Matthew 7:1–5 (NLT):
“Do not judge others… First get rid of the log in your own eye; then you will see well enough to deal with the speck in your friend’s eye.”
It’s interesting that Jesus is so clear that it’s not our job, as His followers, to judge others. And yet we do - often. We tend to self-righteously overlook our own sins as if they’re “less bad” than the sins of “those other people.”
Here’s a little secret: the sin of self-righteousness is (if it’s possible to rate sin by degrees) the worst of all. More than any other sin, it’s the one that keeps us from God. The Apostle John said, “If we claim we have not sinned, we are calling God a liar and showing that his word has no place in our hearts.”
1 John 1:10 (NLT)
Jesus’ point in Matthew
7 is not that there is no right and wrong. There is. And we should aim for rightness and stand against wrong and injustice. His point is, before we go pointing out the sins of others, make sure we have taken care of our own stuff. But, be very careful because we always have stuff, which means that it will be less often rather than more that we have it right enough to call someone on their sin.
It’s only half way through the morning as I write this, and I’m embarrassed to say how many times I’ve already judged others. I think, if you pay attention to your own thought life, you’d likely see that you too are afflicted with this same kind of judgementalism. It insidiously and stealthily creeps in while we blindly overlook our own sin. We need to arrest it and give it over to God.
