things like envy, malice, gossip, slander, arrogance, heartlessness, and so forth. In fact, we often commit these sins under the cloak of morality, religion, and Judeo-Christian values.
When God judges people He’s able to see all the facts. God can see each motive, each secret action, each attitude. Because of that, God judges rightly. And even though God sees all that, God withholds judgment and gives us a grace period so people have the opportunity to be restored to God. That’s what the church age is all about, from the time Jesus came into the world on Christmas day until he comes again at the end of history, this is a grace period. God is showing his forbearance so as many people as possible can find restoration with God.
But some of us interpret God’s grace period as evidence that he’s not concerned about our own sins. We figure if our gossip or malice really bothered God, he’d so something about it. So we treat God’s kindness as if it were unimportant, we set it aside as a sign of God’s indifference toward our sins, rather than viewing it as intended to draw us to turn back to God.
It’s like my college student loans. When I graduated from Biola University I’d accumulated some debt from student loans, but because I immediately went on to seminary for my master’s degree my student loans went into forbearance. Now the bank didn’t grant me forbearance out of the goodness of their heart, but to give me time to finish my education and get a job so I could afford to pay back the loans. So six months after I graduated from seminary I started getting bills for my student loans. I wasn’t surprised or taken back by the bill, because the forbearance was temporary and for a specific purpose. Well God’s forbearance of our sins is similar: it’s a temporary grace period intended to lead us to get right with God. But many moral people interpret God’s forbearance toward their sins as a sign that everything’s okay, that their sins have escaped God’s notice.
Here we find our first reason why judging people is dangerous. A JUDGMENTAL ATTITUDE LULLS US INTO A FALSE SENSE OF SECURITY.
You know what a lull is don’t you? You’re lulled when you’re gradually soothed and clamed into thinking that everything’s okay. When a baby’s crying we sing a lullaby to lull the baby to sleep. When we set ourselves up as judges over other people, we’re lulled into a false sense of security. We figure those homosexuals have made God so mad that he doesn’t notice our gossip or our malice. We figure God’s attention is focused white supremacists, so he doesn’t notice our problem with pornography or slander or lying. All of us tend to divide sins into two categories: My sins and their sins, and of course their sins are always worse than my sins.
Back in the mid 1980s when the TV evangelist Jim Bakker was exposed for sexual sin and fraud, Ted Koppel on Nightline interviewed fellow TV evangelist Jimmy Swaggert. Swaggert was asked to give his opinion about Jim Bakker and Swaggert came off as very judgmental. In fact, he called Bakker a cancer to the Christian community. Then just a short while later Swaggert was exposed as being guilty of some of the same kinds of sins. His judgmental attitude had lulled him into a false sense of security.
You see, God’s not impressed by what we condemn. Being right with God is only found through God’s good news about His Son Jesus, not by which moral causes we stand for. There’s nothing wrong with calling social problems sinful and wrong; there’s nothing wrong with discerning between good and bad, but we must do that in humility and love. We get into trouble when we start thinking that other people’s sins are worse than ours are, when we start looking down at other people rather than looking at each other as equals in this problem of human sin. Bible teacher John Stott says,
"Paul uncovers in these verses a strangely human foible, namely our tendency to be critical of everybody except ourselves. We are often as harsh in judgment of others as we are lenient toward ourselves…This device enables us simultaneously to retain our sins and our self-respect" (Stott 82).
I’m convinced this is one reason why Christians are sometimes reluctant to join small groups like our home Bible studies, because it’s easy to fake it in a big group like this, but when we’re in a small group Bible study people see who we really are. Yet often it takes a small group to wake us up from this false sense of security.
2. Blind To Our Own Faults (Romans 2:5-10)
Now let’s look at the second reason why it’s dangerous to judge in verses 5 to 10. When we treat God’s forbearance as unimportant that betrays a sense of stubbornness and hardheartedness. Instead of making deposits of grace in our spiritual bank account, we’re just making continual deposits of judgment. You see, even though God’s judgment is presently being revealed from heaven against the entire human race, a day will come when each of us stand before God on the day of judgment. When that day comes, God won’t look at what we were against, at what social causes we championed, but he’ll look at what we actually did. God will evaluate each of us according to our actions. On that day of judgment there will only be two alternatives, heaven or hell, being welcomed into a place we were made to enjoy or being shut out from God forever.
Here we find the second reason why judging is dangerous. A JUDGMENTAL ATTITUDE BLINDS US TO OUR OWN FAUILTS.
All of us have blind spots, and a judgmental attitude merely keeps these blind spots blind. It’s like the woman who’s raised in an alcoholic family and she swears that she’ll live differently. Yet develops a drug problem and drags her children through the same kind of experience she had growing up. But she’s blind to the fact that she’s repeated her father’s sin against her.
We all have blind spots. We even change the way we talk about our faults, figuring we have extenuating circumstances to justify our faults. Other people lose their temper but we have righteous indignation. Other people are jerks but we’re just having a bad day. Other people have a critical spirit, but we simply tell it like it is. Other people gossip, but we share prayer requests. Other people are pushy, but we’re goal oriented.
This makes me think of Roger Williams, one of the Puritans who came to America in the 17th century (Bellah 68-70). Williams became convinced that the Puritan Christians were too sinful and not pure enough, so he left Massachusetts and became the founder of the Rhode Island colony. Once there he became a Baptist and started the First Baptist Church of Providence, Rhode Island. But then he once again became convinced that the church had too many sinners, that it wasn’t pure enough, so he started a smaller, purer church. But still he was convinced the people weren’t pure enough, so he started a church just composed of his wife, a friend and himself. His judgmental attitude blinded him to his own sins, and in the end he ended up being an unchurched Christian.
This tendency toward blind spots in the church is why so many unchurched people avoid the Christian church at all costs. Not because we struggle with sin as much in the church as people do outside the church, but because we’re often blind to the sins we struggle with. We’re blind because we’ve spent so much time focusing on other people’s sins that we can no longer see the ways our own lives dishonor God. This is one reason why corporate worship is so important, because if we’re truly encountering God’s presence in our worship, then He’s breaking through our blindness and exposing our own faults. That’s not always pleasant, but it’s necessary to break through our blindness. Worship keeps us anchored in reality and humble before each other.
A judgmental attitude is dangerous because it blinds us to our own faults.
3. Playing God (Romans 2:11-16)
Now let’s look at the final reason why judging other people is so dangerous. In verse 11 Paul starts with a basic truth, that God doesn’t play favorites. God doesn’t make unjust distinctions between people. God’s treatment of people is fair and impartial.
Now back then the people of Israel assumed because God had given them His law that they were immune from judgment. The law here is the 10 commandments. In the Bible God gave the people of Israel through Moses. The people of Israel didn’t see God’s law as a burden, but they saw the 10 commandments as a sign of God’s love and favor on them, and it was. But then they assumed that having God’s law meant they were shielded from God’s judgment. It was true that they were special, but that special status was intended to share God’s love with other people not protect them from God’s scrutiny.
It’s not those who post the 10 commandments on their walls or who go to 10 commandment studies who’re right with God, but those who actually obey the law. Here Paul seems to say that it’s hypothetically possible for a person to be right with God on the basis keeping the 10 commandments. The problem is that no one’s actually done this; the power of sin over our lives prevents us from obeying the law sufficiently to merit being right with God (Moo 140). This is why Jesus lived a perfect life, a life that did keep the 10 commandments perfectly, so he could give us his integrity as a gift when we trust him. So although it’s hypothetically possible to obey the 10 commandments in such a way to be right with God, in actual experience it never happens because all of us have broken God’s law.
But here Paul presents evidence to show that both Jewish people and non-Jewish people will be judged by the same standard. Paul anticipates an objection that it’s not fair for God to hold non-Jewish people to the standard of his law since they didn’t have the 10 commandments. So here Paul claims that all people--both religious and irreligious--have the requirements of the 10 commandments written on their hearts. In fact, non-Jewish people often obey parts of the law because irreligious people can be very moral: Many are honest, they remain faithful to their spouse, they honor their parents and protect human life. This doesn’t mean non-Jewish people who do this are made right with God, but it does mean that they have God’s law in their hearts.
You see everyone has an internal moral compass that functions in our lives like the 10 commandments functioned in Israel. This internal moral compass isn’t infallible but it’s like a moral smoke alarm when we violate God’s standards (Issler 263). So it’s not like Jiminy Cricket in Pinocchio telling us to just follow our conscience and everything will be okay. But this internal moral compass is sufficient to show us that there are moral absolutes in our world and that all of live by this moral compass at times.
Because all of us have knowledge of God’s standards, when the day of judgment that eventually comes, each of us will stand before God with no excuse. On that day our hidden secrets will be revealed, as we stand before God to give an account of how we lived. None of us can stand based on our own works, our own morality, our own merits, but only those who’ve received Christ’s perfect life as a gift through faith will be able to stand.
Here we find the final reason why judging people is dangerous. A JUDGMENTAL ATTITUDE USURPS GOD’S ROLE IN PEOPLE’S LIVES.
God and God alone is the judge, and when we set ourselves up as judges of other people we’re actually playing God. And guess what playing God is? It’s rejecting our creator and worshipping and serving the creation rather than the creator, the very indictment we saw against the entire human race back in chapter 1 (1:25). In other words, it’s just as possible to be a religious, moral rebel as it is to be an irreligious, immoral rebel. But both are forms of rebellion against our Creator.
When we play God we invariably show favoritism. When we coach our kid’s little league team, we treat our kid a little differently than the others. We struggle with favoritism as teachers, as bosses, as pastors, as politicians. It’s part of the human condition. That’s why we have checks and balances in our culture to protect people against unfair treatment. That’s all well and fine for teachers, coaches, bosses, and politicians. But when we play God and set ourselves up as judges over people’s lives, we’re in really dangerous territory.
Under our moral cover, we’re guilty of the most basic human sin there is; the sin of playing God. That’s a dangerous place to be, no matter how moral, socially acceptable, and religious it is.
Conclusion
So as you can see, judging other people is extremely dangerous to our spiritual lives. When we become judgmental it lulls us into a false sense of security, it blinds us to our own faults, and it usurps God’s role as judge. So next time you’re tempted to pass judgment on someone, beware: Do you really want a false sense of security? Do you really want to be blind to your blind spots? Do you really want to set yourself up over God? Do you really?
Now once again, the opposite of being judgmental isn’t tolerance of everything. Tolerance says, "You must agree with what I do. You must allow me to do whatever I want." But the opposite of being judgmental isn’t just pretending like everything’s moral, that it doesn’t matter what people do. The opposite of being judgmental is being humble, it’s looking at ourselves and our own failures first. It’s admitting that we fail as much as other people, that we violate God’s law as much as irreligious people do. It’s no longer pretending like we have our act together, but admitting that only by the loving grace of God can any of us be made right with God. When we see another person stumble and fall, it’s admitting that we’re just as likely to stumble and fall in the same way.
Sources
Bellah, Robert N. 2000. "Religion and the Shape of National Culture" in The Best Christian Writing, 2000. Edited by J. Wilsom. San Francisco, CA: Harper.
Dunn, James D. G. 1988. Romans. 2 Volumes. Word Biblical Commentary Vol. 38 A and B. Waco: Word Books.
Issler, K. 1993. "Conscience" in Christian Perspectives on Being Human. Edited by J. P. Moreland and D. Ciocchi. Grand Rapids: Baker Books.
Moo, Douglas. 1996. The Epistle to the Romans. New International Commentary on the New Testament. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.
Stott, John R. W. 1994. Romans: God’s Good News for the World. Downers Grove: InterVarsity.
