Last week I wrote a post about the mistaken idea that “all sins are created equal.” The phrase is all-too-often used by folks who defend their serious, destructive, sinful behaviors by putting them at the level of other people’s minor infractions.
At the end of the post I said that “church leaders must deal with destructive sin decisively, without allowing themselves to be intimidated by those who defend their own sin or that of others with their ‘all sins are created equal’ arguments and charges of the closely associated sin of ‘judging.’”
As soon as I wrote the word, “judging,” I knew I needed to follow-up the “all sins created equal” post with some thoughts on America’s favorite Bible verse: “Judge not.”
The “verse,” of course, isn’t a verse, it’s a fragment of Matthew 7:1 which says, “Do not judge, or you too will be judged,” spoken by Jesus Christ as part of what we call, the Sermon on the Mount. In this incredible exposition of the discipleship that this claimant to the title of Messiah was looking for, Jesus repeatedly contrasts the impossible-without-God’s-help requirements of the law of Moses with the low, legalistic, shallow moral standards of the Pharisees. As a pastor pointed out to me, “It’s not that the standards of legalism are too high; they’re actually way too low.”
But in the big context of the entire Bible, where we must always begin, judging isn’t bad, it’s good. Judging is simply making moral determinations about human behavior. “This behavior is right; that behavior is wrong.” Consider the Apostle Paul’s prayer for the Philippian believers: “…that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and in all judgment; That ye may approve things that are excellent…” (F/Philippians 1:9,10 KJV).
If you look up the words judge and judging in a concordance, you’ll find the words used hundreds of times and most of the uses depict judging in a positive light: Moses judged the Jewish people all day long until additional judges were appointed to help him. Judges ruled over the Jewish people during the period between the conquest of the Holy Land until the establishment of the monarchy. The Corinthian church members were supposed to judge between two of their members who were locked in a dispute.
So, if judging, in and of itself, making moral determinations about human behavior, isn’t wrong, what is it that makes some judging bad? The following is probably only a partial answer.
- Judging is bad – hypocritical – if we’re not willing to be judged by the same standards with which we judge others. See Matthew 7:1-5 again.The guy in Jesus’ crosshairs wanted to point out the speck in his brother’s eye (again: a reference to a “small” sin) without dealing honestly with the plank (a bigger sin) in his own eye. See also Luke 18:9.
- Judging is bad – merciless – if we don’t love the person we are judging enough to take appropriate action to help him. If he’s a sinner, he needs the gospel. If we don’t have the opportunity to share the message of Christ with him, we can at least pray for his salvation. If the person we are judging has a rough spot in his life, he needs gentle correction, as in Ephesians 4:15-32. If he has a serious sin problem in his life, like an addiction, he needs you to help him escape his addiction, as in Galatians 6:1-5. If he has a sinful practice in his life that is ruining his relationship with you, harming others and ultimately, harming himself, you need to confront him in love as in Matthew 18:15.
- Judging is bad – ignorant – if it’s based on a seriously flawed understanding of the situation. The classic illustration is the father on the subway in the middle of the night with a completely out of control group of children who were raising a ruckus and disturbing other passengers. Confronted with his negligence, the father shamefacedly admitted that – in the depths of grief over his wife’s death at a hospital a few minutes earlier – he hadn’t noticed his children’s behavior. Don’t miss John 7:24: “Stop judging by mere appearances and make a right judgment.”
- Judging is bad – arrogant – if it’s based on wholly subjective standards of right and wrong. This is the type of judging condemned in the wonderful “accept your brother” passage – Romans 14:1-15:7. Confronted with our many differences of opinion about moral matters not delineated in Scripture, Christians are to be careful to not violate their own consciences while being sensitive to the fact that their fellow believers have reached different conclusions in good faith.
Are we going to judge others? Of course. God’s concern is that we will judge well, we will judge rightly and we will judge with integrity and compassion.
Are we, at times, going to need to judge firmly in the face of insolence and rebellion? Of course. We will even be judged harshly for our judging – an irony if there ever was one!
But as followers of Jesus and lovers of his Word, we must be ready to respond to out and out moral relativism – all moral opinions are created equal – with calm assurance, firm resolve and a track record of judging ourselves and others with God’s redemptive compassion.
