If you’re joining us in reading through the gospel of Matthew today’s reading is Matthew 7:1-12 and the devotion is taken from 1-5. “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. “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? 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? 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.” Many people, when they want to avoid confrontation with another person about an activity that is being done, will seemingly quote verse 1 and say something as “we are told not to judge another person.” It is true that that sentence tells you not to judge another person. However, it goes on to say that if you do judge someone else you will be judged by the same standards as you use. If you were going to judge someone’s’ sin then your sin will be judged in the same way. The warning therefore is not necessarily not to judge. The warning is that we will be judged using the same standard by which we judge. We all have a sin problem. Not one of us is blameless. So we need to be careful about how we view other people’s actions. That is not to say we should not call sin, sin. Paul in 1 Corinthians 5:1-5 and in Galatians chapter 2, pronounced a judgment on sin. In 1 Timothy 1:15 Paul calls himself the chief of all sinners. Therefore when we are going to judge another person’s actions we need to be mindful that we are also sinners. We need to be mindful about why we are judging that person’s sin. And we need to be mindful how we judge the sin. Matthew 18:15-20 lays out how we should present ourselves before person who we believe has a sin problem. In all things we should judge ourselves first. If a believer has stumbled we should confront him or her with the idea of restoration not with the idea of condemnation.
Posted on: Tue, 16 Sep 2014 10:00:00 +0000
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