There’s a very real and practical aspect to Jesus words at the start of ch7. I guess we’ve all known people who are constantly critical of every little thing. But have you noticed how, so often, they’re the people that others watch to see when they’ll fail; who receive the harshest criticism when they do something wrong. In fact we take delight, don’t we, in seeing those judgmental types fail. There’s a sort of ironic justice in seeing the fall that follows from pride, in seeing someone who’s critical of others caught out in the same thing they’ve been critical of.
Of course Christians are often portrayed as judgmental, aren’t they? And usually in the same breath they’re called hypocrites. Why? Because they’re seen to be judging others for sins that they’re just as likely to fall into, if not more so. In fact, isn’t it true that the sins we’re most critical of in others are often the sins we find hardest to overcome in our own life?
But it isn’t just avoiding that sort of reaction from our contemporaries that Jesus is thinking about here. Rather he’s probably thinking back to the blessings he described in ch5. The reverse of what Jesus says here is there in the fifth of those blessings: "Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy."
Faults are Thick when Mercy is Thin
What’s more, this saying is a repeat of what he said in his filling out of the commandments about anger, revenge and hate. Rather than seeking to destroy someone, or take revenge on them, you should treat them the way your heavenly father treats you. Rather than hating your enemy, show them love, the way God shows love to us who are his enemies.
In fact, if we want to see how closely this command fits with those others, then put it the other way around: "If you’re going to judge another, judge them with the judgement by which you’ve been judged by God." That would make a big difference wouldn’t it?
Now before we go any further I want you to quickly look down to the end of today’s passage, to v12. There we get something of a summary of what he’s saying here. It’s the same idea from the opposite direction. "Do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets." If you want them to judge you harshly, then go ahead, do your worst. But if you want to be treated gently, then be gentle with others. If you want mercy, then show it to others.
If you want to apply the law to others, first think about the reality behind the law. You see God’s law isn’t there primarily to allow offenders to be prosecuted. It’s there to show the appropriate way for God’s people to behave in response to his goodness towards us. Do I need to repeat that? God’s law shows us the appropriate way to behave in response to his goodness towards us. God’s law shows us how he expects us to live as his people, called out from the world to form a community of love and care, to show to the world something of his nature. And how is his nature shown? It’s shown by the love we have for one another. So the summary of the second part of the law is "Love your neighbour as you love yourself." Or, do to others as you’d have them do to you. So we need to be careful how we apply judgement to others.
We do need to be careful though when we talk about this question of judging others. He doesn’t mean we don’t need to show any discernment when it comes to moral questions. It doesn’t mean we have to accept any and every sort of behaviour from others. Jesus’ saying about throwing pearls before pigs makes that clear. Later in the passage he talks about watching out for false prophets, discerning their fruit so you’ll know whether they truly come from God. In ch18 he talks about a situation where one Christian sins against another and there the church is instructed to discipline the person who won’t listen to the church. But I take it the aim is to bring about reconciliation, not condemnation.
Here Jesus is saying we mustn’t take upon ourselves judgement that results in final condemnation. e.g. we can no longer apply the Old Testament remedy for sin of stoning someone to death. That may have been OK in the theocracy of Old Testament Israel, where communal ethical standards were critical to their identity as a nation, in fact to their survival as God’s people, but now Jesus has reshaped the covenant we have with God. We’re each responsible to God for our own obedience to the commands. So it’s not for us to take on ourselves the role of God when it comes to judgement. No-one knows the final verdict for another except God. In 1 Cor 4, Paul says he doesn’t even judge himself. So we need to be careful about the distinction between discerning false prophets and passing judgement on people’s spiritual destiny.
One of the reasons we’re sometimes too quick to dispense judgement is that we think we have a responsibility to see injustices set right, especially when someone else has perpetrated them. But in fact the way God interacts with his world is first with forgiveness and grace. God offers forgiveness and grace before he threatens judgement.
You see there’s a difference between working for justice and dispensing justice. Often the work of the Christian in fighting for justice is as a servant, not as a soldier. For example, it might involve standing in solidarity with the victim, rather than bringing the offender to justice.
Well, in the following verses, Jesus gives us 2 good reasons for not judging others.
1. One Tape Measure fits All (v2)
He says "the measure you give will be the measure you get." If you want to measure others up against a particular standard, remember that that standard will be used on you as well.
It’s a very practical reason to show mercy and generosity to our fellow human beings isn’t it? If you know that the size of cup you use in dispensing mercy or judgement will be the same as is used in your case it might change the way you think, mightn’t it?
2. It’s hard to see straight with a log in your eye (vs3-5)
How often is it the distorted vision caused by our own sinfulness that makes it so easy to judge another? It’s amazing isn’t it, how well we can see the faults over there while being blind to the faults close at hand. And not only that, but it always seems so much easier to fix up someone else’s problems than to fix up our own. In fact sometimes the log in our own eye is that very awareness of the sin of others. It’s the critical spirit that jumps to judgement long before applying grace and forgiveness.
So what’s the remedy. How are you going to be able to help someone else get the sawdust out of their eye? Because there’s nothing necessarily wrong with that. Well, what does Jesus say? Look at v25: "First take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye." To help others as a Christian first requires a good dose of humility and honest self-reflection. One of the things you learn when you train to be a counsellor, is to understand yourself: your own needs and weaknesses; your personal hurts; the things that tempt you or get you angry. Until you understand your own weaknesses you’ll never be able to help others properly. And the same goes for us as Christians. Unless we deal with the sinful areas of our own life, unless we deal with the temptations that we fall into, we’ll never be able to truly help others fight their temptations.
Let me ask you this. Which would be more helpful to you? If I came to you and said "I understand your difficulty with that particular sin, because I have to fight that temptation all the time"; or if I came and said "You need to fix up that area of your life or you’ll never be a faithful follower of Christ like me." Clearly the first approach would be more likely to succeed wouldn’t it? We’re much more receptive to fellow travellers than we are to the high and mighty who think they’ve got it all together.
Be Discerning (v6)
But having said that, Jesus then gives us a warning about discernment. "6Do not give what is holy to dogs; and do not throw your pearls before swine." Sometimes we’re so eager to help others, to bring people into God’s Kingdom that we can lose a certain amount of discernment. Jesus doesn’t want us to be blind to the reality of what we’re dealing with in certain cases. There are those who don’t want the sawdust removed from their eyes. In fact there are some who will trample you underfoot if you try. Elsewhere Jesus says to be harmless as doves but wise as serpents (Mt 10:16). So we need to keep our eyes open to the way people respond, to the level of receptiveness to the gospel. We need to be ready to withdraw if the pearls of the gospel are going to be trampled underfoot. I remember delivering Bicentennial New Testaments back in 1988, and at one house we went to the man at the door began yelling at me as soon as he heard I was from the local church. He wasn’t interested in what we were there for. He just wanted us off his property. So of course we left. There was no point trying to explore what the problem was. We just went on to the next house. Sometimes it’s better to leave the seed unscattered until the soil is more receptive. Sometimes the salt of the gospel takes time to penetrate the hard exterior before it can begin its work of softening hearts.
Ask (vs7-12)
There’s no doubt that some if this is hard to put into practice. It’s hard to be honest about our own failings. It’s hard to keep our mouth shut when we see someone doing something we think is wrong. It can be just as hard to be quiet when we come across someone who throws the words of the gospel back in our face. It can be hard to wait for someone’s heart to soften towards God.
But Jesus doesn’t leave us without a way forward. Instead he points us to the actions of faith. He says ask; seek; knock. Someone has said this is the simple rule of faith. If you trust God to supply all your needs then ask him to do it. At the end of ch6 we read "Seek first God’s kingdom and his righteousness and all these things will be given to you." And this is the corollary. Let God know what those things are that you need.
Notice that the instruction is simply ’Ask’. Back in 6:7, when Jesus is teaching on prayer, he warns against heaping up empty phrases as the Gentiles do as though the more words you use the more likely you are to be heard. No, all we need to do is ask. And notice how incredibly open ended this instruction is. He doesn’t say what we’re to ask for, or seek; or what door to knock on. He simply says do it. But the illustration he gives amplifies that idea no end. He takes the everyday domestic situation as a parallel. He says "Think about you own situation. If your child asks for some bread or a fish, what are you going to do? Give him something that’s indigestible? Are you likely to give him something that might hurt him? Of course not. The natural response of parents is to want to give their children good things. Even sinful human beings know how to give good gifts to their children. So imagine what our heavenly Father will give to his children, if only they’ll ask him for it.
I wonder how often we carry around a wish list in our hearts, but never get around to asking God for those things. Or how often we spend endless hours worrying about something, sleepless nights tossing and turning over it, having endless conversations with ourselves about how it might be resolved, but never get around to talking to God about it. You see he doesn’t say you’ll get whatever you wish you had. He says "Everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened."
So why don’t we ask more often? Is it because we don’t believe that God will answer our prayers? Have we decided that Jesus was lying when he said this? Or that he meant something quite different from the plain meaning of the words?
Or is it that we don’t think we deserve him to answer us? Have we overlooked this illustration. Or have we never quite understood the relationship we have with our heavenly Father? You see, in our dealings with our children, we rarely take into account their worthiness for our gifts do we? "Santa Claus is coming to town" doesn’t express in any way the basis on which we give gifts to our children does it? We give good gifts irrespective of whether they’ve shouted or cried or pouted. We give them good gifts, simply because we love them. So why do we doubt that God would give his children good gifts simply because he loves us?
Or perhaps we don’t ask because we wonder whether there might be a condition on the gift. "What if I ask him for something and he says he’ll only give it to me if I give up something else?" But again, Jesus’ explanation answers that fear. Who would give their child something that might hurt them. What if God did put a condition on one of his gifts? Couldn’t we expect the condition to be as good for us as the gift itself? In fact wouldn’t we expect that the condition would only serve to enhance the gift? After all God is the giver of every good and perfect gift as James points out in the extension of our first reading from James 1. "If you, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him!"
Be Generous (v12)
Finally we return to where we started. Treat others the way you want to be treated. Just as you might ask God to give you the good things you need for your life, so you should be generous with others who need your help. Just as you wouldn’t want to be judged harshly, so you mustn’t treat others harshly. This of course has become known as the golden rule. Some people treat it as a rule for ensuring your salvation, and that’s to misunderstand it. But it is the golden rule for determining how you’ll live as one of God’s children. And the beauty of it is that it’s so simple. You don’t need a theological degree to work this one out. All you have to do is examine your own desires and motivations. How would you like to be treated in this situation? Before you take advantage of a weaker brother or sister, think about how you’d feel if you were they. Before you cheat on someone, think about how you’d feel if they cheated on you. Before you lie, think how you’d feel if you were lied to. And so on. It’d make a huge difference to our behaviour if we did that every time before we acted wouldn’t it?
Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. Do not throw your pearls before swine. Ask, and it will be given you. Do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets.
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