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8 Words

People love to quote the first two words of Luke 6:37, which are "Judge not." For many people that seems to be all of the verse (or even the entire Bible) that they actually know. Others will quote the first eight words of the verse, which are, “Judge not, and you will not be judged."

Jesus is not telling us not to judge, but is warning us that, once we start to judge, we need to expect to be judged by others. Those who "live and let live," who ignore other's sins in hopes that others will ignore theirs, are not doing anyone any favors. Rather than letting iron sharpen iron, we create spaces where sin flourishes, all while we pat ourselves on the back because we "judge not."

Jesus didn't tell us not to judge, but actually taught us how to judge, as John 7:24 says, "Do not judge according to appearance, but judge with righteous judgment." Judge is an imperative in Greek, an action verb; we are called to judge, so long as we do it the right way ("right judgment").

Part of how we judge properly is by not judging hypocritically, calling out people for doing the same thing we are doing in private. We need to be practicing what we preach. In Luke 6 Jesus continued His message on judging by saying, "Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me take out the speck that is in your eye,’ when you yourself do not see the log that is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take out the speck that is in your brother’s eye."

People love to focus on the eight words at the beginning of the passage, while ignoring the eight words at the end of it: "take the log out of your own eye." That is what we are supposed to do. When we remove the log from our eye, or the sin in our life that should not be there, we can see with 20/20 vision, and help our brother remove the sin from his life. 

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