Judge Not!

Matthew 7:1-5 Much of the Sermon on the Mount is concerned with perspective. The human tendency is to view and evaluate from our limited history and experience. We tend to judge by appearance and emotion based on our own limited experience. Ultimately God Himself is the only One able to rightly judge anything, because He is the only one who is able to view things from the perspective of the infinite relative to space and the eternal relative to time. We cannot “stand” where He does. The more our vision of who He is is expanded, and the more nearly we learn to view people and creation as He does, the more accurate we will be as we observe the things around us. The major problem with human judgment is the motivation behind it. It is almost never from the perspective of making things better for the one judged. All of the judgment of God is motivated by His great love. He only passes condemnatory judgement when love has done everything possible and all hope of repentance is gone. God pays us back for judgment according to His principle of sowing and reaping. The more you sow the more you reap. The more you prepare the ground the better the quality. The more you judge the more you will be judged. The more harshly you judge, the more harshly you will be judged. If our motivation is to love and to serve then we observe and evaluate (judge) for the purpose of discovering ways to serve, bless, enhance, reach for Christ, intelligently pray for, etc. But even then, with great care, tempered and controlled by the love of God.