Daily Devotional

This verse popped up today and I found it very appropriate as I am currently going through the jury selection process known as voir dire as part of jury duty, something I think most of us dread. What is interesting is that I don’t think we dread jury duty because we don’t like judging or deciding things, we don’t like having our lives interrupted and forced to sit under endless instructions and government schedules. As humans we love to judge, to give our opinion on how others should live their lives. In fact I think we are very good at pointing out all the things our fellow humans are doing wrong and should be doing, but generally pretty bad at recognizing our own faults.

In this passage, Jesus is warning us to not judge others, lest we ourselves be judged by the same standard. What I don’t believe He is saying is to simply ignore other people’s sins or bad behavior. I believe we are called to call out sin and help each other recognize where we are stumbling, but there is a fine line here that can be easily crossed. Ultimately we are not God, and God is the only one that gets to judge. We can call things out in love, but ultimately God judges a person and their heart, as much as we might want that job.

However, the larger point here is to avoid being hypocritical. How are we to be taken seriously or win people to Christ if we are seen to be doing that which we are calling people out for? We can’t. The passage goes on to speak about examining ourselves first and removing the plank out of our own eye before we try to remove the speck out of our brother’s eye. In fact, oftentimes seeing others sinning, along with self-examination may lead to us discovering we are guilty of a sin we didn’t really think we were committing, allowing us to change our own behavior.

Ultimately we should be helping each other not to stumble and not to sin, but we must do so in love, and along with self-examination to make sure we are not being hypocritical or being legalistic. Remember there is a difference between God’s rules and man’s added rules. We should not ignore others' sins, but we must confront them in love, otherwise we are likely to be guilty ourselves.

"New King James Version (NKJV) Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved."