What Does “Judge Not” Mean?

“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. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.”

Talk to a random person on any street in America and ask them to quote a Bible verse to you. Many of them will quote to you the first words of this passage, “judge not, that you not be judged.” This seems to be the go to phrase for many in our culture when talking to a Christian about moral issues. They quote this verse as the ultimate trump card to end a conversation because they usually understand this verse to mean that you should never question anything a person does or believes. For example, I read someone this week say he was looking for a church that would be okay with his liberal beliefs on some serious social issues and that would not have a problem with the fact that he smokes pot. The comments were filled with people recommending churches that are “not judgmental.” In other words, the other commenters meant “these are the churches who will leave you where you are without saying anything to you and where what you hear from the pulpit will not call your life into question.” This seems to be what most people in our culture mean when they quote Matthew 7:1.

When you read the broader context of this passage, you realize this is not what Jesus means when he says “judge not.” He tells us not to be obsessed with the speck in our brother’s eye when we have a plank sticking out of our own eye. In other words, you cannot try to take a speck of sawdust from another person’s eye when you have a two by four sticking out of yours. So does Jesus say here that we should ignore the speck of sawdust because who are we to judge? Absolutely not, instead he reminds us to pull the log out of our own eye and then help your brother get the speck out of his eye. Even in the passage itself we see the passage does not teach that we suspend our faculties of discernment and never tell people that their actions or beliefs are wrong, sinful, or out of step with what it means to be a Christian. If  you expanded further out in the three chapter sermon where this verse is found, you would hear Jesus telling people that lust is adultery and anger is murder. He condemns praying, fasting, or giving only to be seen by men and warns us to look out for false prophets. In fact, he says we will know false prophets by their fruits, meaning we should inspect the fruit on the tree of their lives.

Can’t we acknowledge that Jesus is not calling on us to suspend our moral faculties or powers of discernment? Nor is he calling us here to say “well I’m not God so I can’t say what’s right and what’s wrong.” Yes, you can say what is right and what is wrong. Yes, you can look at something someone espouses and say it’s not true; and yes, can tell a person their life is not in line what the Bible prescribes. The Bible commands and encourages us to do these things.

What then does Jesus mean when he tells us not to judge? John Stott, in his The Message of the Sermon on the Mount, summarizes the teaching of this passage well when he says, “In a word, ‘censoriousness’. The follower of Jesus is still a ‘critic’ in the sense of using his powers of discernment, but not a ‘judge’ in the sense of being censorious. Censoriousness is a compound sin consisting of several unpleasant ingredients. It does not mean to assess people critically, but to judge them harshly. The censorious critic is a fault-finder who is negative and destructive towards other people and enjoys actively seeking out their failings. He puts the worst possible construction on their motives, pours cold water on their schemes and is ungenerous towards their mistakes.”

Stott points out three particular temptations we should avoid from Matthew 7:1.

We Judge When We Enjoy the Failings of Others

Many who quote Matthew 7:1 without understanding what it actually means are also fans of appealing to karma when a person wrongs them. These popular appeals to karma often mean someone wants to see bad things happen to another person because of something they have done wrong, yet this is the very attitude Matthew 7:1 forbids. If we want bad things to happen to people who do bad things, don’t we have to be honest and admit that we are actually pulling for bad things to happen to us? When we enjoy the failings of others we unconsciously look forward to our own ultimate judgement.

We Judge When We Misconstrue the Motives of Others

One of our great mistakes is thinking we can read another person’s motives for an action. How often have we seen a person doing a good thing and assumed they are doing it for less than laudable reasons? Matthew 7:1 reminds us that we should assign the best possible motives to a person’s actions unless we have explicit reason not to do so. We want this for ourselves, and if we love our neighbor as ourselves we will do the same thing.

We Judge When We Deny Grace for the Sins of Others

The words “judge not that you not be judged” remind us that we are people who live under the reign of grace. If every person received what they deserved, we would all face judgement. Jesus lived a sinless life, died for our sins, and was raised victoriously from the dead. The person who trusts in Christ soon discovers that Jesus bore the judgement he deserved. In the place of judgement, the Christian is forgiven by God, reconciled to God, adopted as a child of God, and given an imperishable hope by God. If we have experienced this, how could we want to deny it to others? The person who has experienced grace cannot hold another person’s sins over their head and make them grovel for forgiveness.

The words of Matthew 7:1 have important application for the way Christians respond to other people since they live on this side of the cross. They remind us of the grace we have received and should show. Their broader context also remind us that calling others to repentance after we have repented is a loving thing to do. We are not obeying Jesus when we act as if all categories of good and evil should be abandoned. Instead we do our friends and neighbors the greatest good when we are honest about the existence of sins our lives and point to Jesus who took our judgement upon himself so we could be free.

Related Posts:
“Why Should We Forgive?”
“When the Bible Rebukes Democrats and Republicans”

For Further Reading:
The Message of the Sermon on the Mount by John Stott
The Church and the Surprising Offense of God’s Love by Jonathan Leeman