Be Morally Discerning Without Being Judgy

Read Matthew 7:1-14

      Jesus warning to “Judge not” (7:1) is not a call to suspend all moral judgment, as it is sometimes supposed by the unrighteously indignant.  After all, in the next breath Jesus tells us not to “give dogs what is holy,” or to cast our “pearls before pigs,” (7:6), and he’s talking about people, not animals.  Sure sounds like we have to make a judgment about who to protect our pearls from!

      What he is warning against is a quickness to condemn, a tendency to put the worst possible construction on the actions and motives of others, a zeal for strict and swift justice on the guilty, untempered by mercy.  Judgmental people seem to forget that they too are sinners (even if their sins are of a different sort), and that they have received (and still need) God’s mercy.