The following sermon was delivered by Dr. Ralph Blair at City Church, New York on August 14, 2005.  Dr. Blair is founder and president of Evangelicals Concerned, Inc., a national network of gay and lesbian evangelical Christians and friends.

Dr. Blair has generously given us permission to reprint his excellent sermon here.  Please see the copyright notice at the bottom of this page.

There was a time when Christians had "life verses" from the Bible - favorite passages that meant something special to them. They'd include them when signing a yearbook or a letter. Preachers used to jot them down along with their autographs. And all sorts of objects were imprinted with such popular Bible verses - wall plaques, plates, pillows. In some circles, you'll still find this sort of thing - Bible verses on coffee mugs, T-shirts, skateboards.

But today, you don't hear much about Bible "life verses." We don't see many Bible-emblazoned T-shirts on Park Avenue. But post-Christian New Yorkers do have a favorite Bible verse these days. And they're not shy about sharing it. They won't shut up about it. It's probably the most frequently quoted Bible verse on the Upper East Side. And it's even more popular over there on the Upper West Side.

But we're all tempted to quote this verse at anyone who criticizes us. It's proven useful in our retaliating self-defense. And it's less rude than saying: "Shut up!" Even though many can't cite chapter and verse, it's assumed to be there in the Bible somewhere. It's just two little words long so it's not hard to remember it. What is it? It's "Judge not!" - the perfect squelch!

Today, the way "Judge not!" is used - or misused, really - says more about the spirit of our day than it says about the spirit in which Jesus spoke the command. We're part of a culture that prizes a self-servingly selective "tolerance" in which the really offensive thing is to make a moral judgment. Of course, this moral judgment against making moral judgments is, itself, a moral judgment. But this fact escapes the politically correct. So, to them, a "Judge not!" Bible verse seems very useful for counterattacking all those "judgmental Christians."

I say "judgmental Christians" since Christians are the only ones who are judged "judgmental" - at least according to Google. A Google search of the worldwide web finds hundreds of sites on so-called "judgmental Christians." But it finds not even one "judgmental" Moslem, not even one "judgmental" Hindu, not even one "judgmental" Buddhist, not even one "judgmental" Unitarian, and not even one "judgmental" agnostic. Not one! And though Google does find 33 references to "judgmental Jews," they're from thousands of years ago - they're from Bible days - not nowadays. So, these days, the only targets of popular anti-judgmental judging are Christians - and they're conservative or evangelical Christians to boot.

A Christian writer I know has a habit of asking people he meets what they think when they hear the word "evangelical." (Philip Yancey) He observes that the response is usually rather judgmental. He says: "A journalist in the New York media told me that editors have no qualms about assigning a Jewish person to a Jewish story, a Buddhist to a Buddhist story, but would never assign an evangelical to an evangelical story. Why not? 'They're the ones with an agenda.' Evangelicals, according to the New York stereotype, will propagandize and proselytize. You can't trust them. They're judgmental." In these days of shrieking sound bytes, only the evangelical Christians are judgmental, propagandizing and proselytizing? Fascinating.

So, today, the followers of Jesus are told: "Judge not!" Well, in Jesus' day, too, it was the followers of Jesus who were told: "Judge not!" And it was Jesus who told them to "Judge not!"

So if it's the followers of Jesus who were told by Jesus to "Judge not," why shouldn't it be the followers of Jesus today, who are told to "Judge not"? That's as it should be, right? Right.

But should those who are not Jesus' disciples use the "Judge not" Bible verse against Jesus' disciples? Well why not? Maybe without meaning to do so, they're standing in for Jesus - reminding Christians to be minding Jesus. If we say we're serious about obeying Jesus' commands to his disciples, why should we care who reminds us to obey him? Of course, it's a bit uncomfortable for followers of Jesus to have to be reminded by non-Christians to follow Jesus. But so what? We need reminding.

Well let's take a closer look at Jesus' command to "Judge not."

As is always the case, before looking at the meaning of a text, we need to look at its context. And the context of "Judge not!" is Jesus' outlining of God's Reign. It's in what's called his "Sermon on the Mount."

Now it's popularly assumed that, here, Jesus addressed the crowds. But it's clear that the addressed are his disciples - not the crowds. Matthew says that Jesus saw the crowds but that he spoke to his disciples only. The great G. Campbell Morgan put it poignantly: "He left the multitude in order that He might get back to the multitude. ... He left the multitude that he might begin the training of that company who should return and bless the multitude."

Sadly, and too often, however, that Christian company has failed to return to bless the multitude. Too often it's oppressed rather than blessed. So it's no wonder that people who get bashed by Bible-thumpers blast back with a Bible verse to suit their own purpose. And for that, nothing seems to work half so well as "Judge not!"

"Judge not!" or, more literally, the present imperative forces this sense: "Stop judging!"

But what exactly is it that Jesus is demanding his disciples stop doing? What does Jesus' term, translated "judge," really mean? Well it's not all that clear in the English. In English, "judge" can mean different things.

Even in New Testament Greek, "judge" (krino), can mean different things. Krino can mean "condemn" but it also can mean "discern" or "evaluate."

Does Jesus forbid his disciples' condemning each other? He certainly does. Throughout scripture, condemnation is the prerogative of God, and God alone. Any person's attempt to pronounce a verdict of condemnation on another person is, itself, condemned by God, the only Judge who judges rightly.

But is such a final condemnation the only kind of condemnation we're tempted to impose? Don't we more often make petty snap judgments about what's really trivial? Don't we go around with a mindset set for entrapment of our brothers and sisters? Our censoriousness is uncalled for. Jesus was calling disciples to cease such insensitive super-sensitivity. He was commanding that we stop our hypercritical hypocrisy. He wasn't merely telling us to stop telling people to "go to hell."

Well was Jesus here echoing the rabbis? The great Hillel, from whom Paul, and his teacher, Gamalial, learned so much, advised: "Don't judge anyone until you yourself have come into his circumstances." That's like the Native American maxim: "Don't judge another until you have walked a mile in his moccasins."

But neither of these admonitions matches Jesus' command. Notice that Hillel and the Native American saying reserve judgment until one experiences the other person's circumstances. Yet Jesus says we should reserve judgment - not until we go through a situation we guess is similar to another's - but we should reserve judgment period. Jesus is quite well aware that it's a truly impossible thing for us to place ourselves into the other person's actual situation.

Today, we make much of the idea of "a jury of one's peers." But is there really such a thing? We cannot duplicate in ourselves another's genetics, environment, formative years, experience and lack of experience. Can we know how we'd handle being born addicted to crack? Can we know how we'd handle being the son of John Gotti? Can we know how we'd handle being the daughter of Judy Garland? Can we know how we'd have dealt with having been paralyzed from the neck down as a teenager? Can we know how we'd handle having won ten million dollars in last year's lottery?

It's self-deceiving to pretend to know what it would be like to be another person's life. To pretend to know is not only self-deceiving, it's self-serving. "There, but for the grace of God go I" is a better perspective. And yet, time after time we rush to snap judgments where even the "angels fear to tread."

After Tom Cruise's national TV rant over Brooke Shields' turning to psychotropic meds for her postpartum depression, she responded with some sense of humor in a New York Times Op-Ed piece: "I'm going to take a wild guess and say that Mr. Cruise has never suffered from postpartum depression." But then Lauren Bacall added her two-cents worth of judgment. And there wasn't any sense of humor in her attack on Cruise for "selling" his religion. Bacall seethed: "It's inappropriate and vulgar and absolutely unacceptable to use your private life to sell anything commercially." She said that to do so was "a sickness." Maybe she can't see too well with that big slab of silver stuck in her eye. I think it's marked "Fortunoff." But seriously, we'd better be able to identify with her.

With a chastened mind, good sense and a sober outlook, it shouldn't be impossible to stop ourselves when we're likewise tempted to be hypercritically judgmental. And in fact, it can be liberating to escape from obsessively judging others.

And yet, it's not so easy, is it? Why? Well, so much of our judging others is aimed at making us feel better. When we attack those who do what we're not tempted to do, or attack those who do what we're tempted to do but we can't quite manage to pull off, we're trying to feel better about ourselves. When we attack those we fear are better than we are, or are advantaged over us, or have things easier than we do, we're trying to overcome our own sense of inferiority, inadequacy and disadvantage, aren't we?

But, of course, things don't work that way. We can't feel better by feeling bitter. Speaking ill of others in order to cure ourselves is quackery. And besides, at some level we know darn well what we're doing and (hopefully) what we're doing won't sit well with us. But then, we're maybe more likely to redouble our judgmental reaction than we are to repent.

The real remedy for such hopeless efforts at our self-justification at the expense of other people is to take seriously the free grace and justification God gives to all in Christ Jesus - at His expense. There's no need for our making anyone else wrong or bad in order to be made right and good. God's free grace does that. Didn't God make Jesus, who knew no sin of his own, to be sin for us that we might be made righteous in him? The unconditional love God has for all (including those about whom we tend to be so judgmental) is the justification we all need.

To the extent that we take God's love in Christ seriously, we'll be able to stop judging others. To the extent that we don't take God's love in Christ seriously, we'll fail in all our own ineffective efforts to stop judging others.

Jesus gives another good reason his disciples should end their habit of judging one another. Says Jesus: "Stop judging

... or you, too, will be judged."

This is a stern warning. The literary construction here is the divine passive. Jesus is saying: The One by whom these judgmental disciples "will be judged," is the Lord, God Almighty. Putting it in this passive voice was a common Jewish circumlocution of reverence for God. It was done to avoid a careless use of the Lord's holy name. It can be missed in the English. It cannot be missed in the Semitic. To these first disciples - all Jews - it would be crystal clear: If you don't stop judging each other, the Lord God will judge you.

And then, his warning goes further.

In the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.

There again is that divine passive construction. Did you notice it? "For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged" - by others? Maybe - maybe even probably. But that's not Jesus' point, is it? "In the same way you judge others, you will be judged by the Lord God, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you by the Lord God."

Now who among us wants to be judged by God according to the standards we strap on the backs of others? Who among us thinks that we would be able to survive the Almighty God's using on us that strict stick with which we beat up our brothers and sisters?

Jesus warns that God will apply to us the very same standards we so callously apply to others. Do we really want to be held to such perfectionist demands? I don't think so.

It's a scary scenario because we all use double standards. We tend to be lenient with ourselves but strict with others, rationalizing away our misdeeds while doing away with others. Don't we dish it out more readily than we suck it up?

Perfectionist demands of others are not reasonable expectations. They're unreasonable demands. And they're twisted to make others look bad and to make us look good. But that doesn't work here. And it doesn't work for the Hereafter.

Have you ever learned you were wrong about somebody? I didn't ask, "Have you ever been wrong about somebody?" I already know the answer to that question: You have been wrong about somebody. So have I. But have you ever learned you've been wrong about somebody? We so often lack that one piece of data that would change the whole picture. But that one piece is hidden in his or her genes, childhood, undetected intentions, mixed motives, on and on it goes. And still, without that crucial bit of understanding, we can be so quick to think the very worst, and then say so. Without getting to know somebody even a little bit better, how easy it is to simply stereotype with a smirk and make some stupid, smug remark! Little do we admit that it's actually we, ourselves, we can't stand. Isn't it what we see in the other person that we can't stand in ourselves that we try to deny in ourselves by denigrating him or her?

Jesus goes on to ask:

Why do you stare at a speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and yet you pay no attention to that big plank in your own eye?

Jesus knows better than to expect a short and honest answer to his question. But the short and honest answer to his question is this: Because I want the speck in my brother's eye to be bigger than the plank in my own. Don't we all want that? Isn't that why we concentrate so hard and criticize so harshly that little speck in the other guy's eye? Of course, that, itself, reveals we're aware of the big plank in our own eye. But we don't want to look at that.

Jesus continues:

How can you say to your brother, "Let me take the speck out of your eye," when all the time there's this big plank in your own eye?

Now, if the human pain inflicted by such clumsy efforts at extracting somebody else's sin were not so tragic, all this nit-picking would be hilarious. It's slapstick. But it's oh, so sad. Someone with a big log lodged in his eye trying to see around it to pick and pick and pick at a little speck in his brother's eye. That would be a real riot - if it weren't perverse and pathetic and poisonous of all human relationship.

So, with a heavy heart, Jesus calls it as he sees it:

You hypocrite!

He's saying that his very own disciples can be as self-righteous as those scribes and Pharisees who "strain out a gnat only to then swallow a camel." And he warns that even we, his disciples, can do as much damage to sensitive souls as was done by the religious leaders who placed burdens on others that they'd never think of placing on themselves and didn't lift a little finger of help reduce the weight of the heavy load inflicted on them. Isn't he saying that even his very own would-be followers can fail to do unto others as they themselves want others to do unto them?

Imagine: We - his disciples today - can behave hypocritically? We - his disciples today - can behave stupidly? We - his disciples today - can crush another Christian's spirit? We - his disciples today - can do the devil's work? Knowing we can, we can identify with the Galatian Christians Paul had to address as: "You dear idiots ... What were you thinking?"

Again - when we don't take seriously God's free grace in Christ, we have no remedy for our sin and our guilt but the nonsense of a hypocritical and hypercritical posturing.

The Bible is full of the foolishness of hypocrisy - judging others by a standard we utterly fail to meet. Think of King David's ranting indignation at the report of a cheapskate rich man who killed and served up for his guests his poor servant's little pet lamb. After blathering away in "righteous indignation" for quite long enough, Nathan interrupted the king and brought him up short by announcing, David! Oh David! "thou art that man!" Talk about "Wake up and smell the coffee!"

Or, think of the Apostle Paul's writing to Jews in Romans 1, rehearsing the typical Jewish castigation of the rebellion of what they disdained as the "dirty" Gentiles, only to turn the argument right around in Romans 2 and slap these Jewish readers with accusations of the same sinful rebellion against the Lord. Says Paul: "You are without excuse, you who judge others, for since you are equally guilty, you likewise condemn yourself." What a gracious wake-up call - if only they could hear it and take it in! What they couldn't stand in themselves they found easy to find in others - and, in their self-righteousness, they were utterly self-deceived. But instead of saying that "they" are with us still, can we not acknowledge that we are with us still? We're no less sinners than they were.

Churches are still full of the foolishness of hypocrisy - judging others by a standard we utterly fail to meet. And this is true across the spectrum.

There's the hypocrisy of the Religious Left. For example, an Episcopal bishop of the Left publicly and loudly disdains conservative Christians while he tries to sound quite tolerant. He smugly asserts: "There are two kinds of people: those who see everything in black or white and those who don't." But what's the difference between those this bishop faults for seeing everything in black or white and his seeing everyone in terms of do and don't?

Then there's the hypocrisy of the Religious Right. They pretend that the biggest threat to marriage these days is not the millions of couples who reject marriage in favor of co-habitation, nor all the promiscuity in the singles scene, nor their Internet porn, nor their spousal neglect and abuse, nor all their adultery and divorce. No. The Religious Right thinks that the really big threat to marriage is the wish of a few same-sex couples to marry.

But, thankfully, Jesus doesn't give up on hypocrites - Left or Right, us or them. He tells hypocrites what to do about our hypocrisy:

First, get that great big plank out of your eye. Then you'll probably see a lot better how to help get a little speck out of your brother's eye.

Duh? What obvious good sense! "If we knew how to recognize that which blinds us, perhaps we would know how to help others." (Suzanne de Dietrich) But it's not so obvious when hypocrisy blocks your whole way of seeing everything you can't really see and really don't want to see.

Acknowledging our own shortcomings, shortsightedness, suffering and sorrow, we can better identify with the shortcomings, shortsightedness, suffering and sorrow of others. And continuing to love ourselves, but now more wisely, we can hate our shortcomings and those of our brothers and sisters without also hating them. And we can sympathize with their suffering and sorrow because we've already sympathized with our own. Listen to this beautiful sentence from Ira Stamphill, the Southern Gospel songwriter: "He washed my eyes with tears, that I might see." Pray that God washes our eyes with tears that we might see.

When we can see better, we can then move on to Jesus' call to a ministry of discernment.

Don't miss what Jesus is aiming at here: A believer's assisting another believer to deal with a besetting sin - no matter how small. And in order to do that the right way there has to be an effective discernment, sound "judgment." But this judgment is of the other person's sin, it's not judgment of the other person. And this judgment is the work of one who recognizes and acknowledges his or her own sin and has done something effective about that. This judgment is undertaken with great care, in humility and a proper perspective and only after getting his or her own life more straightened out.

Jesus goes on to urge his disciples:

Don't give dogs what's sacred; don't throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they'll trample them. And then they'll turn on you and tear you to pieces.

There's nothing contradictory in Jesus' condemning our condemning of others and yet calling for our discernment when we proclaim the kingdom of God, what he once called the "pearl of great price." (Matt 13:45f) Pigs like to slurp slop. They don't prize the pearl of great price. They don't know what to do with pearls. And we need to recognize that. Jesus calls the gospel despisers "pigs" and "dogs" - the filthiest of animals in Israel. The Scots cleaned it up a bit with "Save your breath to cool your porridge."

Jesus saved his breath with Herod Antipas. (Luke 23:9) He told his disciples that, if people refuse the gospel, shake the dust from your feet and move on to those who'll receive the gospel with repentance, relief and joy.

Jesus calls us to evaluate, but "not by appearances." (John 7:24) And in the epistles, Christians are called to exercise the Spirit's gift for discerning the spirits, discriminating between true and false teachings, moral from immoral behavior in the congregation. (I John 4:1; I Cor 4:6; 5:5; 12:10; Phil 1:9f) Obviously, that we're not to judge one another doesn't require our pretending that just anything and everything can pass for Christian faith and a Christian lifestyle!

And yet, such must be the tentativeness and ambiguous nature of all the judgments of this present age while we see - even at best - but "through a glass, darkly," that Paul said he wouldn't accept the judgment of anyone - literally, of "no human day." (I Cor 4:3, 4-7). He would wait for God's Judgment Day. And Paul went on to say that, seeing he did not see into even himself well enough, he refused to judge even himself. Paul knew that his congregations were not his masters. He served the Lord. He knew that he himself was not his master. He served the Lord. So: Let the Lord judge.

As the Psalmist prayed and as we may pray: You, O Lord, You "look into whether there be any wicked way in me and then You lead me in the righteous way." And the Lord will.

It is not for any of us to have the last word on anyone including ourselves. Thank God, the last word is God's alone. And God's last word is grace.

Sermon text (c)2005 by Dr. Ralph Blair.  Used by permission.