Bible Verse of the Day Saturday May 27th 2023

Matthew 7:1–2 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.

 There was once a young couple that had bought their first house together. The first morning during breakfast, they saw the woman next door hanging out her laundry. The young bride commented that her laundry did not look very clean; she stated perhaps she needed to try a new laundry soap. The husband remained silent during these comments, and every time they saw their next-door neighbor hanging out her clothes, the wife always made some similar remark. Finally, after several weeks during breakfast, the wife commented on how her laundry looked so clean this morning and  that she must have changed laundry detergents. The husband said no, I washed our windows very early this morning. 

 

Some people find it easier to assume the worst about people than to give them the benefit of the doubt. However, when we jump to conclusions about our neighbors, we also reveal something about ourselves, for the faults we see in others are reflections of our weaknesses. This teaching of Jesus needs to be more widely understood. Instead, we often hear a common statement: Don’t judge me. Interestingly, this statement is the opposite application of Jesus’s lesson. Jesus is not telling others not to judge us; he’s telling us not to judge others. What others do is not our primary concern; what we do is our only concern. Our most significant problem is not how others judge us but how we judge others. When Jesus says, “Do not Judge,” he’s not prohibiting others judging us He is speaking against us judging others; he’s issuing a severe warning to take great care of how we judge others. We know this because Jesus goes on to say:

 Matthew 7:3–5  “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 must remember how faulty our perceptions are and how biases distort our judgment. We often think we understand what’s going on when we do not—love covering a multitude of sins (1 Peter 17:9). It is best not to judge at all because God himself does not propose to judge a person until they are dead, so why do we believe that we have any right to judge others.