Sayings of Jesus: “Do not judge” (Matt 7:1-2)
This saying of Jesus comes in what’s called the ‘Sermon on the Mount’ discourse, in Matthew chapters 5 through 7. Although these chapters are traditionally spoken of as ‘a sermon,’ it’s unlikely that the various teachings it comprises were delivered in that form at that one time and place. It’s probably a Matthean collation. Not that this in any way detracts from them; it’s likely that Jesus would have repeated many of the same things on several occasions. That’s evident in the less-well-known ‘Sermon on the Plain’ in Luke 6, where Jesus gives the same “Do not judge” teaching, paired with the same “speck and plank” teaching (that we’ll come on to). Sayings similar to those in the Sermon on the Mount are also found in Luke 11 and 12.
The full version is as follows: “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way as you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”
Like many of Jesus’ teachings, it’s very easy (too easy) to leap to an assumption about what he’s saying, which seems ‘obvious’ at first glance, and then realise on reflection that it may not be quite so straightforward after all. This one is a case in point. Let’s just think through the components. The verb “to judge” is obviously a judicial idea, borrowed from the courtroom, which means to render a verdict based on the evidence, objectively considered. In and of itself, “to judge” seems perfectly reasonable—indeed, it’s what qualified judges are employed to do. Judging is not only reasonable but necessary for the proper working of society. Why then did Jesus not nuance that accordingly? Something like, “Make sure you judge well—be sure to be objective and take full and proper account of all the evidence without fear or favour”? Instead, he plainly says not to judge at all.
It's not as if “judging” is something that Jesus himself shied away from. The clearing of the moneychangers from the temple precincts in Matthew 21 (and parallels) is a case in point. OK, I get that “we’re not Jesus,” so our capacity to judge is diminished. And yet, if we are to “copy Jesus” by becoming like him and imitating him in how we live (isn’t that by definition a disciple?), then surely at least some of that same “judging” should come with the territory.
Interestingly, a quick scan of New Testament references to “judging” people shows them mostly to be in the negative: “Don’t!” Some are quite explicit: for example, James 4:11–12 and Romans 14:10–13. The main exceptions seem to be in 1 Corinthians 6, where Paul encourages the church to judge (albeit “trivial”) cases between believers rather than have them take each other to court, and then the chapter before that, where Paul criticises the church for being indifferent to an egregious case of sexual immorality (someone sleeping with his father’s wife with impunity). These aside, the general thrust seems to be that we should not judge because judgment should ultimately be left to God.
Why, then, might that be so? One contextual factor may be that Jesus’ arguments with the religious leaders of his day (notably, Pharisees) seemed to centre on their propensity to judge people and place the interests of ‘doctrines’ (they wouldn’t have called them that, but that’s essentially what we’re talking about) over the interests of the well-being of people—people who were being harmed by the Pharisees’ demands concerning those doctrines. Some of that was a harsh, unkind application of the commandments in Torah, and some of it was man-made additions to Torah (technically, ‘interpretations’). Those who were particularly vulnerable to this holier-than-thou legalism (“I’m a Pharisee, and you need to be holy like me”) were the ordinary people, the poor people, who did not have the luxury of focusing on meticulous obedience to technical religious niceties when they were barely surviving. Jesus not only understood that, but he also made it clear that by insisting on judging people for compliance with their perceived doctrinal purities, these religious leaders were harming the people God loved. They had things the wrong way around: Torah was given for people’s benefit, not for God’s benefit (Mark 2:27). Loving God was not defined by how well you loved the law of God but by how well you loved the people of God (in Jesus’ opinion).
Does that have any resonance with our passage? I think it does. The second sentence is a warning not to kid ourselves that judging others harshly is for God’s benefit, that we’re doing it for him, and has no negative consequences for us. Jesus is saying, if you are going to judge others according to a certain standard or set of expectations, purportedly on God’s behalf, then be ready for God to apply the same to you. Given that, do you really want to be the one to cast the first stone (John 8:7)? How many stones might come back in your direction later on? There’s a lot that can be said about that ‘woman caught in adultery’ story, but one thing that’s clear is that for Jesus, deep empathy for that woman’s situation (about which we know nothing—and especially, what kind of hell her life might have been) was prioritised over judgement (the very opposite of the religious leaders’ approach).
Is there anything else that might help shed further light on this? I think the immediate context tells us more. Let’s look at the verses that follow, 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.”
One of the problems in our over-familiarity with passages such as this is that we rarely think Jesus is talking about us. He’s talking about those other people (fundamentalists, Calvinists, liberals, or whatever). He’s not talking about decent, respectable, Bible-believing, middle-class conservative evangelicals like you and me (well, me at least).
A ‘hypocrite’ is someone who insists on applying standards and expectations to another person or group of people that they do not apply to themselves. They justify this amorality by claiming their situation is ‘different’ from those other people’s. In a religious context (such as the ones that Jesus was facing), the most egregious element is that God’s name is invoked: “We are simply applying God’s standards and expectations.” This, no doubt, leads to the warning that Jesus is giving these people in v.2: “In the same way as you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” So, just be prepared for that.
Anything done wrongfully in God’s name is to be guilty of breaking the fourth commandment: “You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name” (Exodus 20:7). That includes, of course, judging others in God’s name. For further evidence, compare Matthew 7:22.
It might be argued in defence that ‘righteous’ judgments are exempt—that judging people by “what the Bible says” gets us off the hook. Surely God would want us to be doing that. But I’m not so sure we’ve got the biblical evidence to support it. Or the biblical certainty to support it. One thing’s for sure: we need to be very self-aware concerning the propensity for human nature to enjoy judging others, especially when we can say we’re doing it on God’s behalf (with a couple of proof-texts in our armoury).
But maybe the single biggest problem, and the reason God says not to, is that we’re just not very good at it.
If I’m upsetting the reader at this point, you’ve probably given up reading the article already! Let me add one further potentially unsettling ingredient for those who are still with us. We’re used to thinking of the Pharisees as “the bad guys” in the Gospels. But from their contemporaries’ perspective, they were the good guys. They were the ones who cared about slipping standards in society, who believed that if only we come against the lack of biblical holiness in (other) people’s lives, then we’ll see revival (defined, for them, as the coming of the Messiah). The dire straits that Israel was in, under Roman occupation, reflected God’s righteous judgment against the nation for embracing all this unholiness. The most shocking thing about what Jesus had to say to the Pharisees, the teachers of the law, and other community religious leaders—as it would have been perceived by the ordinary people—was that Jesus was completely upending the conventional religious assumptions about good guys and bad guys.
Let me close with an example of how all this might be applicable to today. It will be deliberately controversial (an attention-getter)—though surely no more controversial in its day than Jesus’ approach towards the woman caught in adultery or the Samaritan woman at the well (https://www.steveburnhope.com/blog/the-samaritan-woman-at-the-well).
Might there be a danger that some (obviously not all) conservative evangelicals could unwittingly be the Pharisees of today? What subject—what people group—might be an example of those conservative evangelicals being wrong by judging in God’s name, where we ought to be leaving it to God? Might it be same-sex partnerships, where heterosexual religious expectations are that homosexual people must be lifelong single and celibate (unlike most of them), with no life-partner and family to share love and companionship into old age (unlike most of them) and no covenantal outlet for the sexuality which is a natural feature of being human (unlike most of them)? Might Jesus think that this is placing the interests of a (disputed) doctrine over the (undisputed) interests of people? Does he want us to be judging in this way? Or perhaps people would say that I myself am doing the very thing I’m warning against—judging!
One thing’s for certain, based on these verses from Matthew 7—any of us judging anyone should want to be jolly sure that we’re right!