Matthew 7:1-6
The Rev. Dr. Robert S. Langworthy, preaching
September 22, 2024
In today’s scripture, we find a word from Jesus that’s probably more often cited than any other – and more often misunderstood and misused! It is, in its King James form, “Judge not, lest you be judged.” People quote it in order to say, “Shut up! Don’t you dare criticize me!”
Jesus, however, distinguishes between two kinds of judging, one of which He forbids and the other of which He encourages. The kind He forbids is made abundantly clear in Luke 6:37 where He equates judging with condemning, saying, “Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned.” It is evident that, if to judge is to condemn, it’s a practice His followers should never engage in. But there is another form of judging that Jesus urges His followers to engage in. It is to distinguish between good and evil and to evaluate character and conduct.
Jesus Himself did that. He does it here in the Sermon on the Mount when He criticizes the hypocrites and exhorts His followers to live better than they. He does it in the last verse of today’s passage when He commands His followers to get a read on people and “not give what is holy” to those He calls “dogs” and “not throw [their] pearls” before those He calls “pigs”. Identifying who’s like that takes the exercise of evaluative judgment, does it not? Then nine verses after that, He urges His followers to beware of “false prophets”. Identifying who’s like that also takes the exercise of evaluative judgment.
Following Jesus does not require us to abandon our critical faculties, or to refuse to recognize reality, or to turn a blind eye to what needs correcting. In fact, Jesus in John 7:24 tells us to judge – albeit without superficiality. He says, “Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment” – that is, with deep, discerning, objective and accurate assessment.
To do that, we have to overcome our deep-seated temptation to make ourselves feel better about ourselves by thinking worse of others. We all have a tendency to minimize our own shortcomings while we exaggerate those of others.
If we don’t get that under control, we not only do an injustice to people, but we put our good standing with God at risk as it feeds our pride and prompts us to step back from our utter dependence on God’s grace – that is, on a kindness from Him we don’t deserve. That is why in verse 2 here Jesus reminds His followers: “With the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get.” This statement hearkens back to the fourth beatitude at the start of the Sermon on the Mount, which says, “Blessed are the merciful for they will receive mercy.” We cannot have God’s mercy without sharing God’s mercy with others.
The worst double-standard is being gracious to ourselves but not being gracious to others. For then we block out God’s unmerited, gratuitous goodness from both others and ourselves.
Yet, Jesus asks us to be people of grace and of truth at the same time – just as He was. Even while He lavished His unconditional love upon people, Jesus confronted those who needed tough love with the hard, unpleasant truth about their wrongdoing. Because He yearned for them to have life at its best, He had to bring to light what hid in their blind spots and not let them get away with what would hurt them terribly in the end.
Please be aware that, in speaking about logs and specks in eyes, Jesus is not telling us, who have a log in our own eye, to pretend that there is no speck in a neighbor’s eye that needs to be taken out. Rather He is telling us to prioritize getting the log out of our own eye so that we can take out the speck in theirs. Listen again to what Jesus says in verse five: “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.” We owe those we care about our assistance in making their eye – and, by extension, their life – as speck-free as possible.
We actually fulfill our call to love by judging rightly. We are never to be judgmental; but we are, with humble acknowledgement of our own faults and brokenness, to hold those we love to account, in support of their becoming the best versions of themselves. So, in getting the log out of our own eye, we should be as critical of ourselves as we too often are of others; and in helping others to get the speck out of their eyes, as gracious to them as we almost always are to ourselves.
We, however, do well to bear in mind that sometimes being gracious to others requires our speaking harshly to get their attention, as Jesus did at times. Jesus called the Pharisees “snakes”, and the disciple Peter, “Satan”. Likewise, in verse 6 here, He calls some people “dogs” – at a time when fellow Jews didn’t see canines as cute, house-trained members of the family but as wild, mean scavengers living off of filth – and calls some other people “swine” – at a time when Jews didn’t see pigs as cute farm animals but as unclean, mean beasts who wallow in mud and who in their gluttony might gobble up pearls thinking them to be nuts, only to spit them out, trample them under foot and turn to maul those who’d deceived them by throwing the pearls before them.
Is Jesus being needlessly cruel here, or doing what’s necessary to save some folks from themselves? Surely He, who sent out His disciples to reach out and offer everyone His grace, is wanting His followers to realize that they do folks a disservice if they persist in offering grace to those who have repeatedly responded to it like a pig trampling pearls under foot or like a dog urinating on the holy things given to them. If someone again and again ridicules and blasphemes the good news of Christ, it is a kindness to them to drop the subject. For recurring actions over time act on those who take those actions. Thus, if people keep rejecting with contempt the good news of Jesus, His disciples’ continuing to put it before them will occasion the recurrent behavior that will eventually harden their hearts and render them forever impervious to its appeal. This is why Jesus told His disciples going out on their first evangelistic mission to “shake off the dust from [their] feet” and move on, if a village perseveres in derisively dismissing the Gospel. It might just not be the right time, and maybe later, perhaps with other people, they’ll be more open.
To know when to reach out with perseverance and when to give up for the time being is to judge rightly. To know when to speak a hard truth of tough love and when out of patient love to bite our tongue and to put up with their bad behavior until the time is right to confront it is to judge rightly. And to know it is never the time to condemn anyone is to judge rightly. Let us pray for God to give us the mind of Christ that we might more often judge rightly!
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