Do Not Judge?

Luke 6:37-42

37 “Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. 38 Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”

39 He also told them this parable: “Can the blind lead the blind? Will they not both fall into a pit? 40 The student is not above the teacher, but everyone who is fully trained will be like their teacher.

41 “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? 42 How can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when you yourself fail to see the plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.

These verses are just a small part of Jesus’ famous Sermon on the Mount. Have you noticed that people love to take the first verse from this section and quote it to other people? This verse might be one of the most misunderstood verses of the whole Bible. If we took a poll of random people and asked them to quote something that Jesus said, many people would probably say, “Do not judge!” My reason for guessing that a lot of people know this verse is because I’ve heard everybody from politicians to movie stars to pastors to teenagers to little old ladies quote this verse. If you question someone’s moral choices, chances are they’ll quote this verse to you and say, “The Bible says not to judge!” If a Christian offers an opinion on what constitutes inappropriate behavior, they will quickly be shut down by being reminded that God says not to judge! Yet the world has no problem leveling their moral judgments on everybody else. Somehow, they do not recognize the blatant irony of condemningly judging people who judge other people. But maybe this is exactly what Jesus is talking about? When Christians level judgement against the world, the world is quick to return the favor. If Christians didn’t judge others, then we wouldn’t be judged. We could all just get along, right? Somehow, I don’t think that is true, and I don’t think this is what Jesus is talking about.

First of all, the idea that if we do not judge others then we will never be judged is simply not true. If we adopt an attitude of extreme acceptance of all people’s actions, that does not mean we will escape the judgement seat of Christ. We will all be judged before the throne of God. 2 Corinthians 5:10 says, “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each of us may receive what is due us for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad.” We will all have to give an account of our words and actions. And unless the person being judged is a Christian, then no amount of not judging others or even “good behavior” is going to save them. We are all sinners who must receive the righteousness that only comes from Jesus Christ. The only way we will be found approved is by being hidden in the righteousness of Christ. So, Jesus’ words should not be interpreted in an all-encompassing, fixed sort of way.

Second, we see in other verses from the Bible that we are to issue judgments. There are specific instances, though, when we are not to judge others and when we are to judge others. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 5:12-13, “What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside. ‘Expel the wicked person from among you.’”

Paul did not see it as his duty to judge non-believers, but he made it clear that we believers are to judge other believers in the sense that we are to hold each other accountable. We are not to turn blind eyes to each other’s sin. We are even supposed to stop having fellowship with believers who will not repent of their sin. That sounds like judging to me.

In fact, looking right here in this passage in Luke, we see Jesus saying that after we have judged ourselves and removed the plank from our own eye, then we are to remove the speck from our brother’s eye. That means that we are to recognize when our brother or sister in Christ has need of help. If we were never to judge, never to evaluate a fellow believer’s behavior, Jesus would not instruct us to “see” the speck in our brother’s eye. He would have said something like, “don’t worry about the speck in your brother’s eye, just take care of yourself.” Jesus also says in the next chapter, John 7:24, “Stop judging by mere appearances, but instead judge correctly.”

So, if Jesus isn’t telling us to never judge anybody, then what does He mean by saying, “Do not judge, and you will not be judged”? I think it makes sense once we look at this in the context of His following sentences. Jesus continues by saying, “Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven.” Well, wait a minute, you might say. That supports the idea that we are not to judge anybody. We are not to condemn anybody if we don’t want to be condemned. And we are to forgive if we want to be forgiven. Well, let’s place this verse into Jesus’ parable of the unmerciful servant. Remember that parable? The servant was forgiven his debt by his master. Then a fellow servant was late in repaying his debt to that same servant. Instead of forgiving the debt or extending the time to repay it, he got angry and had the man dragged off to debtors’ prison. That man’s master heard about what he did and was angry that his servant would not show mercy to another when he had been granted mercy. Jesus told that parable to illustrate this point: His kingdom is a merciful, loving and generously forgiving kingdom. If we are to be a part of this kingdom of God, we must act the same way. Do we render judgment in order to condemn someone? Or do we extend God’s offer of grace and forgiveness to those who repent?

The other thing we need to consider in reading this passage is the fact that the Pharisees are present and listening, waiting to trap Jesus. He is speaking to the crowd of believers who are following Him around, but he’s also speaking to the Pharisees. He knows that their number one fixation is following the letter of the law and yet they are getting so much of it wrong. They are trying to catch Jesus in error so they can condemn Him and expose Him as a false prophet. They are waiting and wanting to judge Him, condemn Him, and have Him tried for heresy. They do not want to extend grace or forgiveness to Jesus. They just want to see if they can prove Him wrong. There is no mercy in their hearts. Jesus sees their hypocrisy. He knows that even though the outside looks “clean” their insides are corrupt. He says about them in Matthew 23:27-28, “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.”

I think this is who Jesus is ultimately directing these comments to. I think this because He also goes on to say, “Can the blind lead the blind? Will they not both fall into a pit? The student is not above the teacher, but everyone who is fully trained will be like their teacher.” This is the same language He also uses in Matthew 23:16-17 about the Pharisees: “Woe to you, blind guides! You say, ‘If anyone swears by the temple, it means nothing; but anyone who swears by the gold of the temple is bound by that oath.’ You blind fools! Which is greater: the gold, or the temple that makes the gold sacred?” Jesus refers to the Pharisees as blind. They are the blind leading the blind. They also call themselves teachers, which is why I think he refers to students being trained to become just like their teachers.

Therefore, Jesus is not making a blanket statement that we are never to judge anybody or anything. Rather, He is explaining how, unlike the Pharisees, we are to extend the same grace, mercy and forgiveness to others that Jesus has extended to us. We are to be generous and giving to others. As much as people love to quote verse 37 and say, “the Bible says do not judge!” I rarely hear anyone quote verse 38, which says, “Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”

Why do you think people prefer the former to the latter? For one thing, the first verse is handy to throw at others. It’s passive, too. Applied this way, it gives us an easy out. It’s a great excuse to not worry about sin. This second verse about giving seems far more demanding. There is action required. He says the measure we use to give to others is the measure that will be given back to us. Is Jesus switching topics and talking about money now? Does that mean that if we give someone 500 dollars than God will give us 500 dollars back? He had just mentioned that we are to give to others without expecting repayment, so I don’t want to discount the possibility that He does mean this verse quite literally. After all, we are to give to others out of our resources. We are to give our “extra shirt” as John the Baptist said in Luke 3:11, “Anyone who has two shirts should share with the one who has none, and anyone who has food should do the same.”

I think Jesus is talking about being generous, but not only in the giving of our resources, but also in another sense as well. Have you ever heard the phrase, “that’s being generous,” used when talking about a person speaking kindly about someone else? For example, let’s say you are asked to give a job recommendation for a former employee. The manager of the new company calls you and asks you what you think of your former employee. If you try to point out their good traits and leave out any negative ones, when you hang up the phone, somebody who knows the former employee well might say, “you were being very generous to describe them so well.” I am not advocating that Jesus is telling us to lie, not at all. But if we can extend grace to someone and highlight their good traits and leave out negative personal feelings, that is a way we can keep from judging or condemning someone. We can give generously in our words and extend to others what we would want extended to us. Would we want someone to only bring up our negative traits? Or would we hope that we get spoken of with a measure of grace and allowance for our character traits that are less than perfect?

This goes right along with what Jesus said directly before these verses. He said in verses 32-26 of Luke 6, “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. 33 And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do that. 34 And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, expecting to be repaid in full. 35 But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. 36 Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.”

Why should we do these things? Because this is how Jesus treats us. We are to love others the way that Jesus loves us. Over the years, I have learned a truism: to the degree that we understand the love, mercy and generosity of the Father toward us, that is the degree by which we love others. The more we understand how much God loves us, the easier it is to love those around us. When we feel secure and loved by God, it’s easier to extend that same love and grace to other people. If, on the other hand, we either doubt God’s love for us, or we feel self-righteous, we tend to be stingy in extending grace to others.

Let me illustrate. First, if we feel insecure in God’s love for us, we tend to feel pretty worthless. If we think God’s love for us is based on our good behavior, then we feel like we are always needing to earn His love. This can create despair or apathy. When we don’t feel like we can ever be enough or good enough or perfect enough, we could end up just giving up. Why even try if it’s hopeless? And why would we extend any grace to other people? If we need to earn God’s love, then that means other people need to, too. Rather, if we understand that God loves us and there is nothing we can do or not do to make Him love us any more than He does right now, then we can share that love with others. Paul explains this concept in Ephesians 3:16-19, which tells us, “I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” Paul is saying that when we understand just how much Christ loves us, then we are on the way to being filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. There is that verse again from a couple of weeks ago. When we understand how much Jesus loves us, then He fills us with the fruit of His Spirit, the foundation of which is love.

Second, if we are self-righteous, then we risk becoming hypocritical pharisees. The self-righteous person thinks that he or she has ticked all the boxes and so God now loves them. Self-righteousness makes us feel like we are better than other people. If we feel like we are better than other people, then we are more likely to be critical and judgmental of others. We could be prone to level harsh criticism and condemnation against others who we disagree with. From our seats of self-righteousness, we could ignore the log in our own eye while pointing out the speck in our brother’s eye, as Jesus so cleverly illustrated.

Both of these things, you may have noticed, are scenarios in which we think we have to earn God’s love. If we think we have to do better so He loves us more or if we think because we’ve done better He now loves us more, either way, we are mistaken. God will never love us any more or any less than He does right now at this moment. Why do I know this? Romans 5:8 tells us, “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” He loved us before we loved Him. He didn’t love us just a little bit then and once we repented and were forgiven then He loves a little bit more. No. He loves us still the same. 1 John 4:9-11 says, “This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.” If we don’t understand that God’s love is not conditional on our actions, then we won’t be able to extend unconditional love to others.

Unconditional love, though, is not the same thing as unconditional forgiveness. Just like we saw a couple weeks ago about forgiveness being conditional, these words spoken by Jesus, here in Luke 6, do not tell us to never judge the actions of others. We are not to become universalists who approve of sin and immorality. When we understand the bigger picture of what Jesus is saying, we see we are to follow His example and extend mercy, grace, and forgiveness to others. We are to extend the love of Christ. We are still to hold ourselves accountable, judge our own actions and heart, and help our fellow believers to put off the sin that hurts them, but we do these things not from a place of self-righteous hypocrisy, but from a place of love.

Our churches would do well to practice this truth. Unfortunately, it seems like we have the proverbial pendulum of extremes within a lot of churches. One side swings to rigid legalism with strict adherence to a set of self-established rules. The other side swings to turning blind eyes to all sin and preaches cheap grace. Neither extreme is Biblical.

The legalist churches are problematic because if we expect everyone to be perfect, we create an atmosphere of fear where people are afraid to be honest and afraid to ask for help. People become hypocrites then, hiding their secret sin. We should examine ourselves and question if we are safe places for people to confess their struggles to. Jesus is saying that we should not be people who harshly judge others, essentially pushing people down and rubbing their sin in their face, but instead, be people who help other people up out of their sin. Our churches need to be places where people can admit their struggles. We need people and churches who will not judge others as a means of condemning them to despair, but rather we need people and churches who will proclaim to the repentant the forgiveness of Christ, and come alongside them and offer them hope out of their struggle.

Alternatively, churches that preach cheap grace do not help people. It does no one any good if someone comes to us and tells us their struggles and we say, “It’s ok, you’re fine the way you are, there is no need to change, I don’t judge you.” If we do that, then we are just leaving our brother or sister in sin. We are essentially the person who Jesus is describing when He says in Matthew 18:6, “If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.” If we reassure people who are in sin, that sin is no big deal, we are causing them to stumble and ultimately condemning them to eternal judgement. Instead, we should point people to the cross of Christ, where forgiveness and freedom are given to everyone through repentance.

Not judging, according to Jesus in Luke 6, means this: instead of judgment and condemnation, we forgive those who repent and share the mercy and grace that Jesus has given to us. As in all things, our motivation must be love. Otherwise we violate the words of Jesus and risk the warning He gives, that if we judge, condemn and do not forgive, then we will be judged, condemned and not forgiven. For if we who have experienced the grace and forgiveness of Jesus Christ in our own lives cannot extend that same grace to others, then we do not truly understand how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ. May the Holy Spirit work this truth deep into our hearts so we can share that same love with others.

Prayer: Heavenly Father, we thank You that You loved us so much that You sent Your son to die for us. Thank You for loving even us before we loved You. Please help us grow in our understanding of Your love for us, so that we can extend that same love to other people. Please forgive us when we fail to love like You do. Please help us to be more like You. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.