Not Judges but Children—Matthew 7:1-12

I have thought of a good birthday present for my children. Not just my children -- I think almost any child would find a use for this. A gavel. Most children, in my experience, think they are judges. All they lack is the gear. I include myself in this. I remember passing judgment on my siblings quite regularly. It was not enough to play the lawyer, accusing them to my parents. I was quite happy to name their crimes and fix their sentences myself.

Christians can be the same. We sometimes think that Christ has appointed us as judges of our neighbors, that it is our job to peer over the hedge and pass sentence on the folks next door, or to glance around the pews and rank our brethren for their holiness. The truth is that Christ has made us children of God, not judges of men. This passage from Matthew teaches us that we should be slow to correct each other, and quick to cry to God, who has given us his only Son.

Slow to Correct Each Other

Imagine that you are on trial. You have committed horrible crimes, and the judge is about to give the sentence. But, at the last minute, you learn that you yourself can decide how merciful he will be. You can choose for him to be merciless, punishing even the smallest crime with a strict sentence. You can choose for him to be a little bit merciful, letting the little crimes off but punishing the big ones. Or you can choose for him to pardon big crimes -- crimes like yours. What would you choose? Most of us would make the judge merciful enough to pardon the big crimes that we have committed.

Oddly enough, Jesus says that we have such a decision to make with God as our judge. The condition is that we must be as merciful to others as we would have God be merciful to us. "Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you."

Now, Jesus is not saying that we should always ignore evil and never point it out. Later in Matthew's Gospel, in chapter 18, he will tell us how to rebuke one another rightly: "If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone" (Matthew 18:15). And he describes a whole process for dealing with sin. The Apostle Paul talks about how the church, working together and led by the Holy Spirit, is competent to judge its members. That's very different from the kind of judging Jesus describes here, where I am so quick to see and point out my brother's faults that I will look at the speck in his eye when there is a log in my own eye.

If you spend much time around children who are being taught to pray with their eyes closed, you have probably at some point heard one child shout, right after the amen, "Jimmy had his eyes open!" And the parents ask, "How do you know that Jimmy had his eyes open?" And the first child offers some weak explanation about blinking in reverse. Christians are often like that. We are so quick to point out others' faults that we are blind to our own.

Here are some questions we can ask ourselves when we are thinking about pointing out the faults of others:

1. Am I too quick to point out this fault? Do I know enough to form a conclusion, and have I really thought it through?

2. Is there a good reason to point out this sin? What is the purpose?

3. Am I open to finding out that I was wrong, and that my brother or my neighbor was not really at fault?

4. Do I delight in knowing that someone else sinned, or does it grieve me to think so?

5. Have I searched my own heart and life for the same sin, and repented of it?

Once I have answered all these questions, I may be in a place to go to my brother, with the log taken out of my own eye, and help him take the speck out of his eye.

But even when we have answered all these questions, it still isn't always wise to give people our pearls of wisdom. This may be the point of the mysterious saying of verse 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." If, Jesus says, your wisdom is so great -- which is a big if -- and if the other person is really so much worse than you -- which is also an if -- you might be best to keep your wisdom to yourself.

There are good reasons to rebuke one another. But there are also bad reasons to rebuke one another. One of those reasons, I think, is that we really look for salvation in other people. And when other people are not who we think we need them to be, we feel that the only solution is to change them. And the only way to change them is to go to them and correct them.

Jesus says we should be slower to go to other people and correct them, and quicker to go to God and cry for help.

Quick to Cry to God

"Ask," he says, "and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened." This is not some general truth in life: "just ask for help, and you'll get it," or "just follow your dreams, and they will come true." No, this is a truth for the children of God: "If you, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!"

Let's imagine -- purely theoretically -- that your life would be better if your spouse treated you better. Go to God and ask for his help! Let's imagine that a neighbor or coworker is making your life hard. Knock on God's door! Let's imagine that you have a strong desire to serve God in some way. Ask God himself to make it happen!

Jesus does not say that it will be easy. Asking sounds easy, but knocking requires action, and seeking implies a journey. God may send you on a long journey, but you can know that you will find what is best for you at the end of it, because your Father in heaven is watching over you.

Who Gave Us His Only Son

And we know that God will give us what we need, and what is best, because he has given us his only Son. He sent his Son into the world to be one of us, a humble man, serving God perfectly but enduring all the suffering we endure. He sent his Son to the cross to die in the place of us sinners, taking all our guilt upon himself. He raised his Son from the dead to live forever and sit on the throne of heaven. And he sent the Holy Spirit of his Son to live in our hearts. If he has given us his Son, won't he give us everything we need?

Now that we know this, what should we do? Well, Jesus says, "So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets." This is a summary sentence of a big section of the Sermon on the Mount, beginning at 5:17, when Jesus said, "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them." Now he tells us something of what the fulfillment will look like. We will do more than obey a long list of rules about how to treat other people. We will seek their good as much as (or more than) we seek our own.

Now, this rule (which people call the Golden Rule) is easy to misapply. For instance, I might get my wife a guitar for her birthday, because that's what I want myself. That might be a good way for me to end up with a guitar, but it's not a way to keep the Golden Rule. Or I might give other people whatever they want, which might bless some people but could really harm others. No, the point is that God's generosity to me frees me up to be generous to others. I don't have to fret when other people don't do what I want -- God will provide all that I need. He has already provided it, in Christ. My job is to imitate his generosity.

Pastor Nate Jeffries