“So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you.” (Matt. 7:12)
The Prescription:Expect to be treated to the degree people perceive the respect you grant yourself.
How you treat yourself is a message to others of how they may treat you. It is a circular process that teaches us how to love and esteem ourselves highly.
When we are excellent in our own matters and affairs—like our health, attitude, and finances—we tend to become empathetic persons preferring one another’s well-being and dignity because we have, in effect, dignified ourselves. Our relationships improve also because our own lives have done just that as we’ve sorted out the kinks in our character. The obverse is that we will not treat others how we don’t want to be treated.
The Description:Our general manner toward others explains how we view ourselves.
People that truly love themselves and seek happiness and enrichment approach others hoping to connect with like quality. Those who belittle themselves are negative, distrustful of others, and hard-pressed to find any good in people.
Do you think I’ve overdone explaining this Rule? But we definitely act this way toward people we consider our superiors, perhaps for a prestige, title, or wealth. We do so because we feel there is something in it for us, not because we truly care. The deep insight of the Golden Rule is that therein we all become dignitaries, not for possessions but self-worth.
The lesson here is more than one of mere courtesy. It is a philosophy of self-respect that raises the quality of our lives and enhances the relations we share. Thus, we discover a social approach firmly rooted in personal integrity of character.
“Just a bunch of Mexicans that should be shipped back to where they came from! They’re all illegal, here taking our money and sending it to Mexico. They just need to leave!”
“My goodness, the gays! These folk are demon possessed: men have a female demon and women have a male demon. They need deliverance. But I ain’t got time for them.”
“Can you believe some Muslims just moved next door? Things are gonna start getting bad around here. You can’t trust them because they’re surely up to something.”
“There were some foreigners in the grocery store the other day blacker than me—I mean b-l-a-c-k—and they’ve got the nerve to think they’re better than us.”
These were real comments I heard made by professing Christians that caused my heart to sink. I cannot understand why people who say they are Christians can feel so graceless and speak so ruthlessly about people with whom they should be sharing the love of Jesus. When I hear these kinds of comments coming from Christians, I’m tempted to go “Jesus vs. The Money Changers” crazy and shut everybody down. But enough is already written in their Bibles, which they are obviously not reading well.
Have you ever felt like one alone on an island in the middle of the ocean? I know there are a host of other Christians around me striving to walk in the fruit of the Spirit; however, the journey for me gets lonely sometimes when the faithful seem to cling to worldly notions more than taking their cues from Christ. I just don’t get why loving God and people is a Christian essential for me and not for everyone else.
Getting Down in the Pit
Maybe the question needs to be reworked. So let me start by addressing the two issues—homosexuality and xenophobia—in the comments above and use them in proxy to address the issue of loving others whoever they are.
Many Christians don’t know how to talk about homosexuality without feeling they must come down hard on it lest they be viewed as condoning. Yet the very ones who would claim they love everybody could never really have a friend who was gay, a person they could act the fool with, respect, and enjoy life together, because their own faith would be a jagged blade between them stabbing both ways.
I consider homosexual behavior sinful. But I also know that the deepest differences of opinion on any subject don’t necessarily have to divide. Christ’s approach was always toward the person. He understood that getting some people (of any habit) out of the rut might mean having to jump over into the slum with them and pulling them out. (No, I’m not advocating any type of gay therapy.) Why? It’s because people—those bearing the image of God—have primacy in the heart of God, and no distance is too greatly traversed to recover them. (I cover this topic in-depth in Communication Barriers Between Christians and Gays.)
It reads simply but is quite profound: We like to say that God loves the sinner and hates the sin, which is very true, but it doesn’t get us to what we need to see. Jesus shows us a God who chooses love for people over his contempt for sin. God, who is perfect love, hates sin with perfect disdain and yet his love for humankind is preferred to his love and need for justice. Thus, space is created for pardon, for redemption.
So for Christians, loving others with God’s heart is transforming to the one who receives it, and if that’s not happening, the problem is not with God.
As it relates to other cultures and people groups, Jesus was often criticized for associating with street people and those of the seedier side of society—and by those who felt they had a handle on their own righteousness. (Read “People of Your Kind!”) But Jesus’s message was broadly inclusive of everyone, especially the outsider.
It isn’t just the Great Commission where we are told to go to the four corners of the earth with the message. Jesus predicted (in Mark 12:1-12) a spiritual “fumble” that would bypass God’s chosen and bless the Gentile first in a way unintended. Further, in Christ’s final embodied scene in the Gospels, he instructs the disciples to wait for the Holy Spirit—the one who would enable them to bridge the barriers of culture—and take his message, as if in ever-widening concentric circles, to Jerusalem (home), Judea and Samaria (city, state, nation), and to “the ends of the earth.”
Crux of the Matter
So I come to my reworked question: What made Jesus so approachable? And, he being God, why was it easy for him to mingle with sinners? It is more of that which we so desperately need. Moreover, why can’t all Christ followers see that loving God through people really is a Christian essential? What Christ shows me is that the faith God offers is amazingly well suited to human need. To say even this is an understatement, for God has made us to need him. It is a wonderful thing that is sorely missed by those who take the lesser road.
God needs us Christians to acquaint their Lord. Without intimacy we will not have God’s heart or understand his ways. We must live in the words of Christ, think through the scriptures, deliberate with our faith, and follow the Holy Spirit who reveals Christ perfectly. When we do, we’ll lend credibility to the Christian name and others will come to know the Lord, if only by observing that he truly dwells in us.
“Master, carest thou not that we perish?” This is Mark 4:38 in the King James Version. I love its poetic tone. If it were you or me today, about to be marooned at the bottom of the sea, we’d say, “JESU-US! Get up! We’re about to die here!” Jesus must have been “in the zone” when the disciples shook him awake, fear in their eyes.
Moreover, their inquiry, so rhetorical and profound, is quite revealing of our human limitation. Plight and hardship comes to everyone in some way. When it enters our lives and we’ve reached the limit to what we can handle, we often frantically search for answers using questions that would be reproachful and unthinkable in an ordinarily peaceful state of mind.
“What did I do to deserve this? Am I so evil that…? Do you really love me? If you’re God, then why don’t you just…?” We become sarcastic and harsh, not unlike the Israelites—“You mean to tell me we left our life in Egypt to get out here and waste away?” It’s not just the sinners who talk to God this way; the saints do it, too, when the heat gets too hot, if only in their hearts.
I am not being critical; if it helps, I’ve been one to gripe this way. And I’m certainly not defending God who regularly demonstrates his capability of handling our weakness. I can appreciate the fact of my limited capacity; it’s part of our nature. But there will be times in life where a higher level remedy is needed, and, thankfully, it is available to us. Further, it’s useful to pause and reflect with some sense of self-estimation. I am frail; God is strong. In his wisdom, he permits the storm from time-to-time to help me discover my strength in his or to prove it.
Pain is never easy but always purposeful. When God allows a storm in our lives, he uses it within his plan. We should always be better after storms than before them, but the outcome isn’t the focus here. This is not unlike storms themselves: they (and God) don’t give us time to focus on conclusions lest we miss the lessons God is attempting to teach us. Storms must be endured, for it is in our persistence, not our escape attempts, that God reveals things about us and him. We must trust him that we’ll land safely ashore when it ends.
God uses pain in our lives to make us move and achieve mature responses he’s waiting on. Hardship always forces us in some way: to uproot, to plant, to build, to tear down, to eliminate, to renovate…something. The “fire” puts us in action.
When I was a boy, one summer day my brother and I (with adults) had to cross a newly paved thoroughfare in our town on a very hot, cloudless day. We decided to do it barefooted! (The pavement was so smooth and beautiful, okay!) We assumed that the road wasn’t all that hot, plus we’d be on the other side in seconds. Unfortunately, we got halted in the middle of the road by oncoming traffic for far longer than we expected, and our shoes were inaccessible to us. Drivers got a free hootenanny that day! Our poor feet nearly burned to nubs!
Likewise, the heat in our lives is a grace that jolts us into action to achieve results God desires for us and that we would certainly desire for ourselves.
The storms we go through are tough, but God, addressing our questioning and limited understanding, explains that it’s designed to be that way. Yet we have his promise that the storms will never destroy us. When we have nothing more to latch onto for help, we will learn to cry out for God, which should be instructive. God desires to show us how reaching for him and his spiritual provisions should be our first response in whatever we face, whether times are good or bad.
I imagine that in their moment of fright the disciples were certain that everyone, including Jesus, was going down. Isn’t that like our human frailty, to see God as subject to the terms and conditions that life places on us. And that’s when the Lord makes a demand: “Where’s your faith?” Not that we possess no faith…not to berate or belittle us, but to call out of us, with the same authority he rebuked the wind and sea, the faith lying small within.
True godliness has a way of making self-righteousness expose itself. Time after time in the Gospels, we find the religious leaders at odds with Jesus for something: his miracles, his teaching, the disciples, Sabbath violations. He could do nothing right in their eyes when all he ever did was good. He was also in constant trouble for his associations.
In the Gospels, Jesus catches flak for keeping company with two people of the same trade: Levi and Zacchaeus, both tax collectors. The scriptures clearly express the disgust the public bore for tax collectors, but that contempt wasn’t without reason. Let me explain.
Who Were the Publicans?
Rome ruled Judea at this time. A system of tax farming had already been established by the Roman government more than 100 years earlier. This system was a method of reassigning the responsibility of collecting a tax. The censor, with various public agencies including some financial duties, and concurrently with his five-year term, leased out public revenue for a region into the hands of the highest bidding private citizens or groups (companies).
These persons (NT: chief tax collectors) would pay fixed rents into the treasury and receive the right to make a profit on the revenue for the five-year term. Then, they would hire others (NT: tax collectors) who would actually deal with the public and collect the revenue.
These publicans, a term used for all tax collectors and other roles they served, were held responsible for any losses. So abuse pervaded the profession, namely extortion, not only to ensure the full revenue, but also to allow the collectors to make the most money they could. Dishonesty was more than common; it was expected and generally true of publicans.
In Judea, tax collectors were Jews and viewed as working for Rome, extorting fellow Jews. The scorn was immense. They were degraded as the worst of sinners. They were ineligible to be judges and even witnesses. Their families were stigmatized by the profession so that it would be clear in a court of law that such persons were probably untruthful, also.
More than likely, people took up the publican profession with a view of getting wealthy because the law permitted their abuses by turning a blind eye. Publicans knew they wouldn’t be liked, and I imagine most were ambitious, aggressive, thick-skinned individuals. In the Gospels, Matthew is a tax collector in Capernaum and Zacchaeus is a chief tax collector in Jericho.
Jesus, Full of Grace and Truth
So “pretty shocking” is an understatement in expressing how people feel when Jesus dines with both Matthew and Zacchaeus. Mark describes Jesus as eating with “tax collectors and sinners” (2:15), and the Pharisees, the moral police who always seem to hang around Jesus, got fed up and pulled the disciples aside and asked why. Jesus spoke up: “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners” (v. 17).
Be very afraid when religion grants you “Me and Jesus” status and makes everyone else outsiders, even if they do bad things. The only way we can save sinners is by empathizing with them, which forces us to remember that once we didn’t have ourselves together either. Jesus found us somewhere in a dump, even the best of us. This means, we have something in common with the sinner, whether it is the same sin or simply our fallen condition. We fully understand what it’s like to be in sin and to struggle with it daily.
And what a personality Jesus was! He forced the religious to recognize their graceless, entitled, self-righteous ways and transformed those who had set religion aside to indulge their sin. Further, he wasn’t afraid to engage sinners. He went where they were, and this must have made a statement to them about his character. Sometimes we don’t approach people because we’ve scandalized them—we’ve turned them into their vice. When we do that, we shut the door of grace to them.
“She’s a prostitute.” “He’s gay.” “They sell drugs.” “She’s a gang leader.” These are “bad sins” and, in our eyes, they make these people unreachable. (Did you hear all those doors slamming?) But Paul says, “And such were some of you” (1 Cor. 6:11).
Let us never forget that just because people choose a wrong path, not only does it mean that grace remains available to them, it more importantly means that they’re not immune to being hurt by how people treat them. They’re still people; words and characterizations still cause pain. Christians, especially, run the risk of pushing these folk away from God forever if we don’t prove the great love awaiting them.
Jesus finds worth in Matthew; he calls this tax collector to preach his gospel. To Zacchaeus, whose wealth Luke candidly acknowledges, Jesus announces, “Salvation has come to this house” (Luke 19:9).
In Luke 18:10-14, Jesus tells the parable of—guess who?—the Pharisee and the tax collector, in the presence of the Pharisees. (Can it get any better!) It is riveting and emotional and a great final word on this discussion:
Two men went up to a temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’ But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’ I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.
Serve only the Lord. Keep God first, before every other thing. Revere God and represent him truthfully. Rest and celebrate God’s faithfulness to you. Honor the leadership of your parents. Respect life, bodily and emotionally. Enjoy sexual things only within the sacred bond of marriage. Cherish the things you own and work for new […]
Jesus’s encounter with the rich young ruler is fascinating. Unfortunately, the most we ever retain of it is the command for the man to give away his fortune and his walking away disappointed. But it’s the rest of the story and Jesus’s insight on the human heart that makes this account intriguing.
We know from the story itself that this gentleman was young, rich, and some type of ruler, perhaps of a synagogue or political institution. We also know that he was eagerly devout but now troubled in his spiritual life, which brought him to Jesus.
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In my mind, I always envision this guy as the newbie executive, good-looking and not long out of grad school, boasting a remarkable resume and impeccable work record and reputed to be a go-getter. Everyone loves being around him, even the old-heads. But, although he’s sharp and soaring to the top, he still needs some tweaking, and he runs smack into the one who can help him the most see what he’s missing.
This man finds Jesus on his way out of town. He respectfully bows, acknowledging Jesus’s status as a great teacher. Then he makes a mistake—“Good teacher…” The mistake isn’t apparent to us because we don’t share the language or cultural context in which it was expressed. Surely we consider Jesus a good teacher in every possible sense.
Yet Jesus stops him…on a technicality. The word good—the way it was conveyed—denotes intrinsic goodness and was mainly used when referring to Jehovah. Jesus challenges the man’s needless flattery: “Why do you refer to me with such divine language but respect me as a mere man?” There was much Jesus could’ve said to affirm his divinity with the statement, but this wasn’t the point. Instead, it is a lesson about simplicity and avoiding pretension that this “executive” quickly learns with Jesus.
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So what was he to do to inherit eternal life? Something agitated this young man. He was devout but searching, and his audience with the great Galilean had come. Jesus points him to the Law of Moses to which he discloses his lifelong history of discreet living.
There is a correlation here between this man and the seeker. What we see in the ruler is an awakened spiritual conscience being drawn by the Holy Spirit. We should not doubt his words to Jesus that he had obeyed the precepts of God as best he could. But Jesus, already knowing the condition of his heart, lures him to a perch in his own soul where he could perceive that religion-by-the-book falls terribly short of unbridled devotion from the heart.
“One thing you lack,” Jesus tells him. This was the climactic moment this Jesus admirer had long awaited. He was going to get the solution to his problem. “Go, sell everything you have.” What! This was no letdown; it was a shock. But he was cornered, and he understood exactly what Jesus was telling him.
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Jesus wasn’t condemning this man’s status, wealth, or reputation. Instead, he was attacking the covetousness that festered in his heart. Money had a grip on this man’s life, and his devotion to God, something he treasured, suffered because of it. Jesus’s instruction was a major test that served to reveal the root problem—idolatry—that prevented him from having the peace he sought.
Jesus asked him to do the impossible for himself—for someone else it could be the directive to end a relationship, to quit a job or activity, or to assume a responsibility. The command, whatever it is, exposes what might be controlling us, and within it we always face a decision. Unfortunately for this man, covetousness proved that he could not freely serve God because he would not.
Before I move on, notice something Jesus said: “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and then you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” Does that formula sound familiar? The text explains that Jesus had a fondness for this guy. Surely Jesus appraised his inner purity and strength of character.
Was he inviting this gentleman to be part of his circle…a disciple? The other twelve had indeed left everything behind to follow Jesus. Certainly, there was some type of ministry Jesus intended for him. Here was a break this young executive could’ve only imagined, but his heart wouldn’t allow him to have it.
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After the man leaves Jesus dejected, Jesus exclaims, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God!” In fact, he says it twice. Then, he states something incredibly revealing: “With man this is impossible, but not with God; all things are possible with God.”
He speaks of the transformation of the heart, with regard to the rich who have idolized their wealth but not limited to them. The verse is similar to those given in Genesis (18:14) and Jeremiah (32:27) where the reference is more about physical might: “Is anything too hard for the Lord?” Of course, Jesus would aim the notion toward the heart.
What is possible is the ability for the human heart to overcome even the strongest vices by God’s grace. It may be incredibly difficult and people might never believe it about one, but God will help us, if we let him.
And is this not the gospel? Isn’t this the fullest expression of the cross? That we need not be dominated…mastered by sin…controlled by our weaknesses? After a while sin isn’t fun anymore. Jesus offers us freedom.
(Drawn from Matt. 19:16-30; Mark 10:17-31; Luke 18:18-30)
The parable of the sower is rich teaching. Jesus tells the story of a farmer who sows seed, and he focuses on what happens with the seed based on four conditions where it lands: the pathway, the sandy soil, the weeds, and the cultivated ground.
Then, Jesus offers a spiritual rendition of the scenarios. (Read it in Matthew 13:18-23.) He contrasts the effects of the pathway, sandy soil, and weed-ridden ground with the cultivated land to explain why the seed will not grow. His discourse is somewhat inductive as well, as though to clarify that the word of God flourishes only in good ground—resultant of deeply planted seed, wholesome soil, and weeded ground.
But there’s more.
Seeing What’s Possible
There is none of us who reads this parable and does not say in our hearts, “I want to be good ground.” It is because we truly desire to please God and know that we worship him best with the beauty of holy lives. Yet the holy life is gradually gained, or lifelong in scope. We live in a constant tug-o-war of yielding to the Holy Spirit or our carnal desires.
This is what makes the parable so pertinent to our devotion: it envisions ideal spirituality. It shows us a picture of the heart in which faith is permitted to deeply implant itself and flourish.
A parable is a comparison, and Jesus used them masterfully. I do not seek to explain this parable; instead, I wish to draw attention to Jesus’s pedagogy. What is interesting with the sower parable is his use of contrast to create an appreciable and lasting point in the minds of his hearers. He leads us through the three adverse conditions to help us better understand the character of a good heart.
I think that’s important because sometimes envisioning the ideal is difficult. We can theoretically understand ideal conditions but have no clue about how to attain them or have no expectation because we’ve always lived in defeated circumstances where the ideal was merely surviving, not thriving.
Could I Ever…
My sister relocated with her job and purchased a home with a large backyard that was completely overgrown with weeds, thicket, and trees. I would often stand on the deck and imagine what the yard would actually look like with grass and recreational spaces.
It is not unlike outsiders who want to know more about Christ but doubt they could ever live as a Christian. It is not unlike Christians who wonder how they might ever overcome certain sin patterns or live a joyfully devout spiritual life. So God envisions it for us. He has shown us the fruit of the Spirit, the love of God, Spirit-empowered ministry, and Jesus Christ himself.
It is an act of his grace to first say, “Let me show you why this isn’t working for you.” Let me show you why you’re frustrated in this area…why your efforts consistently fail here. It is because (back to the parable) this is unwholesome soil; this is weeds; and this isn’t even planted. “But now let me show you what you’ve really been wanting!”
You see, God gets us to desire his vision for us by using where we are to point the way to something better. We often dream and say, “Now wouldn’t it be good if…” To that God says, “That’s it!—and it is for you.”
And what is for us? A fertile heart with a bumper crop of righteousness. It will be the result of our being conscientiously introspective, determined to please the Lord, and open to the Spirit’s work in our hearts.
In Mark 10, after the rich young ruler parted ways with Jesus, the Lord exclaims, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God!” (v. 23) Having everything in this life, we could end up bankrupt in the next because our hearts are spiritually unkempt, thus unproductive.
But Jesus didn’t end it there: “With man this is impossible, but not with God; all things are possible” (v. 27). God has the power to make us see differently, to change our minds, to help us groom our hearts for godliness.
Joyful are they who keep a humble opinion of themselves, for the treasures of the life of faith belong to them. Joyful are they who grieve for their sins, for they shall have lasting spiritual comfort. Joyful are they who with patience endure injury, for they shall receive abundantly in this life. Joyful are they […]
It was election season and I worked with a Christian woman who was also a staunch Democrat. We often enjoyed spirited conversation on politics and the presidential candidates. One day I decided to explore her ideas on a hot-button topic, same-sex marriage, one her camp supports. “It’s not for me,” she said, “but I can’t judge them. I can’t judge what they do because I don’t have a heaven or hell to put them in.”
I was disappointed with her response, tinged with relativist notions and biblically questionable. She finished: “The Bible says, ‘Judge not that ye be not judged.’”
Who Gets to Judge?
I think society and many Christians get what it means to judge wrong. My friend cited God giving us free will to do as we please. This was meant to suggest that we all possess the right to act on our own terms and that, in the end, judgment belongs to God. Who are we to speak out against another’s action when God has given that person the freedom to do it?
So I countered: Is the preacher wrongly passing judgment every Sunday when he cries out against sin and evil? Is the parent being unduly judgmental when he or she cracks down on a teen’s misbehavior? Her response was that her opinion doesn’t matter. Whatever she could say would indeed be to wrongly judge another; however, if she added that it was wrong because God said so, then it held weight and was a worthy judgment.
Semantics? Confusion about to judge? A cop-out? Or nonsense? I can accept that being a follower of Christ may give me little room for personal opinion, but how could this bar me from judging, or forming opinions about others and issues? If anything, it should mean that I am more resolute in my beliefs.
I argued that each day I act, reason, and make decisions based on my convictions, amongst people and apart from them. But I don’t necessarily have to add that God approves or disapproves the what-why-and-how of my actions or any other’s. It also brought me to a major point in our discussion: Everyone judges.
Judging others is a very natural thing we humans do. Even animals judge. Humans are highly rational creatures and, with complex minds, live each day assessing things, ideas, and other people. Further, we make decisions based on those assessments, which are informed by many factors, including spiritual and moral beliefs. We naturally judge (or analyze), need to judge (or scrutinize) for survival, and will judge (or inspect) daily.
The Best Way We Judge
The scriptures do not refute this. The New Testament speaks about judging in several places; however, the inclination is never about whether we judge, but how we judge.
We get it wrong for a simple reason: We don’t know what the Bible says. So let’s start where my interlocutor did, in Matthew 7:1 and Jesus preaching his Sermon on the Mount. The verse does say, “Do not judge, or you too will be judged”—but what does this mean?
Jesus is advising against harsh, condemnatory, and unjust moral assessments about another person. The next five verses do more to explain. Verse 2 warns that cruel judgments have a way of finding their way back to us, not from God but our fellow man. It is in verses 3-6, however, that the first verse is best clarified.
In a humorous stroke Jesus questions the people about looking into the eyes of their brethren and pointing out “specks,” or personal flaws but doing so with 2×4 beams sticking out of their heads! His illustration suggests that a person is unable to properly assess another’s flaw because he himself is not seeing clearly to do so being blinded by his own greater flaw.
The point is that one of the best ways we judge is by taking careful inventory of ourselves before we chance to rule on others. Thus, making private, weighty character assessments about people, whether we wish to call it Christian or not, is a moral matter and should never be done hastily, with cruelty, or in an unforgiving manner.
The Moral Guard Within
Paul adds a notable thought in 1 Cor. 2:15 where he says, “But he who is spiritual judges all things, yet he himself is rightly judged by no one” (NKJV). Paul had been contrasting natural wisdom and spiritual wisdom, indicating that the two are incompatible and that the natural, or carnal, man is incapable of attaining Spirit-derived concepts.
Then (v. 15), he says that a person born of God is capable of analyzing all things because he does it by the Spirit and according to God’s moral self-disclosure, although this person himself is not easily understood by others.
It is a startling equivalence to Jesus’s own words to Nicodemus in John 3:6, 8 where he says, “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit;” then, “The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit” (NKJV).
The importance of both Jesus’s and Paul’s words is not merely the contrast between spiritual and earthly knowledge. They also draw attention to the moral front that God has placed in the earth in his people and, by common grace, in the hearts of all who endeavor to do right.
It is why the world doesn’t fly apart in chaos and evil. It is why we have public defenders, police, judges, prosecutors, and policy advocates—to bolster truth and justice and eliminate wrongdoing. Paul calls these people the “ministers” of God (Rom. 13:4, NKJV).
Further, to claim that judgment solely belongs to God, as my friend did, would be to risk forsaking what God has to say (or has said) explicitly about a matter. Christians should always be taking their cues from the Spirit of God, just as Jesus did (cf. John 5:30), for such is what permits us to preach in pulpits and move beyond there to protest in the public square and pound the pavement against social evils.
How We Judge Others
Now, how do we judge? There are a few biblical insights to learn here that are difficult to deal with independently because they operate together in scripture. So I will list them all and then present them in biblical scenario.
Christians are to judge: 1) lovingly, 2) considering the state of the other person, 3) restoratively, and 4) with pure motives.
There are a few places in the New Testament where we find these lessons. In both Romans 14 and 1 Cor. 8, the apostle Paul discusses issues Christians were having concerning certain foods and meat. In Romans, the issue concerned converts that were hesitant about foods their personal faith outlawed; in Corinthians, the concern was whether Christians should purchase and eat meat that had been used in idol worship. What Paul has to say regarding each scenario is very interesting and worthy of study.
For here, however, the scenarios serve to backdrop a Christian civil duty, and it is Paul’s response that needs a thorough examination.
Paul’s position is best summed up in Rom. 14:21: “It is better not to eat meat nor drink wine or to do anything else that will cause your brother or sister to fall.” What is more important to see, however, is how Paul deals with the fact that many people had begun to make judgments about others based on their decisions to participate or not in certain foods.
For instance, in 1 Cor. 8:1, he begins by quoting the people, then turning their argument back on them. I will paraphrase here since most translations don’t showcase what’s happening: “Now concerning things offered to idols: You say, ‘We have full knowledge that idols are nothing’—and you’re right. But it is not knowledge that matters here. What we know often gives us a big head and leads us astray! It is love, however, that builds folk up, and love is what matters regarding your weaker brother.”
It merges into the point the apostle makes in Romans 14 that any judging we do of others must be done fully considerate of a person’s state of need. People act based on their maturity level. Those who are more advanced should not be critical of those that are immature or whose faith they know little about (and vice versa, but Paul places more responsibility on the stronger brother.)
Paul makes the case that we are not to judge our brethren unfairly because we all belong to the Lord, and we are not to judge all others unfairly because, ultimately, all judgment does indeed belong to God and we are stewards of his righteousness and not lords of our own opinion.
Judging and Restoring
Moreover, to act with love and consideration means that judging others will be restorative. It will give light whereby a person may see their shortcomings or wrong. (One cannot repent from sin he cannot see.)
Galatians 6:1 is the hallmark scripture here: “Brothers and sisters, if someone is caught in a sin, you who live by the Spirit should restore that person gently. But watch yourselves, or you may also be tempted.” It is the exact message of Matthew 7:1, John 3:6, 8, and 1 Cor. 2:15 with the extra note that we have the same capacity to harbor the very sin we may wish to condemn in others.
Finally, our judging others must be done with pure motives. In Colossians 2, Paul warns Christians to avoid those that would seek to deceive them through philosophies and a reversion to works religion. These people, taking advantage of the apostle’s absence, hassled the fledgling church with the many requirements of the Law of Moses, plus added their own stipulations as a means of controlling the people.
A sound study of this chapter produces a real distinction between God’s law, which was good, and human legalism. The legalistic injunctions these people used to sway the church represent not only impure motive, but also a lack of moral respect.
False and censorious judgment is a moral trespass and the kind of disrespect often highlighted in the Prophets as drawing the indignation of God. What we cannot miss in scripture is that God is a God of love, but he is also a God who loves justice. He desires justice in the earth because he is righteous and cares about civil order and fairness.
It is difficult to believe that a Christian stranded of conviction and confused about his or her role in stemming the tide of darkness brings God much glory. That person will collapse beneath the weight of a small inquisition.
A 'Mike' for Christ 