Sacred Cow: Judge Not?

We have been looking at the Sacred Cows of the evangelical church. Here is another one you hear often. "Judge not lest you be judged. You have no right to judge somebody else"

How many times have you heard this? You hear this especially from non believers , when any part of their lifestyle may seem to come into question. But sadly, even Christians say this at times in the spirit of not judging others. Now this is based on something Jesus said in .

Luke 6:37 "Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned.


People everywhere say “Don’t judge, don’t judge. Doesn’t the Bible say not to judge? We are supposed to be tolerant.”

Recently a whole Baptist church was accused of intolerance because they dared to believe that Jews needed Jesus. The locals were all up in arms about how judgmental the church was being. Even this week gay activists made Hillary Rotten Clinton unequiviocally state “homosexuality is not immoral”

So what did Jesus mean when he said not to judge?


Luke 6:41-42"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? 42 How can you say to your brother, 'Brother, let me take the speck out of your eye,' when you yourself fail to see the plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye.

Here, only a couple of verses later, Jesus does not say "don't correct the erring brother" but that he is to first go and make sure he is not being a hypocrite, by judging his own life first. Let’s look at other verses with regards to judging.

John 7:24 Stop judging by mere appearances, and make a right judgment."

Jesus said this when he was under attack by the Pharisees in the Temple. They were accusing him of doing wrong, yet Jesus rebuked them and said that their judgments made no sense, and he told them to judge correctly.

Here he was telling them to judge-- but to judge correctly.

John 4:15-24 The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water so that I won't get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water."

16 He told her, "Go, call your husband and come back."
17 "I have no husband," she replied.
Jesus said to her, "You are right when you say you have no husband. 18 The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true."
19 "Sir," the woman said, "I can see that you are a prophet. 20 Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem."
21 Jesus declared, "Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22 You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. 24 God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth."
NIV

Here Jesus was being very judgmental. First, he judges her with regards to the fact that she had five husbands, then he goes on to judge her religion saying that they didn’t even know who they were worshiping! Whoa!

Well perhaps you are thinking . "Well that was Jesus , he was the perfect son of God. He had the right to judge, but we certainly don’t."

Well let’s look at some more judmenalism shall we?

Matt 3:7-8
7 But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to where he was baptizing, he said to them: "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? 8 Produce fruit in keeping with repentance.

John the Baptist must have been pretty judgmental to call the Pharisees and Sadducees a bunch of snakes.

2 Tim 4:14-15 Alexander the coppersmith did me much harm. May the Lord repay him according to his works.

Paul was into naming names, and warned the church to stay away from certain people, false teachers etc. Kind of judgmental wouldn’t you say?

Jude 12 These men are blemishes at your love feasts, eating with you without the slightest qualm-shepherds who feed only themselves. They are clouds without rain, blown along by the wind; autumn trees, without fruit and uprooted-twice dead. 13 They are wild waves of the sea, foaming up their shame; wandering stars, for whom blackest darkness has been reserved forever.

Jude is being a little judgmental isn’t he, when he speaks this way about the false teachers who pervert the way of grace?

The church is commanded to judge.

1 Cor 11:31 For if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged.


1 Cor 6:2-5 Do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if you are to judge the world, are you not competent to judge trivial cases? 3 Do you not know that we will judge angels? How much more the things of this life! 4 Therefore, if you have disputes about such matters, appoint as judges even men of little account in the church!
NIV

So what was Jesus saying when he said "don’t judge, lest you be judged?" He was merely saying not to use hypocritical judgment.


Rom 2:1 You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge the other, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things.

So, in light of this, we can see that when Jesus said not to judge, he was merely telling the believer not to condemn others especially hypocritically. Of course, he did not mean that the church should not discern and judge behavior. Just this in fact is commanded of the church.