Judging Your Neighbor

A young couple moved into a new neighborhood. On their first morning in the new house, while they were eating breakfast, the young woman saw her neighbor hanging the laundry outside. “That laundry is not very clean,” she observed. “She doesn’t know how to wash clothes correctly. Maybe she needs better detergent.” Her husband looked on, but remained silent. 

Every time her neighbor would hang her laundry to dry, the young woman would make the same comments. About a month later, the woman was surprised to see a nice clean load of laundry on the line and said to her husband, “Look, she has finally learned how do laundry. I wonder who taught her?” The husband said, “I got up early this morning and cleaned our windows.”

It is easy for us to see fault in other people, but it seems a little more difficult to see fault in ourselves. That is part of why we often become guilty of improperly judging people. When we judge, we often use hypocritical judgment, holding people to a standard that we do not meet ourselves. We may even be guilty of judging people for something we are secretly involved in. When we judge, we need to use righteous, not hypocritical, judgment. 

I’ve lost count of the number of times I have heard people remind Christians that they are supposed to “judge not,” but that sadly misses the point of what Jesus was saying. His point was that we will be judged in the same way that we judge others, so we better judge properly. To say judge not and then stop short of the rest of Jesus’ message is to fail to understand that Jesus actually does want us to judge, so long as we do it His way. 

He continued: “And why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye?  Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me remove the speck from your eye;’ and look, a plank is in your own eye? Hypocrite! First remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye (Matthew 7:3-5).”

Did you notice the hypocrisy He condemns? Calling out someone for sin in their life (a speck—which was like a twig), while you have even more sin in your own life (a plank) is hypocrisy. But do not miss the last part: once you have removed the plank of sin from your eye, Jesus expects you to help your brother or sister remove the speck of sin in their lives. This necessarily involves judging the person to assess the speck. 

The key is learning how to judge without being judgmental. We must never look down our nose or point accusing fingers, and this is a passage about helping those inside the church, not yelling at the unsaved. Jesus went on to say in John 7:24, “Do not judge according to appearance, but judge with righteous judgment.” Let us be righteous judges for Jesus.