Right From The Heart: Just Being Basically Good Doesn't Cut It

“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?” - Matthew 7:3-4

During His ministry on the earth, Jesus Christ was a master, really a genius, at painting word pictures in ways that even a child could understand. And right in the heart of the greatest sermon ever preached, The Sermon on the Mount, when He was preaching before thousands on a hill by the Sea of Galilee, He painted a word picture about judging others. 

He said something like, "When you see someone with a little grain of something in their eye, and you go to them to try and get that speck out of their eye while you've got a log in your own eye - well - you look like an idiot." Now, he didn't use those exact words, but what He was seeking to communicate in painting the word picture is that we DO look like idiots when we seek to judge others for what may be even a minor flaw in them, when we have a major flaw of sin in our lives. 

Jesus tells us, “Judge not, lest you be judged.” (Matthew 7:1) In other words, the way you judge others is the way that God is going to judge you. 

But there’s hope for us. The closer we are to Jesus Christ, the more we are aware of our sinfulness. The further a person is from God, the more they are blind to their sinfulness, and they feel like they are really basically good, especially compared to those that they see or read about in the news. That’s how you can tell a religious moralist from a true Christian. But the closer we follow Christ as Lord, the more we’re aware of our own sinfulness. Thus, we become less prone to judge others because that big log (our sin) is so clearly seen. 

Isn't it time to leave the judging to God? ....About Right From The Heart