January 7: Matthew 7
Judge NOT, brah!
The first six verses of this chapter are both very convenient and inconvenient for our age. We want to do what we want, so when someone notices the insanity of what we want to do, we love to quote verse 1 (always quoted in King Jamesian English):
Judge not, lest ye be not judged.
We say there are no absolute standards, and we say it with absolute certainty.
Yet there is a range of meaning to the word “judge,” and it’s the same today as it was in Christ’s time. We can summarize the range of meaning with two uses.
The first use is when, for instance, someone “judges” a high school debate tournament. They are undoubtedly wowed by the acumen and hard work of all the young people involved. Yet they must - and here is another word for “judge” - discern the differences between them, according to the standards of debate.
The other sense of “judge” is Jesus’ use above: when one person occupies the space of lawgiver and judge, often capriciously. It’s when someone acts like they are the timeless, transcendent standard of right and wrong. They occupy the place of God. Thus Jesus commands, “Don’t do that.”
James would later echo the point in his chapter on conflict:
There is only one lawgiver and judge, he who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you to judge your neighbor? James 4:12
Yet just a few verses later, Jesus is certainly thinking of the first use of “judge” - that of discernment - when he commands us
“…5b then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye. 6 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.”
Jesus commands us to “judge” or discern who is a dog or a swine. He never commands us to turn off our moral compass and accept all behavior. Those who claim this turn Jesus into a “whatever-man” doobie-riffing hippie. Besides, discernment is needed - once we’ve pulled the board out of our eye - to see the speck in our brother’s eye.
The difference between “judging” and “judging” is not whether we discern right and wrong but whether we can leave the just adjudication of the wrong in question to God. And the way we do that is by preaching both the bad news and the good news: that we are all dead in our trespasses and sins, destined for the burn pile. But God judged His own Son so that we might not be judged.
We judge, and then in love we preach the way out of judgment.