TOPIC:‌“The Sin We Must Sometimes Indulge In” (Judging)

                  by Rev. Dr. Reg Dunlap

 

TEXT:‌Matthew 7:1-6

 

‌‌“Judge not, that you be not judged. For with what judgment you judge, you will

‌‌be judged; and with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you”

‌‌( 7:1,2).

 

‌There is an old Indian proverb which states: “Judge nobody until you have walked in their moccasins.” There you have in a capsule the supreme truth of what Jesus was trying to get across to His disciples here in our text. He was admonishing them in the way we as His followers are to behave in our treatment of one another as citizens of His Kingdom. And Jesus Himself is our best representative of this kind of living of not judging others. He shows us by His life and by His speech how important it is to link what we say with the way we live.

 

‌St. Paul, the greatest apostle of them all, was also of this same persuasion. In writing to the believers at Rome he declared: “You therefore have no defense - you who sit in judgment, whoever you may be - for in judging your fellow man you condemn yourself, since you, the judge, are equally guilty” (Romans 2:1, NEB). Or again Paul declared: “Who are you to pass judgment on someone else's servant? Whether he stands or falls is his own Master's business” (Romans 14:4, NEB). Or to put it in the plain words from Dennis DeHann who wrote:

 

‌‌“Your Word instructs us not to judge;

‌‌So, Lord, we humbly pray,

‌‌Restrain our lips when we would speak

‌‌Those things we should not say.”

 

‌Let us consider now four truths found in the teachings of Jesus on this matter of judging.

 

I.

 

‌We find here, first of all, a COMMAND which does not end in RETALIATION. The command that Jesus laid down is found in verse 1: “Judge not.” The NLT makes the words of Jesus much more blunt and absolute: “Stop judging others.” A. T. Robertson, New Testament Greek scholar of past years, writes of this: “The form of the Greek implies that this is not a counsel not to commence, but a command not to continue.” In other words, the Greek construction carries with it the idea . . .