January 6

Leave Judgement To God

Background: Matthew 7:1-5; James 4:12; Romans 14:1-4; Genesis 3.

One Sunday in church, as we were standing and singing hymns, I noticed a man sitting a few pews ahead of us. He was sitting as the rest of us were standing and singing.

I wondered what the problem was, and why he was not standing with the rest of us. Was he flaunting our tradition? Was this man a believer? Did he not like the songs? The thoughts and questions nagged at my mind during the service.

After the service some friends of his came with a wheelchair and helped him into the chair and wheeled him away.

The reason he had not stood, was that he could not. He was bound to a wheelchair.

He smiled at me as he noticed me watching, and I felt the conviction of the Holy Spirit nearly floor me. I realized that I had judged someone’s actions wrongly, and I also realized that I had no reason for even making such a judgment in the first place.

It is so easy to rush to judgment of others. It is so easy to see other people’s faults and often very hard to see our own.

When Jesus spoke of not judging others, he had this very thing in mind, as he gave the analogy of noticing a speck in someone else’s eye and not seeing the board in ones own eye.

1. A higher level of righteousness.

The Pharisees were constantly trying to find fault with Jesus, by trying to catch him in violation of a point of outward righteousness, but they were not concerned about internal righteousness. As always, Jesus was calling the Pharisees to a higher level of righteousness – the inner level - and often they missed the point.

Today we may miss the point as well. When we judge, we usurp the role of God. When we condemn someone else, we are saying that we know better than they do about their own spiritual health. From scripture, it seems to matter little if our judgment of others is correct.

James 4:12 says there is only one judge, and that is God himself, and he asks the readers who they are to judge someone. The implication being, that God is the only true judge, and we have no right at all to judge others.

Paul takes it a step further in Romans 14, where he asks who are we to judge another person. He says that both us and the person being judged will be judged by God. He goes on to say that God will make the person stand. We all stand, or are justified, only by God’s grace, and not by any merit we might possess. This is why Paul writes in Ephesians 2:8 that we have been saved by grace so that no man may boast.

Since God created us, and controls all things, he alone has the right to judge us. God alone is also capable of right judgment.

God is totally righteous, cannot sin and cannot be tempted by sin. Because of this, He can see clearly to judge us. He has no ulterior motive in His judgment.

Often when we judge, we have an ulterior motive.

2. Judging as a smokescreen.

Just as Adam and Eve passed the buck in the Garden of Eden, we too judge in order to try to hide our own shortcomings.

When confronted in the Garden after they had sinned, Adam blamed God first for giving him Eve, and then blamed Eve. Eve in turn, blamed the serpent for deceiving her. In a sense both Adam and Eve were judging others in order to try to take the heat off themselves.

Often we do the same thing. When our sin becomes apparent, we will point to other people, so show that they are at least as bad as we are, if not worse.

It is so easy to say, “I am not as bad as some other person who does something worse than what I have done.” However James 2:10 says if we keep the whole law, and break just one point, we are guilty of breaking all of the law.

3. No room to judge

In God’s economy, there is no different level of sin. We are either sinners or we are not. Whispering gossip is sin just as murdering is sin, though the two have different levels of consequence. There is no room for boasting or pride then, because we are all lawbreakers and sinners. In light of this, there should be no room for judging others by any stretch of the imagination.

True humility would lead a person to realize that he or she has no righteousness other than what God has given, so they have no reason to pass judgment on anyone else.

Just because we are Christians, we are not immune to sin, and therefore we have no right to condemn any other believer. The only real difference between us and non-Christians, is that we have been forgiven by God’s unmerited grace.

We may want to make ourselves feel more righteous by comparing ourselves with someone we think is not doing as well as we are.

Another possible reason for judging, is to make ourselves feel better about our own condition. Just as people want to make a good impression on others, we also at times need to convince ourselves that we are doing well, or that we are good people.

Judging others, or finding fault, with others, can be a way of doing this.

Scripture often tells us to not pass judgment, and there are consequences to ignoring this command.

4. Reaping our own judgment.

Jesus told his disciples that they would be judged in the same way that they judged others. This is the same idea as reaping what you sow, which is another theme throughout the New Testament.

When we judged others harshly, we usually forfeit any fellowship that we might have had with that person. Also, when we are judgmental, people may start to avoid us because they do not want to have us exposing their faults.

In this scenario, we are sinning, and we also lose fellowship with God because we are not relating properly to God or man.

What we should do instead, when we see someone caught in sin, is to try to help the person without judging them. Galatians 1:6 says if anyone is caught in sin, spiritual people should restore that person gently. The word “caught” means being trapped by the sin, as opposed to having been found out. This should be undertaken by those that are spiritual, and with gentleness, because any of us is capable of falling into sin. There are several Biblical references to sin being a trap, or a snare that can entangle us.

Also throughout the scriptures there is a call for balance in all things. When Jesus said we should not judge, he did not mean that we should not keep our eyes open and not know what is going on around us.

5. Wise but still innocent.

He was not saying that we should have no opinion, or that we should not be wise in our dealings with others.

Jesus said we should be innocent as doves but wise as serpents. If we have an acquaintance who is a thief, we can avoid judging the person until God deals with him, but in the meantime it would be a good idea to keep our possessions out of his reach.

There is then, a narrow line to walk, between discerning the truth and passing judgment on other people. It may be more inconvenient, and take more effort, but there is usually a way to try to help a person who is struggling instead of just passing judgment and walking on. This is what Jesus would have us do.

We do make judgments about many things constantly throughout the day. The problem arises when we go a step further and condemn another person either mentally or with our actual words.