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Volume 1 · Honest HereticsLesson 11About 22 minutes

Judging Others

Is calling out other people's sins part of following Jesus?

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Lesson 11 · Honest Heretics
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The center · Matthew 7:1
1“Don’t judge, so that you won’t be judged.

In this lesson

Ask people outside the church to describe Christians in one word, and many will give the same answer. In 2007, researchers at the Barna Group surveyed Americans aged 16 to 29 who were not Christians. Eighty-seven percent said Christians are "judgmental." Eighty-five percent said "hypocritical." Those are the words people reach for first, about the followers of a man who said, "Don't judge."

If you have been on the receiving end, you know this subject: the sermon about your sins, the relative who reminds you where you are headed, the stranger with a sign. Ask honest questions and you may be called a heretic; consider yourself an honest one. Jesus taught almost the opposite, in some of his most direct words, and his answer to the urge to judge works for anyone.

Read it3 min

In the middle of the Sermon on the Mount, his longest recorded teaching, Jesus spoke about judging, and he used a joke.

Matthew 7:1-5
1“Don’t judge, so that you won’t be judged. 2For with whatever judgment you judge, you will be judged; and with whatever measure you measure, it will be measured to you. 3Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but don’t consider the beam that is in your own eye? 4Or how will you tell your brother, ‘Let me remove the speck from your eye,’ and behold, the beam is in your own eye? 5You hypocrite! First remove the beam out of your own eye, and then you can see clearly to remove the speck out of your brother’s eye.

Luke records the same teaching, and adds two more commands.

Luke 6:37
37Don’t judge, and you won’t be judged. Don’t condemn, and you won’t be condemned. Set free, and you will be set free.

Then Jesus told a story aimed at a particular kind of listener: people "convinced of their own righteousness, and who despised all others."

Luke 18:9-14
9He also spoke this parable to certain people who were convinced of their own righteousness, and who despised all others: 10“Two men went up into the temple to pray; one was a Pharisee, and the other was a tax collector. 11The Pharisee stood and prayed by himself like this: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like the rest of men: extortionists, unrighteous, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. 12I fast twice a week. I give tithes of all that I get.’ 13But the tax collector, standing far away, wouldn’t even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his chest, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ 14I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.”
Who's who: The Pharisees were respected, devout teachers who kept God's Law carefully. Tax collectors collected money for the Roman occupiers, often with a cut for themselves, and were despised as traitors. In Jesus' story, the respectable man is the one who gets it wrong.

The world behind the words4 min

A speck and a beam. The Greek word for the speck, karphos, means a bit of straw or a splinter. The word for the beam, dokos, means a roof beam, the timber that holds up a house. Jesus' neighbors called him "the carpenter" , and the picture is a carpenter's joke: a man with a beam sticking out of his eye, squinting at a splinter in someone else's. People would have laughed. Then they would have stopped laughing.

Notice the order Jesus gives. Judge yourself first. Only after the beam is out can you "see clearly" to help someone else. Jesus does not pretend that no one ever does wrong. He says that the person most eager to point it out is usually the one least able to see.

The story of the Pharisee and the tax collector makes the same point from the other side. The Pharisee was not a fraud. He fasted twice a week and gave a tenth of everything, more than the Law required. His mistake was the comparison: "I am not like the rest of men... or even like this tax collector." The tax collector made no comparison at all. He only said, "God, be merciful to me, a sinner!" Jesus said that he, not the Pharisee, went home right with God.

Jesus' own life fits his words. Respectable people complained that he ate with "tax collectors and sinners," and he answered, "Those who are healthy have no need for a physician, but those who are sick do" . When a woman known for her sins anointed his feet at a dinner, his host thought, "This man, if he were a prophet, would have perceived who and what kind of woman this is" . Jesus defended her.

Jesus did judge some people harshly. Read Matthew 23 (Follow Me §135) and you will find him calling religious leaders "hypocrites" and "whitened tombs" . But look at who he judged: the powerful, the religious and the self-righteous. He never once spoke that way to the outsiders, the sinners or the people others looked down on.

A famous story to handle carefully: "He who is without sin among you, let him throw the first stone" comes from the story of a woman caught in adultery. It is beloved and fits Jesus well, but it does not appear in the oldest surviving manuscripts of John's Gospel. Many Bibles mark it in brackets. The teaching in this lesson does not depend on it; Matthew 7 and Luke 6 say the same thing on their own.

How it drifted5 min

Ring 3: church tradition
Correction turned outward, from private and humble to public and permanent
The further an idea sits from the center, the more it needs a reason to outrank his words.

Jesus did give a way to deal with wrongdoing among his followers, and it was small and quiet: if someone wrongs you, go to them "between you and him alone" , with the goal of winning them back. Even Paul, who wrote firmly about discipline inside the church, drew a line around everyone else.

1 Corinthians 5:12-13
12For what do I have to do with also judging those who are outside? Don’t you judge those who are within? 13But those who are outside, God judges. “Put away the wicked man from among yourselves.”

Over the centuries, the church kept the discipline and lost the quiet. By the Middle Ages, excommunication could cut a person off from worship, from business and even from burial in consecrated ground. Church courts tried people for moral offenses, and from the 1230s the papacy established inquisitions to root out heresy, with punishments carried out by secular rulers.

In colonial New England, moral judgment became civil law. In 1658 Plymouth Colony ordered that a person convicted of adultery wear the capital letters "AD" sewn on their clothing, and anyone found without them could be publicly whipped. Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel The Scarlet Letter (1850) was built on laws like this one.

You may know the saying "Love the sinner, hate the sin." Jesus never said it. Its roots are in a letter by Augustine around 423 that urged "love for persons and hatred of sins," and Mohandas Gandhi, a Hindu, gave it a modern form in his autobiography: "Hate the sin and not the sinner." It is often used today to justify exactly what Jesus warned against: focusing on other people's sins first.

c. 30Jesus: "Don't judge… first remove the beam out of your own eye."
50sPaul: "What do I have to do with also judging those who are outside?"
c. 423Augustine urges "love for persons and hatred of sins."
1230sThe papacy establishes inquisitions against heresy.
1658Plymouth Colony orders convicted adulterers to wear the letters "AD."
1927–1929Gandhi's autobiography includes "hate the sin and not the sinner."
2007Most young non-Christians surveyed call Christians "judgmental."
Whose purpose it serves: Judging outsiders makes insiders feel safe and righteous, the exact feeling Jesus aimed at in the Pharisee's prayer. It draws a line between the saved and everyone else, and a group with an enemy holds together. In politics, a campaign against other people's sins mobilizes voters far better than a sermon about your own. Many who "call out sin" sincerely believe they are helping. But the habit serves the people doing the judging.

What they'll say back3 min

"Jesus judged people. He called the Pharisees hypocrites." He did. But look at whom he judged: religious leaders, the powerful and the self-righteous. He never spoke that way to sinners and outsiders. If you want to follow his example in judging, judge the religious and the powerful, starting with yourself.

"We're supposed to call out sin. Love tells the truth." Jesus did give a way to correct someone: privately, one to one, after dealing with your own beam, with the goal of winning them back . That is almost the opposite of a public rebuke of strangers. And even Paul said judging outsiders was not his business. "Those who are outside, God judges."

"If we don't speak up, people won't know they're sinning." People usually know. The tax collector in Jesus' story already knew. What he needed was mercy, and Jesus gave it.

Be fair: Jesus did not ask his followers to stop telling right from wrong. He warned about false prophets and said "by their fruits you will know them" . Discernment is not condemnation. The real questions are who you look at first, and whether your aim is to win someone back or just to win.
When you hear these: Expect "love tells the truth" most of all. Agree that truth matters, then ask one question: "Did Jesus say to start with other people's sins, or with our own?" Matthew 7:5 answers it in his own words.

Measured against the center2 min

A contradiction
Jesus told his followers to judge themselves first and leave outsiders to God; a faith known for condemning other people's sins has reversed his order.

Measured against the center, this is not close, and it is a contradiction, not an add-on. Jesus said "Don't judge," "Don't condemn," and "first remove the beam out of your own eye." He saved his hardest words for the self-righteous and ate with the people they condemned. When Christians become known for pointing at others, they are doing what the Pharisee in his story did, not what he did.

What you noticed is real. If you have been condemned, shamed or warned by Christians, you were on the receiving end of something Jesus told them not to do. You owe them no agreement on that. You can also notice that his answer, deal with your own faults first, is good advice for everyone, including people who have been judged.

A keeper1 min

Whatever you believe about who Jesus was, this teaching works for anyone. Before you criticize someone, look at yourself first. Assume you have a beam too. If you must correct someone, do it privately, humbly and with the aim of helping.

Luke 6:37
37Don’t judge, and you won’t be judged. Don’t condemn, and you won’t be condemned. Set free, and you will be set free.

Psychologists have a name for the blind spot Jesus described. In 1977 the social psychologist Lee Ross called it the "fundamental attribution error": we tend to blame other people's faults on their character and underrate the circumstances behind them. Related research finds we see the circumstances behind our own faults far more easily. The beam in our own eye really is harder to see.

You can take this teaching without taking anything else. Looking at your own faults first makes you fairer and calmer, and it disarms people who come at you with judgment, because you are no longer playing their game.

Reflect2 min

  1. When have you been judged by a Christian? Did it bring you closer to their faith or push you away?
  2. Where do you see the beam-and-speck pattern outside religion, in politics, at work, in your family, or in yourself?
  3. What would Christians be known for if they followed Matthew 7:1–5?

Take your time with each one. There is space to write your answers in the book and the PDF.

Practice this week1 min

For one week, notice judgment around you: in sermons or posts that reach you, in politics, at work, and in your own thoughts. Each time, ask who is doing the judging and who is being judged. Write down one example where the judge had an obvious beam of their own.

Bring it back1 min

1
Common ground
"Jesus said a lot about how we treat people who get things wrong. Can we look at what he said?"
2
The bridge question
"In the story of the Pharisee and the tax collector, who went home right with God?"
3
Back to his words
The tax collector, the one who judged no one but himself. Read Matthew 7:5 together (Follow Me §34): "First remove the beam out of your own eye." Then ask: "If that's his order, what would change in how Christians talk about other people?"
They sayYou can say
"We're called to speak the truth in love."
"We are. Jesus said to start with our own beam, and to go privately if we go at all (Matthew 18:15). Public condemnation isn't on his list."
"Jesus called the Pharisees hypocrites."
"He did. He said it to religious leaders, not to sinners. If we follow that example, we start with the religious, and with ourselves."
Pass it on: The believers who judge you are often harder on themselves than you know. If one of them ever wonders whether there is another way, hand them the believer edition of this book. You don't have to win; his words will do it.

Remember it

The beam and the speck

Judge yourself first. Matthew 7:1, "Don't judge," opens the chapter. Picture a carpenter's beam: the bigger the beam, the louder the pointing.

The beam and the speck: a heavy dark strip right in front of you, and a tiny speck far off. Take the beam out first.

  1. What were the speck and the beam, in the original Greek?
    A bit of straw (karphos) and a roof beam (dokos).
  2. In Luke 18, who went home right with God?
    The tax collector.
  3. Who said "Love the sinner, hate the sin"?
    Not Jesus. Its roots are in Augustine (c. 423), and Gandhi gave it a modern form.
Sources
  1. David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons, unChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity (Baker Books, 2007), reporting Barna Group surveys of 16- to 29-year-olds.
  2. On karphos and dokos: W. Bauer, F. W. Danker et al., A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament (BDAG, 3rd ed., 2000).
  3. On John 7:53–8:11: Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament (2nd ed., 1994). The passage is absent from the earliest papyri (P66, P75, about 200 AD) and from the fourth-century codices Sinaiticus and Vaticanus.
  4. Excommunication and medieval church courts: R. H. Helmholz, The Spirit of Classical Canon Law (University of Georgia Press, 1996).
  5. Papal inquisitions from the 1230s under Pope Gregory IX: Edward Peters, Inquisition (Free Press, 1988; University of California Press, 1989).
  6. Plymouth Colony law of 1658 on adultery (two whippings and the letters "AD" "cut out in cloth and sowed on their uppermost garment"): Records of the Colony of New Plymouth in New England, ed. N. B. Shurtleff and D. Pulsifer (Boston, 1855–61), vol. 11, Laws.
  7. Augustine, Letter 211.11 (c. 423), cum dilectione hominum et odio vitiorum; M. K. Gandhi, An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth (2 vols., 1927–1929), Part IV, ch. 9, "A Tussle with Power."
  8. Lee Ross, "The Intuitive Psychologist and His Shortcomings," in Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, vol. 10 (1977).
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