To Judge or Not to Judge?

In 1996, the year that I graduated from high school, Tupac Shakur released a song titled, “Only God Can Judge Me.” The sentiment expressed in the lyrics was that everyone else should get out of his business. OF course, though he acknowledged that only God could judge him, the rest of the song and his lifestyle showed that he was not terribly concerned with this thought. He would tragically face eternity just about three short months after the release of the album that contained this song.

I’m guessing that when most of you got in the car to come to church today you probably weren’t thinking I’d be leading off the sermon with Tupac. But aside from that, his song and the sentiment therein is an illustration of our culture’s obsession with telling us that no one can judge them. In today’s section of scripture from the Sermon on the Mount we find what I am claiming to be one of the most misunderstood and misapplied passages in the whole of scripture. People will readily reference it or quote it if they feel someone may have displeasure with their life choices. Even those who are far from God or have little knowledge of the content of the Bible can be heard quoting or referencing this passage.

My hope for you today, Lord willing, is that you will grasp the true meaning behind this passage and how you chan apply true Biblical principles to your life. If I had to boil this down to one exortation to grab onto tos morning I would say this:

Do the hard, heart level, work of self-examination instead of focusing on the eternal behaviors of others.

Said another way:

Judge your own motives rather than passing a sentence on those whose motives you do not know.

Let’s read from Matthew chapter 7, verses 1-6.

Matthew 7:1–6 ESV

“Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye. “Do not give dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you.

PRAY

Chapter 7 of the Sermon on the mount marks a bit of a change in the structure of the sermon. Matthew changes over to these self contained paragraphs of Jesus’s teaching. The sermon so far has been showing us how to live as citizens of the kingdom of God, what that looks like played out in our lives related to prayer and other areas and now, in Chapter 7, we see Jesus address how this whole person righteousness plays into our relationships with other people.

I. Jesus gives a warning about being judgmental toward others.

And of all things, Jesus begins by telling his followers and that would include those of us who have trusted in Jesus Christ for salvation, that we should not judge our brothers and sisters. As we look at this, we have to answer some obvious and maybe some not so obvious questions. 1. Was Jesus opposed to all judging? Would he condemn anyone who condemned others? Would Jesus simply let each man’s conscience guide him?

The first thing we must do with any teaching of Jesus as we are looking for what He intended by it, is to put it in its biblical context.

If we back up to the final verse in chapter 6, we find a forbidding of a negative attitude toward our own affairs in Jesus telling us not to worry. Now in the very next verse, we see him prohibiting a negative attitude toward others or what some have termed a critical spirit. But right before both of these He told us to “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness,” (Mt. 6:33)

It’s almost as if what Jesus wants us to understand is that we should not criticize the unrighteousness of others but address our own unrighteousness first, and then maybe we can address other people.

This may seem confusing but it shouldn’t be when we dig into it. The command from Jesus here uses a grammatical form we call present imperative which implies that the hearers should not be continually judging. They should not have a censorious spirit. Censorious is a word that means severely critical. It means to express severe disapproval of or to formally reprove. Jesus’s people aren’t supposed to always be looking for an opportunity to disapprove of someone’s motives or judge their activity. We aren’t to be nitpickers. Here’s an example: If someone gives a praise or encouragement about someone or speaks a kind word about someone and your first thought is yes, but… they… then you may have this kind of censorious spirit.

John Stott writes:

The Message of the Sermon on the Mount a. The Christian Is Not to Be a Judge (1, 2)

Censoriousness is a compound sin consisting of several unpleasant ingredients. It does not mean to assess people critically, but to judge them harshly. The censorious critic is a fault-finder who is negative and destructive towards other people and enjoys actively seeking out their failings. He puts the worst possible construction on their motives, pours cold water on their schemes and is ungenerous towards their mistakes.

We must be careful not to swing the pendulum too far the other direction either. Jesus is not saying, that He never wants anyone to disapprove of anything. The problem with people thinking this is that they are taking Jesus’s words and trying to use them for their own purposes or to justify their behavior. But how do we balance this passage with John 7:24?

John 7:24 ESV

Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment.”

Jesus can not mean that He is against all judgement because there are several times when comes right out and tells his followers to make a judgement call.

He even does it later in chapter 7:

Matthew 7:15–16 ESV

“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles?

Matthew 18:15 ESV

“If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother.

Jesus made judgements himself. He even made some negative judgements like when He said in

Matthew 23:25 ESV

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence.

Jesus did not just warn people or disapprove of them but declared the truth that certain individuals were headed for eternal judgement and would only avoid it if they repented of their sin.

Matthew 23:15 ESV

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.

1 John 4:1 ESV

Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world.

So we can see from even the apostles that judgement is neccesary.

Galatians 2:11 ESV

But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned.

According to Daniel Doriani,

“Moses and Paul agreed that leaders must judge if a teacher is so dangerous that he must be removed from the assembly (Deut. 13:1–11; 1 Tim. 1:3–4; 6:3–5). Such judgments are necessary to preserve the church (Acts 20:28–29).”

We must also make judgement calls on modern day issues that come before us.

Jesus does not prohibit critical thinking but does prohibit having a critical spirit.

So, if some times judgment is okay but this says to not judge, then there must be different types of judgment. There are times when we MUST exercise moral discernment. For example, the issue of transgenderism. The Bible clearly lays out that there are two genders, male and female, designated by God and set in our biology. They are unchangeable. So we make the moral discerning choice to not recognize that you can change your gender or that there are more than two. People may tell us we are being judgmental but we are simply being morally discerning as we are called to in scripture.

If we want to decide when we should withhold judgment then we should look at how this passage is situated after a long block of moral instruction. Hearing all of this teaching would no doubt, make it tempting for His followers to pass judgement on or use this teaching to condemn other people. So He commands them not to.

I get it. I’ve been in a service and heard an amazing message that just pumps me up with zeal for the Lord. The temptation is that you walk out of there and everyone else looks like an underachiever ready for your “help” in correction. One author I read put it in the context of a marriage conference.

Matthew, Volumes 1 & 2 Judge Not

consider how dangerous it is to attend a marriage seminar alone. Going without our spouse changes the way we listen. The talks can lead us to rejoice over our blessings in marriage or to godly self-examination. But, sadly, they can also lead us to list all the counsel the speaker had for our spouse, the one who really needed to hear the message. When we report on the conference, we say, “You should have been there, honey. The speaker suggested three ways for me to be a better husband and nineteen ways for you to be a better wife. Let me share the top five with you right away.” But Jesus does more than prohibit judgment. He carefully explains why.

II. Jesus gives us reasons not to judge.

#1 You will be judged.

You are actually placing yourself in God’s place when you judge others.

If you are judging others, you will be judged as well.

#2 The measure you use on others will be used on you.

The standard by which you judge other people will be the standard used on you.

Like the pharisees who judged others to make themselves feel and seem superior to others. It was ultimately not about lifting others up but lifting themselves up and tearing others down.

Stott sums up verses one and two so well when he says that the command not to judge is not a requirement to be blind but a plea to be generous. We are not to cease being men by suspending our critical powers but to renounce what he calls our presumptuous ambition to be God - setting ourselves up as judges. It’s the difference between judgement and judgementalism. We are not let off the hook for our brotherly responsibilities toward one another as Christians. There is obviously a difference in how we deal with a fellow Christian and someone outside of the family of God. We have to balance this passage with Matthew 18:15-20.

Matthew 18:15–20 ESV

“If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.”

Our unfortunate, sinful, tendency is to judge more often and more harshly than we should.

#3 We should check ourselves first.

Begin with yourself. Check your heart.

Often times, we easily see the sin in others and readily point out their sin while ignoring the sin in our lives. Often it’s the very same type of sin and more glaring to others than it is to us. Sometimes we are self deceived about our sin. We need to deal with our sin first so that we can see clearly to help our brothers and sisters.

There is hypocrisy in our judgement of others when we are mired in sin and trying to help someone else out of their sin.

Matthew We Blind Ourselves When We Rationalize Away Our Guilt (7:3–5)

At a Bible study Joe Bayly once met a former Nazi, a participant in the Holocaust, who complained that had missed a promotion in the army because he objected to social dancing. Bayly remarked tongue in cheek that “Christians were the same everywhere—they weren’t afraid to speak out, even against Hitler, when it came to social dancing.”

As we have said continually in this series: The heart of the matter is a matter of the heart.

But here, in verse 6 is where Jesus sort of pivots a little bit. He’s been talking about not judging people and issuing condemnation on others to telling us who to judge.

III. Jesus advises to judge those who are living wickedly.

Let’s take a look at verse 6 back in Matthew chapter 7.

Matthew 7:6 ESV

“Do not give dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you.

A. Those who tear up God’s truth.

Dogs tear stuff up.

B. Those who trample on God’s truth.

Pigs trample things.

I struggled with the meaning of this verse as many have over the years. What I’ve come down to understand is this:

Some people will not receive Jesus. There are some people who are going to continually and repeatedly refuse the gospel. This makes sense because we know there is a real place called Hell, a place of judgement where those who do not know Jesus will spend eternity. There exist people who regardless of how many times they hear the gospel, will reject Jesus. I don’t like this but it’s the truth.

The people Jesus is talking about here are those who have heard the message about Jesus and willfully rejected it. They have refused Jesus repeatedly and they have show themselves no to recognize the value of the “pearl” that is being put before them. Now, I want to say that this would be in exceptional situations where they had hardened their hearts after (again) a repeated attempt to share the gospel with them and at some point you effectively dust off your sandals and move onto someone else. Now you don’t know whether that individual will continue to reject the Lord of if they may one day hear the message from someone else and believe but at a point you should move on. Again, these are extreme and exceptional situations, not excuses for lack of evangelism. Our general posture toward people should be one of patience and perseverance in evangelism.

Based on this understanding of verse 7, we can see that: to persist in witnessing to those who have stubbornly and willfully rejected the gospel is a waste of time.

There is a difference between people who are open to the truth and those who just flat out oppose the truth.

Conclusion:

Check your heart for:

- Critical spirit

- A plank in your eye - sin in your life

- Right motives

- Love for others

So what does it look like to approach someone with love, with right motives, without a critical spirit, and in a non-condemning way?

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