God’s Constitution, Pt 27: Judging
Matthew 7:1-6 1Do not judge, or you too will be judged. 2For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the same measure you use, it will be measured to you. 3”Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own? 4How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eyes, when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? 5You 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. 6 “Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls before Pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feat, and turn and tear you to pieces.
Proverbs 9:7-8 7Whoever corrects a mocker invites insults; whoever rebukes the wicked incurs abuse. 8Do not rebuke mockers or they will hate you; rebuke the wise and they will love you.
Leviticus 19:17 17“You shall not hate your brother in your heart, but you shall reason frankly with your neighbor, lest you incur sin because of him. 18 You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.
Except that they have accepted Jesus as their Savior, the believing community is hardly different than the pagan one. Believers have sins just as do pagans, some large and obvious (planks), and some minor and unimposing (specks). The question is what the community is to do about those sins. Over the years, maybe centuries, the Matthew verse has been misunderstood to mean that a believer should let his fellow believer live his own life and focus instead on his own sin. But what are we to do with the last half of v5 which speaks of removing the speck from our brother’s eye? Further, what are we to do with v6 which seems to have nothing to do with the rest of this passage?
Here, as in much of his teaching, Jesus is particularly harsh on hypocrites, but the focus of the passage is not hypocrisy, but helping one another out of our sin. Doing so is difficult and subject to abuse, even to the extreme of excommunication. The whole point of living in a believing community is to help one another grow in righteousness and holiness and to draw near to God. Doing so requires that we help one another through our sin struggles, but that first requires that each of us be aware of our own limitations and that we be delicate in the helping of our brother. In the 4th Century John Chrysostom, Bishop of Constantinople, commented on this required delicacy in saying, “Correct your brother, not as a foe, nor as an adversary, exacting a penalty, but as a physician.”1
In addition to being delicate, the helping of someone out of their sin requires that we be wise. There are those people who just won’t listen. When Jesus sent out his disciples to preach the Good News, he told them to shake the dust off their feet and leave the place if they would not listen (Matthew 10:14). That is the point of the metaphor about the dogs and pigs. There are some people who are antagonistic to the Gospel, they love the sin they are engaged in and simply don’t want to hear about correcting it. To approach such people is to waste one’s time. In Jesus’ day dogs were not part of society; they were feral, filthy, and vicious. Pigs were wild boars, also filthy and vicious. So, in combination, these metaphors are meant to graphically show that such people won’t receive the message or help no matter how kindly it is offered.
Presumably, if you are in fellowship with another believer, that person is not a dog or a pig. So it is fair to assume that that person will receive your message about their sin. Verse 5 says that even one with a plank in his eye, that is, one with obvious sin, must help another with his. But boy, watch out! Jesus says that we must first remove our own sin. But that’s not easy, is it? Removing one’s own sin involves fully contritionary repentance before God. And if that sin has been obviously plank-sized then others in the community have been aware of it. This means that following the forgiveness given by God there must be a time for the community to see that you are truly free of it. Effort and time are required. This is the reason the Matthew verse has been missed. People don’t want to deal with their own sin. People judge others by their actions but judge themselves by their intentions.
Another problem is that most people don’t handle criticism very well no matter how kindly it is offered. I’m one of them! It is rather odd really that I can accept criticism from a brother who I know loves me, but it is difficult to accept from my senior pastor because although I know he loves me also, he is, after all, my boss.
Let’s suppose for the moment that you have done the necessary work on your own sin. Consider what it means to help someone else deal with theirs. First, that person has to trust you implicitly. Next, he has to allow you to get intimately close to his internal self so that he sees his sin. Then he has to understand how that sin affects his closeness to God and to others. And finally, he has to be willing to change. None of these steps is easy, and in combination might seem overwhelming. But in so doing we are doing what Jesus says to do: We are helping a brother grow in righteousness and holiness and growing closer to God. So it is a holy task we undertake when we help such a brother, and God will empower us. But truly, we must be prayed up, fully repentant, and fully humble. If so it is a holy and noble thing we begin.
_________________
1Douglas Sean O’Donnell, Matthew: All Authority in Heaven and on Earth, ed. R. Kent Hughes, Preaching the Word (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2013), 190.