Judging Others(05-6-19)
Judging Others
Matthew 7:1-12
Big Idea: Judge others in the way you want to be judged…
I know someone who trains professional athletes and I recently asked him how he helps an athlete perform at his or her best during a crucial moment in the game.
How do you prepare a professional baseball player to rise to the occasion when the game is on the line? It’s game 7 of the World Series with 2 out, the bases are loaded and your team is down by 3 runs. And you step up to the plate.
How do you help that athlete with all that pressure come through in the clutch rather than choke?
Quoting a famous boxer this coach said, “Fear is your best friend or your worst enemy. It's like fire. It can cook for you; it can heat your house. Or it can burn everything around you and destroy you."
Judgment is also like fire, in that it can be extremely beneficial or extremely damaging.
A father or mother, who exercise good judgment can their bless children. A manager who exercises good judgment can bless her company. But on the other hand, an inappropriate judgment by a parent, a manager or by a person in some other role can be very damaging.
Jesus recognizes this and so he warns against judging in a particular kind of way in Matthew 7. If you have your Bibles please turn to Matthew 7
Matthew 7:1-12
Judging Others
1"Do not judge, or you too will be judged. 2For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.
3"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? 4How 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? 5You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye.
6"Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and then turn and tear you to pieces.
Ask, Seek, Knock
7"Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. 8For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.
9"Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? 10Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? 11If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! 12So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.
In verse, 12 we read the word “So” or as translated more in the more literal New American Version “therefore” do to others what you would want them to do for you (this is sometimes called the “golden rule”). Whenever you see a therefore in Scripture you must ask yourself what is it “there for”?
The “So” or the “Therefore” of vs. 12 refers back to verses 1-11 in his chapter. In verse 1-11 Jesus talks about judging others, and prayer.
Jesus says, "Do not judge, or you too will be judged. 2For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.
Jesus is saying if we read our passage in the larger context, when it comes to judging others, ask yourself how you would want people to judge you, then take the initiative and judge others in the way you would want to judged. In your judging of others apply the golden rule.
Jesus words here about judging are among the most often quoted in the Bible, but some of the least understood.
In the context, when Jesus says “Do not judge,” it’s clear that he is NOT saying it’s always wrong to judge.
Right after this verse, Jesus speaks about removing a speck from a sister or brother’s eye. This involves judgment. Later in the passage Jesus speaks about not throwing pearls to pigs… What he seems to be teaching is that we are NOT to indiscriminately offer the treasures of Christ to a person who may stomp all over them… In order to follow these words we must exercise judgment…
As I mentioned earlier, in life we need to exercise judgment. If you have some kind of leadership role in the home or at work, if you vote in an election, if you serve on a jury, you will be involved in making judgments.
Jesus in this passage is not categorically condemning judging.
What Jesus does prohibit here is a judgmentalism that “writes someone else off.”
Why is it wrong to write someone else off?
It’s wrong to “write someone off” because when we do we presume to be in the place of God who alone knows all and therefore who alone can judge in an absolute way.
We never have all the information so we are never in a place where we can completely write someone off.
Steven Covey tells of riding the subway on a Sunday morning. Then a father and his children got on the subway. The youngsters were yelling back and forth, throwing things, grabbing people's newspapers. The father sat there and did nothing.
Covey says, "I could not believe he could be so insensitive as to let his children run wild and do nothing about it.
"Sir," Covey asked, summoning his nerve, "your children are really disturbing a lot of people. I wonder if you couldn't control them a little more?" The dazed father looked out of it, but he snapped to attention. "Oh, yeah, you're right," he said softly. “They're usually not like this. We just came from the hospital where their mother died an hour ago. I for one don't know what to think, and I suppose they are not doing much better handling it."
The old native proverb says, Don't judge anyone unless you've walked in their moccasins one moon.
Realizing we don’t see the full picture should make us slow to judge and humble in our judgment.
If we ask our self how would we want people to judge us, we would say we would want them to have as much of the picture as possible. We are to apply the golden to rule to our judgment and judge in the way we would want to be judged.
Jesus also warns us not to write people off because the measure with which we judge others will be the measure with which we ourselves are judged.
In vs. 2 Jesus says, 2For the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.
In another parable about an unmerciful servant, Jesus suggests that the standard with which we judge others will be the standard by which we are selves our judged on judgment day.
In what we call the Lord prayer, Jesus seems to say that if we are not willing to be merciful to others, we ourselves should not presume that God will be merciful to us.
We are to refrain from hyper-critical judgmentalism because we don’t see the whole picture and we are show mercy because in the way in which we judge others is the way in which we will be judged.
If we asked our self how we would want people to judge us, we would say we would want to them have as much of the picture as possible before judging us and that would them to be merciful. We are to apply the golden to rule to our judgment and judge in the way we would want to be judged.
In verse 3 Jesus says, 3"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? 4How can you say to your sister or brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? 5You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye.
Eugene Peterson, says “It's easy to see a smudge on your neighbor's face and be oblivious to the sneer on your own.”
We tend to “over blow” the faults of another person, while we “under blow” the size our own.
Dale Bruner calls this the “the law of critical gravity,” which causes us to judge in our favor.
There are certainly people with extremely sensitive consciences who tend to be more conscious of their own faults, than the faults of others, but generally speaking we, myself included, tend to magnify the faults of others and minimize our own.
We have the infinite capacity for rationalizing our own behavior.
The person involved in an affair may rationalize saying it’s not like I’m paying for sex. The person who drinks heavily may say at least I am not doing Crystal meth. The person who steals a cable, may watch a news channel on their newly stolen cable channel… and say in disgust “Those guys involved in the sponsorship scandal were stealing my tax dollars…”
We tend to compare ourselves with those whose sins are different from ours and worse than ours.
There were 2 brothers Joe and Harry who were involved in a life of crime. One day one Joe suddenly died and Harry went to a priest and said would you do my brother’s funeral? And please describe him as a saint. During the funeral the priest said Joe was a criminal, he was arrogant, he was a thief, he cheated on his wife, but compared to his brother Harry here, he was a saint!
When it comes to our faults, we tend to compare ourselves with people beside whom we look at lot better.
Jesus seems to be teaching that in order to be able to judge someone else we must be willing to recognize our own sin, i.e. the log in our eye so as to be able to remove the speck from someone else’s eye.
The heroic German pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s in Life Together writes,
If my sinfulness appears to me to be in any way smaller or less detestable in comparison with the sins of others, I am still not recognizing my sinfulness at all. My sin is of necessity the worst, the most grievous, the most reprehensible. Brotherly love will find any number of extenuations for the sins of others; only for my sin is there no apology whatsoever. Therefore my sin is the worst.
When we see our sin as being the worst as far as we are concerned, it will engender in us a healthy humility and grace toward others so that we are able to help others.
Alexandr Whyte was a godly, gifted, and esteemed preacher in Edinburgh, Scotland… back in the 1800s.
There was a bombastic American evangelist preaching in the area and he was highly critical of the Christianity of Scotland.
And as an assistant told Alexandr Whyte that they American evangelist was saying that churches of Scotland had fallen into disfavor with God because of their pride, luke warmness and grevious sins, Whyte became indignant and began to pace in his office.
And the assistant and said, “It gets worse, the evangelist is questioning whether such a minister (whom he named) was saved and whether such a such minister (whom he named) had a relationship with God and whether such and such a minister (whom he named) had the Holy Spirit.”
As Whyte heard about a number of local ministers whom he personally knew, being attacked liked this, his became visibly angry and slammed his fist to this desk and said “How dare he say those things!”
The assistant them said halting, “Dr. Whyte… I haven’t told worst yet… the American evangelist, has questioned whether you are really saved or not.”
At that Dr. Whyte became still and sat on in chair… and turned to his assistant and said quietly, “Would you please excuse me, I need some time to examine the condition of my own heart.”
Sometimes accusations come at us from left field and there is a healthy kind of differentiation where we say this is not true of me.
But there is also value in saying is there a kernel of truth in this criticism here that I must pay attention to?
As a minister and as a private individual, I have faced some withering attacks and in a many cases, I’ve learned from those attacks something I needed to know and work on.
So, in a strange way, I am grateful for those attacks, in some cases they’ve been part of my necessary education, i.e., tuition free, and helped me, I hope, to take some planks out of my eye.
If we asked our self how would we want people to judge us, we would say would want people to know the larger picture, be merciful, and first judge themselves before judging us. We are to apply the golden to rule to our judgment and judge in the way we would want to be judged.
To those inclined to hastily judging others, Jesus says.
5You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye.
He tells to take the log out of our eye in this passage, but Jesus doesn’t categorically prohibit judging….
He simply says before we judge we are to take time to soberly judge our self. As we remove, the log from our eye we will be able to clearly remove the speck from your brothers’ eye.
Sometimes there are things we need to say to someone we believe would be helpful for them… but we just “let it go” (and don’t say anything).
Recently I felt like I had to saying something to someone.
I have connection to foundation that helps give funding to young emerging leaders.
There was a young leader who communicated seemed to communicate with me only when he wanted to get funding. When I tried a get a response from him on other things, it was very difficult to get any kind of response.
Without sharing his name, I was talking about this situation to a friend.
He said, it’s easier to “let it go,” but “You may be depriving him of wisdom.”
So, I communicated with this young, emerging leader and affirmed him, but also said the way you tend to communicate make you come across as self-centered and that I think this will hurt you in the future, he wrote back and said…
Thank you for your words of exhortation. "Faithful are the wounds of a friend." And though it hurts to hear your words…. I truly appreciate your willingness to speak boldly into my life--I need people like you! I have made a commitment to the Lord to work on this area and I make the same commitment to you.
Thank you, my brother, for "as iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another".
He’s changed his ways.
If we asked ourself how you would we want people to judge us, we would say we would want people to judge themselves first.
The text goes on to talk about asking, seeking, knocking.
Darrell Johnson helped me to see that the context of Jesus encouragement to ask, seek, and knock follows in this passage on judging.
Darrell points out that while this passage is a kind of open encouragement to pray, but there seems to be a special application in praying for those we are inclined to judge.
While a student, I was active in student government role… There was a very hostile person on student council member who was a really radical feminist… she was very angry and hostile and her life seemed to be defined what she stood against more than what she stood for. At times she was highly critical of her fellow student leaders.
A friend mine said, you need to pray for people who oppose you. When you pray for someone, it’s hard to dislike the person, in fact you come to love that person.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer says in Life Together the most significant thing we can do for another is pray for them. He writes:
A Christian fellowship lives and exists by the intercession of its members for one another, or it collapses. I can no longer condemn or hate a brother for whom I pray, no matter how much trouble he causes me. His face, that hitherto may have been strange and intolerable to me, is transformed in intercession into the countenance of a brother for whom Christ died, the face of a forgiven sinner. This is a happy discovery for the Christian who begins to pray for others.
If we asked our self how would we want people to judge us, we would say we would want to get a much information as possible, to be merciful, to judge themselves first, and to pray for us. We are to apply the golden to rule to our judgment and judge in the way we would want to be judged.
If we applied the golden to rule to our judging our relationships would change and if we did collectively our world would a completely different.
This is so obvious that is sounds banal. But for all of our accomplishment in other areas of life we have not been able to live out the golden rule. And we cannot act like this on our own.
Douglas Coupland the well known North Vancouver author of Generation X in his book Life After God concludes:
My secret is that I need God--that I am sick and can no longer make it alone. I need God to help me give, because I no longer seem to be capable of giving; to help me be kind, as I no longer seem capable of kindness; to help me love, as I seem beyond being able to love.
It is as we realize we need God and turn to his son Jesus Christ who perfectly embodies the Sermon the Mount, that we can become people who love others we would want them to love us…
Silent Prayer…
Benediction: May you receive the love of God and may God himself sanctify you through and through… may your whole mind, soul, and body be made blameless until the day you see Christ face to face, faithful is he who called you and He also will do it.
Matthew 7:1-12
Big Idea: Judge others in the way you want to be judged…
I know someone who trains professional athletes and I recently asked him how he helps an athlete perform at his or her best during a crucial moment in the game.
How do you prepare a professional baseball player to rise to the occasion when the game is on the line? It’s game 7 of the World Series with 2 out, the bases are loaded and your team is down by 3 runs. And you step up to the plate.
How do you help that athlete with all that pressure come through in the clutch rather than choke?
Quoting a famous boxer this coach said, “Fear is your best friend or your worst enemy. It's like fire. It can cook for you; it can heat your house. Or it can burn everything around you and destroy you."
Judgment is also like fire, in that it can be extremely beneficial or extremely damaging.
A father or mother, who exercise good judgment can their bless children. A manager who exercises good judgment can bless her company. But on the other hand, an inappropriate judgment by a parent, a manager or by a person in some other role can be very damaging.
Jesus recognizes this and so he warns against judging in a particular kind of way in Matthew 7. If you have your Bibles please turn to Matthew 7
Matthew 7:1-12
Judging Others
1"Do not judge, or you too will be judged. 2For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.
3"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? 4How 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? 5You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye.
6"Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and then turn and tear you to pieces.
Ask, Seek, Knock
7"Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. 8For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.
9"Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? 10Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? 11If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! 12So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.
In verse, 12 we read the word “So” or as translated more in the more literal New American Version “therefore” do to others what you would want them to do for you (this is sometimes called the “golden rule”). Whenever you see a therefore in Scripture you must ask yourself what is it “there for”?
The “So” or the “Therefore” of vs. 12 refers back to verses 1-11 in his chapter. In verse 1-11 Jesus talks about judging others, and prayer.
Jesus says, "Do not judge, or you too will be judged. 2For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.
Jesus is saying if we read our passage in the larger context, when it comes to judging others, ask yourself how you would want people to judge you, then take the initiative and judge others in the way you would want to judged. In your judging of others apply the golden rule.
Jesus words here about judging are among the most often quoted in the Bible, but some of the least understood.
In the context, when Jesus says “Do not judge,” it’s clear that he is NOT saying it’s always wrong to judge.
Right after this verse, Jesus speaks about removing a speck from a sister or brother’s eye. This involves judgment. Later in the passage Jesus speaks about not throwing pearls to pigs… What he seems to be teaching is that we are NOT to indiscriminately offer the treasures of Christ to a person who may stomp all over them… In order to follow these words we must exercise judgment…
As I mentioned earlier, in life we need to exercise judgment. If you have some kind of leadership role in the home or at work, if you vote in an election, if you serve on a jury, you will be involved in making judgments.
Jesus in this passage is not categorically condemning judging.
What Jesus does prohibit here is a judgmentalism that “writes someone else off.”
Why is it wrong to write someone else off?
It’s wrong to “write someone off” because when we do we presume to be in the place of God who alone knows all and therefore who alone can judge in an absolute way.
We never have all the information so we are never in a place where we can completely write someone off.
Steven Covey tells of riding the subway on a Sunday morning. Then a father and his children got on the subway. The youngsters were yelling back and forth, throwing things, grabbing people's newspapers. The father sat there and did nothing.
Covey says, "I could not believe he could be so insensitive as to let his children run wild and do nothing about it.
"Sir," Covey asked, summoning his nerve, "your children are really disturbing a lot of people. I wonder if you couldn't control them a little more?" The dazed father looked out of it, but he snapped to attention. "Oh, yeah, you're right," he said softly. “They're usually not like this. We just came from the hospital where their mother died an hour ago. I for one don't know what to think, and I suppose they are not doing much better handling it."
The old native proverb says, Don't judge anyone unless you've walked in their moccasins one moon.
Realizing we don’t see the full picture should make us slow to judge and humble in our judgment.
If we ask our self how would we want people to judge us, we would say we would want them to have as much of the picture as possible. We are to apply the golden to rule to our judgment and judge in the way we would want to be judged.
Jesus also warns us not to write people off because the measure with which we judge others will be the measure with which we ourselves are judged.
In vs. 2 Jesus says, 2For the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.
In another parable about an unmerciful servant, Jesus suggests that the standard with which we judge others will be the standard by which we are selves our judged on judgment day.
In what we call the Lord prayer, Jesus seems to say that if we are not willing to be merciful to others, we ourselves should not presume that God will be merciful to us.
We are to refrain from hyper-critical judgmentalism because we don’t see the whole picture and we are show mercy because in the way in which we judge others is the way in which we will be judged.
If we asked our self how we would want people to judge us, we would say we would want to them have as much of the picture as possible before judging us and that would them to be merciful. We are to apply the golden to rule to our judgment and judge in the way we would want to be judged.
In verse 3 Jesus says, 3"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? 4How can you say to your sister or brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? 5You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye.
Eugene Peterson, says “It's easy to see a smudge on your neighbor's face and be oblivious to the sneer on your own.”
We tend to “over blow” the faults of another person, while we “under blow” the size our own.
Dale Bruner calls this the “the law of critical gravity,” which causes us to judge in our favor.
There are certainly people with extremely sensitive consciences who tend to be more conscious of their own faults, than the faults of others, but generally speaking we, myself included, tend to magnify the faults of others and minimize our own.
We have the infinite capacity for rationalizing our own behavior.
The person involved in an affair may rationalize saying it’s not like I’m paying for sex. The person who drinks heavily may say at least I am not doing Crystal meth. The person who steals a cable, may watch a news channel on their newly stolen cable channel… and say in disgust “Those guys involved in the sponsorship scandal were stealing my tax dollars…”
We tend to compare ourselves with those whose sins are different from ours and worse than ours.
There were 2 brothers Joe and Harry who were involved in a life of crime. One day one Joe suddenly died and Harry went to a priest and said would you do my brother’s funeral? And please describe him as a saint. During the funeral the priest said Joe was a criminal, he was arrogant, he was a thief, he cheated on his wife, but compared to his brother Harry here, he was a saint!
When it comes to our faults, we tend to compare ourselves with people beside whom we look at lot better.
Jesus seems to be teaching that in order to be able to judge someone else we must be willing to recognize our own sin, i.e. the log in our eye so as to be able to remove the speck from someone else’s eye.
The heroic German pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s in Life Together writes,
If my sinfulness appears to me to be in any way smaller or less detestable in comparison with the sins of others, I am still not recognizing my sinfulness at all. My sin is of necessity the worst, the most grievous, the most reprehensible. Brotherly love will find any number of extenuations for the sins of others; only for my sin is there no apology whatsoever. Therefore my sin is the worst.
When we see our sin as being the worst as far as we are concerned, it will engender in us a healthy humility and grace toward others so that we are able to help others.
Alexandr Whyte was a godly, gifted, and esteemed preacher in Edinburgh, Scotland… back in the 1800s.
There was a bombastic American evangelist preaching in the area and he was highly critical of the Christianity of Scotland.
And as an assistant told Alexandr Whyte that they American evangelist was saying that churches of Scotland had fallen into disfavor with God because of their pride, luke warmness and grevious sins, Whyte became indignant and began to pace in his office.
And the assistant and said, “It gets worse, the evangelist is questioning whether such a minister (whom he named) was saved and whether such a such minister (whom he named) had a relationship with God and whether such and such a minister (whom he named) had the Holy Spirit.”
As Whyte heard about a number of local ministers whom he personally knew, being attacked liked this, his became visibly angry and slammed his fist to this desk and said “How dare he say those things!”
The assistant them said halting, “Dr. Whyte… I haven’t told worst yet… the American evangelist, has questioned whether you are really saved or not.”
At that Dr. Whyte became still and sat on in chair… and turned to his assistant and said quietly, “Would you please excuse me, I need some time to examine the condition of my own heart.”
Sometimes accusations come at us from left field and there is a healthy kind of differentiation where we say this is not true of me.
But there is also value in saying is there a kernel of truth in this criticism here that I must pay attention to?
As a minister and as a private individual, I have faced some withering attacks and in a many cases, I’ve learned from those attacks something I needed to know and work on.
So, in a strange way, I am grateful for those attacks, in some cases they’ve been part of my necessary education, i.e., tuition free, and helped me, I hope, to take some planks out of my eye.
If we asked our self how would we want people to judge us, we would say would want people to know the larger picture, be merciful, and first judge themselves before judging us. We are to apply the golden to rule to our judgment and judge in the way we would want to be judged.
To those inclined to hastily judging others, Jesus says.
5You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye.
He tells to take the log out of our eye in this passage, but Jesus doesn’t categorically prohibit judging….
He simply says before we judge we are to take time to soberly judge our self. As we remove, the log from our eye we will be able to clearly remove the speck from your brothers’ eye.
Sometimes there are things we need to say to someone we believe would be helpful for them… but we just “let it go” (and don’t say anything).
Recently I felt like I had to saying something to someone.
I have connection to foundation that helps give funding to young emerging leaders.
There was a young leader who communicated seemed to communicate with me only when he wanted to get funding. When I tried a get a response from him on other things, it was very difficult to get any kind of response.
Without sharing his name, I was talking about this situation to a friend.
He said, it’s easier to “let it go,” but “You may be depriving him of wisdom.”
So, I communicated with this young, emerging leader and affirmed him, but also said the way you tend to communicate make you come across as self-centered and that I think this will hurt you in the future, he wrote back and said…
Thank you for your words of exhortation. "Faithful are the wounds of a friend." And though it hurts to hear your words…. I truly appreciate your willingness to speak boldly into my life--I need people like you! I have made a commitment to the Lord to work on this area and I make the same commitment to you.
Thank you, my brother, for "as iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another".
He’s changed his ways.
If we asked ourself how you would we want people to judge us, we would say we would want people to judge themselves first.
The text goes on to talk about asking, seeking, knocking.
Darrell Johnson helped me to see that the context of Jesus encouragement to ask, seek, and knock follows in this passage on judging.
Darrell points out that while this passage is a kind of open encouragement to pray, but there seems to be a special application in praying for those we are inclined to judge.
While a student, I was active in student government role… There was a very hostile person on student council member who was a really radical feminist… she was very angry and hostile and her life seemed to be defined what she stood against more than what she stood for. At times she was highly critical of her fellow student leaders.
A friend mine said, you need to pray for people who oppose you. When you pray for someone, it’s hard to dislike the person, in fact you come to love that person.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer says in Life Together the most significant thing we can do for another is pray for them. He writes:
A Christian fellowship lives and exists by the intercession of its members for one another, or it collapses. I can no longer condemn or hate a brother for whom I pray, no matter how much trouble he causes me. His face, that hitherto may have been strange and intolerable to me, is transformed in intercession into the countenance of a brother for whom Christ died, the face of a forgiven sinner. This is a happy discovery for the Christian who begins to pray for others.
If we asked our self how would we want people to judge us, we would say we would want to get a much information as possible, to be merciful, to judge themselves first, and to pray for us. We are to apply the golden to rule to our judgment and judge in the way we would want to be judged.
If we applied the golden to rule to our judging our relationships would change and if we did collectively our world would a completely different.
This is so obvious that is sounds banal. But for all of our accomplishment in other areas of life we have not been able to live out the golden rule. And we cannot act like this on our own.
Douglas Coupland the well known North Vancouver author of Generation X in his book Life After God concludes:
My secret is that I need God--that I am sick and can no longer make it alone. I need God to help me give, because I no longer seem to be capable of giving; to help me be kind, as I no longer seem capable of kindness; to help me love, as I seem beyond being able to love.
It is as we realize we need God and turn to his son Jesus Christ who perfectly embodies the Sermon the Mount, that we can become people who love others we would want them to love us…
Silent Prayer…
Benediction: May you receive the love of God and may God himself sanctify you through and through… may your whole mind, soul, and body be made blameless until the day you see Christ face to face, faithful is he who called you and He also will do it.
posted by Shigematsu at 11:37 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home