Judgment Neglected: The Words of Jesus We Still Don’t Hear

Matthew 7:1–5 (CSB) – “Do not judge, so that you won’t be judged. For you will be judged by the same standard with which you judge others, and you will be measured by the same measure you use. Why do you look at the splinter in your brother’s eye but don’t notice the beam of wood in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the splinter out of your eye,’ and look, there’s a beam of wood in your own eye? Hypocrite! First take the beam of wood out of your eye, and then you will see clearly to take the splinter out of your brother’s eye.”

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Imagine a young child growing up and trying to figure life out. Children must learn the difference between right and wrong, and how to apply that knowledge to real people. So imagine a kindergartner whose classmate takes their favorite pencil. The child, immediately recognizing theft as wrong, flies off the handle, screams, slaps the perpetrator, and says, “I hate you, you ugly head thief!” The child isn’t wrong about the injustice they suffered—but they are wrong in how they applied their sense of right and wrong to the situation. So the teacher calmly intervenes, separates the two, and explains that when someone does something wrong, hitting and name-calling aren’t the right way to respond.

Jesus is doing something here very similar to what the kindergarten teacher has to do in their classroom. In what is perhaps one of Jesus’ most unheard teachings, he tells us not to judge. He doesn’t forbid moral clarity or even the sting of righteous outrage. He says, “don’t judge so that you won’t be judged.” Jesus means something deeper and more piercing than all these. He means that we must not take up God’s place while ignoring God’s posture. God, who has every right to condemn, does not come to crush us. He comes to redeem.

Like the petulant kindergarten child, we’re tempted to weaponize the knowledge of right and wrong against wrongdoers, both to protect ourselves and to vengefully destroy them. But this is not how we are meant to apply the knowledge of right and wrong. What Jesus teaches us here is that it’s not just our technical correctness that matters, but also our posture towards those who do wrong.

Unfortunately, this teaching is often one of the most unheard teachings. On the one hand, some try to weaponize this teaching to silence moral truth altogether, while on the other hand, others try to explain it away in order to keep their “righteous” criticisms intact. But Jesus meant what he said, and he knew what kind of people he was saying it to, so he warns us that we mustn’t apply our knowledge of right and wrong with a heart that we are unwilling to be judged by ourselves. How are we approaching those who do wrong, to destroy them or redeem them?

And this leads to Jesus’s metaphor about the splinter and the beam, which is humorous and humiliating all at once. We often think of ourselves as clear-eyed truth-tellers. But the truth is, we usually see others’ faults more sharply than our own. Jesus calls this hypocrisy, not honesty.

So what’s it look like to obey this teaching today? It begins with what moves us towards those who do wrong. Are we moved towards them like the petulant kindergarten child, merely to protect ourselves or vengefully destroy them? If so, we have been forewarned by Jesus that God will move towards us with this same measure of judgment with the implied conclusion that we won’t survive his judgment! And it continues with humility. Real humility. The kind that pauses before speaking. The kind that confesses before confronting. The kind that weeps over sin instead of leveraging it for clicks or tribal points. The kind that seeks to heal, restore, and build up rather than seeking to destroy and tear down.

I’m a firm believer in the importance of imagination. So, again I’ll ask you to imagine what the witness of the church would look like if we were seen consistently removing our own beams before pointing at anyone else’s splinters; if people saw Christians striving in reverence to follow Jesus’ way of life, correcting their own mistakes as they arise along the way long before they used the failures of those around them for leverage or political gain. Imagine the change if our public voice wasn’t known for railing condemnations, but rather, for a deep integrity that spoke moral clarity and truth with compassion because it had first bowed in repentance.

This is not softness. It’s strength. The kind of strength that comes from truth held in grace, and judgment tempered by mercy.