CarlZunker.com

Are we willing to tell everyone about the things we enjoy, or is it better to keep some things hidden in the dark? Why do we want to keep some things out of the light? One answer is that light exposes what we would rather keep hidden. When sin is brought into the light, its ugliness becomes undeniable. Not because we never knew it was wrong, but because we can no longer ignore what it is. At other times, we suppress the truth instead of simply failing to see it. We lie to ourselves. However it gets in, sin is like junk in our soul; things we love but hide because they are shameful, or things we have convinced ourselves are not shameful, just not anyone else’s business. Before we know Christ, we mistake sin for treasure because it sits in a dark, secret place, never fully examined.

When we shine a light on that junk, we recognize we don’t want it; it’s not worth keeping. Most hoarders don’t want people in their homes because of shame. Sin is much the same. If we are not walking with Christ, we don’t shine a light on that sin. We think it’s not junk at all, it’s something precious. If someone asks why we have all those worthless things, we get defensive. We haven’t seen it clearly ourselves, so how could someone else possibly call it junk? Some people view their trash as treasure. What happens when we ask a brother or sister in Christ about the sin we see in their lives? Matthew 7:1-2 gets brought up almost immediately.

“Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you” (NIV).

Some people just read the first 3 words. Do not judge, full stop. Ignore John 7:24, 1 Corinthians 5:12-13, 1 Corinthians 6:2-3, or the rest of the verse in Matthew 7:3-5. We must look past appearances, check ourselves first, focus on the church family, and aim for restoration. Then we are called to judge rightly. Do not condemn. Do not assume motives. Help correct others knowing we will also be judged with the measure we use.

How do we want to be judged by others? We should want to be corrected, not condemned. That gives us the guidelines for how we judge others. We judge King Saul in 1^st Samuel 13 and 15 because of his actions without giving much thought to the circumstances surrounding his actions. Specifically, Saul offered the burnt offering when Samuel did not arrive on time and kept plunder after being commanded not to. Those are examples of his disobedience to God without any context. There is no excuse for Saul’s disobedience, but context helps us understand the circumstances surrounding his actions. I don’t want to assume someone’s heart based solely on their actions; I want them to understand how their actions can be perceived regardless of their intent. What does this look like in practice?

In John 7:24, Jesus tells the crowd, “Stop judging by mere appearances, and make a right judgment.” It’s an instruction to judge correctly, instead of judging on the surface. Paul makes a sharp distinction in 1 Corinthians 5:12-13: “What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside.” Paul explicitly tells the Corinthian church to judge one another; he’s rebuking them for tolerating sin within the body, not for judging too much. None of these texts support a blanket “do not judge.” They support judging rightly, judging within the body, and judging with the standard we ourselves will be measured by, which is exactly what Matthew 7:1-2 says, if we read past the first sentence.

Sometimes our resistance to judging others comes from a legitimate fear of being judged in return. It’s easier to limit our interpretation of scripture, to remove the opportunity to be corrected ourselves, than it is to let scripture change how we view the world. We all must start with our personal analysis of scripture, but we can’t stop there. We have a lot of interpretive help and resources at our fingertips, but we need to use the correct tools instead of simply listening to the loudest voices or to what already aligns with our perspective.

 Why do we value our own understanding so highly? How do we miss the full context of the teachings about judging (and many, many other things)? Hebrews 5:12-14 explains why some people will try to compress multiple layers of context into a simply binary 1 or 0, black or white with no gray. It says, “In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil” (NIV).

Hebrews 5 is not a weapon to call others immature. It’s a reminder to all of us that discernment requires growth, practice, and humility. We can’t say someone is simply “immature” and we are “mature” because we disagree with their perspective. There are serious and devout Christians who believe that we should not judge. Their concerns are not naïve; they are often rooted in real wounds from churches that used judging as a cover for control or gatekeeping. For every extreme in not wanting to judge, there is an equal and opposite extreme in wanting to be the morality police, judging everything. Both extremes are variations of the same failure, just pulling in opposite directions.

It’s easier to understand simple instructions than to apply context in our discernment. We can recognize that some people are still drinking milk instead of eating solid food, but we don’t condemn people for getting nourishment. If we have an ability to do so, we should try to help others expand their menu with love, patience, and understanding.

Matthew 7:3-5 continues with, “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.” We are told to take the plank out of our eye first and then remove the spec from our brother’s eye, not to let our brother keep the spec. We need to clean up our own junk. An active hoarder is not a very good example to correct another hoarder, but a reformed hoarder may be able to effectively lead someone to change.

Another analogy is to think of a 5-gallon bucket full of water that has trash floating on the top. It has potato chip bags, soda cans, and crumpled plastic stuff. It’s gross. Because I see the stuff floating, I know it’s not clean water to drink. Before we come to Christ, we are often comfortable with trash in our bucket. But as we draw near to God, we begin to recognize the trash for what it is, and we want it removed. The water starts to look okay from the outside, but we still shouldn’t drink it. Not when we know about germs and all the problems that can come from drinking unpurified water. If we take the trash out of our bucket and start telling everyone how clean it is now, other people may still suspect our water is not good. We may talk the talk, but do we walk the walk? People are more likely to listen to any correction we offer if we are drinking from our own bucket.

Believers are called to judge without condemnation. That means discerning what is right and wrong without pretending to know another person’s heart, pronouncing their final standing before God, or placing ourselves above them. I won’t tell people to drink water from my bucket because I have cleaned it, I am not claiming to be a better Christian. The answer isn’t that we finally learned how to clean our own bucket. Christ gives us living water. I will drink that in front of anyone to show them what is possible. What if I see someone else drinking from a dirty bucket? Do I just let them, or do I try to help them understand that it is not safe? We need to help others clean their junk, help them get living water in their bucket and clean the trash. It is also allowing others to help us clean our junk too. It’s not talking down to people with a dirty bucket. It’s not celebrating people doing things their own way. It’s correction that comes from a place of love, not a place of superiority.

R.C. Sproul says, “Christians have nothing to be smug about; we are not righteous people trying to correct the unrighteous. As one preacher said, ‘Evangelism is just one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread.’” I am not special because I recognize my junk is not treasure, I cannot be smug because I have living water in my bucket, I didn’t do anything. God did everything for me, because we cannot do it on our own. But God put people in my path to breathe into my life, to point out first the planks in my eyes, and then as they got close, the specs they could see. Not because they are better for not having planks and specs, but because they had theirs removed as well.

There are 3 takeaways from this missive. Number one, discern if the people you are listening to are on milk or solid food, understanding what your own diet requires. Second, inspect yourself to see if you have planks in your own eyes, and then check your brothers and sisters in Christ for planks. Are we hoarding junk, or is our bucket polluted? We are called to help the people we love identify the obvious things, then we can start asking people to check our eyes for specs and check their eyes as well. Third, always look to see if complicated topics are being reduced to a false dichotomy. This discussion is not as simple as being called to judge or to not judge, it’s about considering scripture as a whole. Scripture does not contradict itself, but it builds upon a solid foundation. We know the foundation is Jesus Christ, but an incomplete understanding of that foundation can lead to building ineffectively. We cannot focus on one teaching at the expense of all other teachings. We must hold everything in proper tension. We can only do that correctly by spending more time in the Word, getting to know our Father.