Judgement That’s Loving

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| Don’t Judge… Help series |

• Don’t Judge.
• Don’t Judge… Help!
• Judgement That’s Loving
• What Does Judging/Helping Look Like?

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How do we reconcile love with judgment? How do we balance mercy and judgment? Are we even supposed to make judgments? We’ve been in a series exploring Jesus’ instruction in Matthew 7 to “Judge not, that you be not judged.” In exploring this passage, Jesus illustrates this command by telling us to remove the log from our own eye so that we can see clearly to help our brother with the speck in his. However, in seeing this speck in our brother aren’t we making a judgment?

More to the point, how do we reconcile Jesus instruction to “not judge” with other verses in the Bible which instruct us to make judgements like 1 Corinthians 5:12: “Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge?”, or John 7:24: “Judge with right judgement.” I’m excited to explore this together today as we find the reconciliation for these things in nothing less than God’s character demonstrated through Jesus’ life.

Did Jesus Judge?

So, did Jesus judge? In John 8:15, Jesus says “I judge no one”. But there are several examples where it seems that Jesus did express a judgement:

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.

Matthew 23:15

But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.”

Matthew 16:23

How do we reconcile this? Moreover, what was the nature of Jesus’ judgements and what does that teach us about what judgement is supposed to look like?

Not Our Judgement

Right after Jesus said, “I judge no one”, he went on to say: “Yet even if I do judge, my judgment is true, for it is not I alone who judge, but I and the Father who sent me.” (John 8:16) So, Jesus clarifies for us that whenever He did express a judgment, it was not His own judgment. This reflects what we discussed last time: The only way that we can see clearly enough to help remove the speck is to rely on God’s judgement.

We know that God does not judge by appearances like people do, but He judges by the heart (1 Samuel 16:7). So, when Jesus said: “Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment.” (John 7:24), He was teaching us to follow His example and rely not on our own judgment but on God’s. Why is this important?

We know that our judgment is not reliable. More to the point, whenever we make our own judgment, we are puffing ourselves up and looking down on someone. In explaining this, Jesus said:

“As I hear, I judge, and my judgment is just, because I seek not my own will but the will of him who sent me.”

John 5:30

Not Condemnation

This Greek word for “judge” is just as broad as the English one. It can mean simply “to separate (distinguish)”, but it is can also mean “to condemn”.  We know that Jesus did not come “to condemn the world, but to save the world” (John 3:17) and that word “condemn” is this same Greek word for “judge”. So, when Jesus expressed a judgment, His goal was not to condemn. If not to condemn, what was His goal in expressing judgment?

Consider how, in describing condemnation, Romans 1:18-32 does not say that God expressed His judgement. Instead, it says that God simply let them “do whatever shameful things their hearts desired” (Romans 1:24, NLT). This is because sin carries its own condemnation, its own consequence. In contrast to this, consider what Hebrews says about when God rebukes us:

My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him. For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives.

Hebrews 12:5-6

Just like John 3:17 says, His goal is not to condemn us but to save us, to save us from the damage that sin does.

Judgement That’s Loving

Let’s bring this all together with what we’ve learned from the passage in Matthew 7. We saw in our last two posts that Jesus was telling us not to judge others, but to help them. We saw that we do this by relying on God’s help to be able to “see clearly” to remove their speck, just like Jesus demonstrated reliance on God’s judgment rather than His own.

Furthermore, we can only help when we have a heart to help them. Just like Jesus, in relying on God’s guidance, we don’t seek our own desire; that is, our nature to put others down (condemn them) by our judgement. Instead, we seek God’s desire to save them from the damage that sin does.

So, in this way we see that the way Jesus did express judgement teach the same lessons He taught us in Matthew 7 after saying “do not judge”.  In other words, these verses don’t just reconcile with Matthew 7, they reinforce it. Rather than using our judgement to puff ourselves up, we rely on God’s loving judgement to help build one another up.

What does this look like though? And are we asked to do this with unbelievers as well as believers? It might surprise you to know that Jesus demonstrated what this looks like when He washed the disciple’s feet. Next time we’ll explore the parallels from when Jesus washed the disciples feet and we’ll talk about who we are called to help in this way. Don’t forget to subscribe!

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