A Good and Bad Way to Judge Others

All right. This text we’re about to look at, if you have a Bible, hope you or somebody around you does that you can look on with. Matthew 7 is where we’re going to be. Feel free to use table of contents if you need to. We are about to look at words from Jesus that we, in our culture, every one of us desperately need to hear. So we’re about to hear words from Jesus that strike at the core of the tendency we have in our culture to be critical and judgmental of others in ways that reveal we have a warped understanding of ourselves, a warped understanding of others, and ultimately a warped understanding of God himself. So that’s what we’re about to look at, and I say we have this tendency because it’s the water we swim in, in this world and we need to be aware of how this tendency affects us subtly and significantly.

So I want to encourage you, pay attention close today. Maybe take notes, which there’ll be a lot of today. Hear, listen to what God is saying to you individually and to us collectively as the church in his Word, as God calls us to live very differently from this world. So let me set the context. Before we read these words from Jesus in Matthew 7, we’re going to read the first six verses and these verses begin the third of three chapters in the Sermon on the Mount. And all throughout this sermon, Jesus has been telling us there’s a better way to live in this world over and over again. I’ll put it up here on the screen. We see Jesus using this phrase, “You have heard it was said” this, “But I say to you,” this, so there’s a better way to live that starts in your heart and the part of your life that nobody else can see.

That’s where Jesus started. The good life, the blessed life. Blessed, he says it over and over again, the beginning of Matthew 5. The happy life starts with being poor inside in spirit and living totally dependent on God, being pure in heart. It’s completely focused on God such that when you obey God and others harm you or speak evil against you, you rejoice because you’re not living for the applause of this world. You’re infatuated with affection for God that leads you to give generously and pray continually and fast humbly, and trust God completely. It’s what we saw last week, to be free from worry in this world and free from lust and anger and desires for revenge to be free even to love your enemies because your heart is filled with and transformed by the love of God. 

Living the Good Life in a Fallen World

So all that leads to chapter seven, and if I were to summarize the questions Jesus is answering in the verses we’re about to read, this would be the question, how do we live the good life, the happy life, the blessed life with a pure heart in a fallen world where people do wrong?

That’s a question we all need to answer because we live in a world where everybody sins and including every one of us in ways that hurt others, in ways that hurt us. So how do you live the good life in a fallen world where people including us do fallen things, do wrong, either in general or wrong against us? And Jesus says starting in Matthew 7:1, Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce, you will be judged and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. Why do you see the speck that’s in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that’s in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, “Let me take the speck out of your eye,” when there’s a log in your own eye. You hypocrite. First take the log out of your own eye and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye. Do not give dogs what is holy and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you.”

What Jesus is NOT Saying

All right, so what is Jesus teaching us here? About how to live the good life with a pure heart and a fallen world where people do wrong. Well, before we look at what Jesus is saying here, I want to make sure we understand what Jesus is not saying here. So if you’re taking notes, let’s start there. Here’s what Jesus is not saying. One, Jesus is not saying that it’s wrong to be a judge in a court of law. So for judges in our church family, Jesus’s words, judge not do not mean that you are out of a job. And we see many places in Scripture including our church’s Bible reading today in Micah 6:8, where God commands us to do justice and ordains leaders to carry out justice. All throughout the Bible we see judges doing good work under the sovereignty of God as the ultimate judge.

So this is not Jesus saying it’s wrong to be a judge in a court of law. Jesus is also not saying that it’s wrong to evaluate good and evil in people in circumstances. So this passage actually highlights the need to evaluate good and evil in yourself, like what’s the log in your eye? In others, what’s the speck in their eyes? And we’re going to talk more about verse six later, but Jesus is telling us to discern when we approach different people with truth or correction, how they respond in good or evil ways. And all throughout Scripture, including the rest of Matthew 7, we’re told to discern what’s good teaching and what’s evil teaching? What’s good behavior, what’s evil behavior? So Jesus is definitely not saying we need to suspend all of our faculties for discerning good and evil in people or circumstances and just view every person and every circumstance through amoral lens.

Indeed, according to the Bible, it’s necessary to evaluate good and evil in people and circumstances. And similarly, Jesus is not saying it’s wrong to assess someone’s spiritual condition. Later in this chapter Jesus tells us to look at the fruit of somebody’s life to see what’s in their heart. The world divides into those who are followers of Jesus and those who are not followers of Jesus. Jesus is not saying it’s wrong to assess somebody’s spiritual condition.

Finally, he’s not saying it’s wrong to correct or rebuke somebody else in sin. Even in this passage, Jesus is telling us to help remove a speck from our brother’s eye when they’re caught in sin. Later in Matthew 18, Jesus outlines a whole process for correcting and confronting a brother or sister in Christ in sin. He says this process may even lead to removing somebody from the church at which point one might think, well that sounds critical and judgmental, removing somebody from the church, but Jesus is the one who tells us to do that, which means that what Jesus is talking about there in Matthew 18 is very different than what Jesus is talking about here in Matthew 7.

And just to put an explanation point on all of this, look at John 7:24 with me. Jesus says another point, “Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment.” You see that? Jesus is telling us to judge. So he’s telling us in Matthew 7, “Judge not”. In the beginning of John 5, actually that should say, sorry, not John 5, that should say John 7. There we go. He says, do not judge this way but do judge this way. So clearly when you look at just both these passages side by side, you realize there is a way to judge that is right and there is a way to judge that is wrong, that we don’t need to do. 

So you can’t just come to Matthew 7:1 and say, well, you’re not supposed to judge. Jesus said it because, well, Jesus also said you are supposed to judge with right judgment, so right way, wrong way to judge, that leads to what Jesus is saying here.

What Jesus IS Saying

So when Jesus says, “Judge not,” he is telling us three main things, you might write them down. One, he’s saying, do not be hyper critical. So judging can mean what we’ve already seen helpfully, wisely, evaluating or assessing someone or some situation, that’s a good kind of judging, but it can also mean to be critical, or condemning, or even having an avenging attitude towards someone which is a bad kind of judging. So how do you know if you’re being hypercritical? Well, let’s think about specific ways that Jesus and the rest of the Bible say judging can be bad. When Jesus says, “Judge not,” he’s clearly saying here and throughout the Bible, “Do not judge harshly.” Later in Matthew 18 right after Jesus outlines that process for judging a brother or sister in Christ in a good way, even as I mentioned removing them from the church.

Jesus then tells a parable, he tells a story about a man who owed the king a great deal of money and the king had mercy on this man, forgave him his enormous debt. Then that man went out and to people who owed him just a little bit, he was harsh and unforgiving of them and when the king found out about it, he put that man in prison because of his harshness. Jesus is clearly saying, do not be harsh, unkind, unsympathetic in your judgments of others. Do not judge harshly and do not judge quickly. Jesus is clearly warning here about hasty condemnations that are so easy for us to make in our culture, right? We hear something about someone or something else. We see something online, on social media. We assume it must be true because well, everything anyone says and everything online is true. We are so prone to so quickly form judgments of others and Jesus is saying don’t do it.

Colossians 3:12–14, “Put on patience bearing with others, believing the best about others even when you have a complaint about them.” Related to that, “Do not judge rashly.” That’s what Jesus said in John 7:24. Do not judge by appearances. How often do we make judgments about people or circumstances without really knowing all the information? Sometimes based on second, third, fourth hand information or when you think about social media, it could have passed through 100 different hands before it got to you, or after hearing just one perspective on a person or a situation. Or how often do we make judgments about people we don’t actually know? I trust we realize social media thrives on leading us to all of these kinds of bad judgments. We can scroll through a feed, through post after post, video after video without even realizing it.

We’re making all kinds of rash judgments about people or situations. We don’t even think about it and all the more so in the echo chambers that social media creators want us to operate in where once we have a certain set of assumptions about an individual or a group of people, we now apply all those negative assumptions to just about anything that that individual or group of people does an you can find something wrong with just about anybody if that’s what you’re looking for. And Jesus says, no, do not live like that. “Do not judge rashly and do not judge unfairly based upon your opinions, preferences, or personal convictions.” This is what Romans 14 is all about. People in the church were disagreeing about what food to eat or what holidays to celebrate.

Paul writes in Romans 14:10, “Why do you pass judgment on your brother? Or you, why do you despise your brother?” There’s a way to pass judgment that is despising your brother and it’s over these secondary or even tertiary issues, which brings us back to the words Jesus just says in Matthew 7:2, “With the judgment you pronounce, you will be judged. With the measure you use it will be measured to you.” Be careful the measures you use for the judgments you make, knowing there is an eternally significant difference between the law of God and your opinions or preferences or even personal convictions. Those kinds of judgments are divisive and destructive in the church and Jesus is saying, do not judge destructively in ways that bring down your brother. Paul continues in Romans 14:13, “Therefore let us not pass judgment on one another any longer, but rather decide never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of a brother.”

Instead, Romans 14:19, “Let us pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding.” What a great word. So much in our culture is about bringing people down. Jesus said, my people build others up. Romans 15:1–2, “We who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak, not to please ourselves. Let each of us please his neighbor for his good to build him up.” Just pause. Think about that for a moment. Think about how there is part of our flesh that actually wants to see news or hear rumors about others’ wrongs, particularly people we don’t like or people who have what we don’t have in a way that somehow we think makes us feel better about ourselves. A.B. Bruce describes what he calls this pharisaic vice in us, that of exalting ourselves by disparaging others, a very cheap way of attaining moral superiority and we can do it so easily without even realizing we’re doing. And all of this, really to summarize what Jesus is saying here, he’s saying, do not judge proudly. His language here when he says “Judge not,” this verb is a present imperative.

Basically what that means is it carries a sense of ongoing action. It’s like this ongoing tendency to look at others in judgment and Jesus is saying, when you make a practice of judging like this, you show that your heart is in a selfish place and you need to die to yourself to stop asserting yourself before others and before God, to start humbling yourself before others and before God, which leads to a totally different heart and a completely different approach to judging, which is what we see Jesus calling us to all throughout Scripture, even just a few verses later in Matthew 7:12, Lord willing, we’ll look at this verse this next week. “Whatever you wish that others would do to you,” Jesus says, “Do also to them. This is the law and the prophets.” Like Jesus said, judge with the measure you want to be judged by, do to others what you would want them to do to you.

Do you want to be judged harshly by others? Do you want to be judged quickly? People don’t have all the information. Do you want to be judged rashly? Do you want to be judged based on other people’s opinions, preferences, or personal convictions in ways that are destructive for you and others? Then don’t do that for others. Resist every temptation to do that for others and do this because praise God, that’s not how he judges us. Praise God. He doesn’t look for all the things that are wrong in us to accuse us of them all the time. That’s what the devil does. That’s his name. He’s the accuser. So don’t be like him. Be like Jesus who looks mercifully upon you. A man named Charles Hodge once said, “No one can be severe in his judgment who feels that the mild eyes of Jesus are fixed on him.”

Oh, see the mild eyes of Jesus fixed on you and then look at others through his eyes. And when we do that, just think about how it totally transforms our tendency to judge others. Just turn all these around. Jesus is saying well, “Do judge gently not harshly”. Galatians 6:1. If anyone is caught in transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Gently and patiently. It’s the first mark of love. 1 Corinthians 13, love is what? Its patient. “Do judge generously,” like the parable in Matthew 18. “As one who has been forgiven much for your faults, look for opportunities to be generous toward others in their faults.” John Stott said, “This command from Jesus to judge not is not a requirement to be blind to others in their faults, but rather a plea to be generous to others in their faults.” And “Do judge fairly based upon what is clear and direct in God’s Word.”

This is how God commands his people to judge in 1 Corinthians 5 with the measure God actually uses where God’s Word speaks clearly and directly. We are to judge, but we’re also to do so constructively with the goal of building the up. Matthew 18, 1 Corinthians 5, Romans 12, Romans 14, Ephesians 4. All these passages talk about judging others in good ways that have as their goal the edification of that person in Jesus, which is only possible when we judge humbly, when we’re dead to ourselves, Philippians 2 in humility counting others as more significant than ourselves, putting their interests above our own. You put all this together, Jesus is saying this world judges a certain way. I’m calling you to judge a very different way. The church of Jesus Christ should savor of a completely different spirit than the spirit of this world.

And then Jesus says, not only don’t be hypercritical, but Jesus says, do not be hypocritical. This is another wrong way to judge, out of the overflow of hypocrisy. “Why do you see that speck that’s in your brother’s eye? You don’t notice the log that’s in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, “Let me take the speck out of your eye,” when there’s a log in your own eye. You hypercritical, first take the log out of your own eye. Then you’ll see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.” So anybody knows if you’re going to help somebody remove a speck from their eye, which sometimes is needed and helpful, but that clearly involves somebody getting really close to you to see what’s in your eye to help you get it out. And that task is impossible if somebody has a log sticking out of their eye. It’s obviously a caricature intended to make a point and it does so on a couple levels. One, isn’t it interesting that Jesus refers to others’ faults as specs and our faults as logs?

Because we’re attempting to do the opposite. We’re attempting to view others’ faults as big and our faults as small. It’s a pressing problem in someone when we see it in them. It’s a passing mistake when we see it in us and we’re particularly prone to see things in others that we struggle with ourselves. So whenever we see something in someone else, our first question must be, is this in me? Where is this in me? God help me to see is this in me? And this is the era of the hypocrite. Don’t miss it. It’s not that the hypocrite finds fault where there’s fault. That’s not wrong. It’s that the hypocrite fails to apply to himself or herself, the criticism he or she so meticulously applies to somebody else. One writer said, “This way we can experience the pleasure of self-righteousness without the pain of penitence,” which is exactly what Jesus is calling us to in this passage.

Jesus is saying, examine yourself and repent of your sin, humbly, honestly, continually, and seriously. Take the log out of your eye. Every day your life will look different. If you rise each morning, you behold God in his holy glory, you ask him to help you see any sin in your life that’s not pleasing to him, anything in your thoughts, your desires, your motives, your words, your actions, your decisions, anything that’s driven by self and not by the Spirit of Jesus. Anything that doesn’t reflect the life and the love of Jesus. And you confess that before God, you repent of sin, you receive his grace that covers over all that sin before a holy God, that saves you from eternal judgment you deserve from God. You do that humbly, honestly, continually, and seriously in your life, it will totally change the way you view others in their sin with their faults.

I think about times whenever we have had just times of prayer and confession, even when we were doing it like every single night, gathering together for prayer, spending time in confession. There was never a time where we got to that point in our worshiping together where we spend time in confession and it was just like for me personally, it was never just like, oh, actually everything’s perfect at this point. There’s always in all of our lives like need for examination, need for God to purify it. So to do this regularly before God and then receive his grace and it changes the way you view people around you and it guards you from the self-righteousness Jesus is guarding us against.

I’ve quoted many times from an article on criticism from Tim Keller that I reread all the time. One of my favorite parts is when he writes about, when you’re criticized by somebody who doesn’t know you, as often happens online, he puts it and the criticism he says is completely untrue. Keller writes, “When that happens, it is easy to fall into a smugness and perhaps be tempted to laugh at how mistaken your critics are. Pathetic you might be tempted to say. Don’t do it. Even if there is not the slightest curl of truth in what the critic says, you should not mock them in your thoughts.”

Then he says, do two things. First he says, “Remind yourself of examples of your own mistakes, your own foolishness, your own cluelessness in the past, times in which you really got something wrong. And second, pray for the critic that he or she grows in grace.” Now here’s what I love so much about that council from Keller, because when I followed it instead of unfair, unjust, untrue criticism leading me to assert my moral superiority over somebody else, in other words, to fueling my flesh, doing this actually leads me to greater humility to realize, yeah, I’ve thought that way. I’ve spoken that way. I’ve missed it in the past about people. I sure knew God’s grace. So God, I pray for your grace over them just as you’ve shown that grace to me. This is the heart of what Jesus is after in all of our hearts.

Examine yourself, repent of your sin, humbly, honestly, continually and seriously, and then, then, help others turn from their sin personally, graciously, carefully and helpfully. Jesus says, then you will be able to see clearly and take the speck out of your brother’s eye. The New Testament contains all kinds of instructions for how to do this personally, like not over social media or from a distance, but personally, graciously, gently, carefully as Jesus outlined in places like Matthew 18. Don’t resort to the world’s ways of going after people. No follow Jesus’s way because you want to help them in their relationship with him. It’s not about you being right, it’s about them being redeemed.

The hypocritical spirit keeps all of this from happening. So Jesus says, do not be hypocritical. Be quick to see, confess, repent of your own sin and to humbly, carefully help others turn from sin the way Jesus says to do in order to lead them to him. Now in all of this, so here’s the third way not to judge. Jesus says, do not be foolish. In verse six says, “Don’t give dogs what is holy. Don’t throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you.” There’s a lot of discussion among Bible scholars about exactly what this means. We don’t have time to explore all of that exhaustively today, but the overall picture is clear. We need to be wise in the way we relate to others based on how they respond to that which is good and holy.

So don’t picture, when you picture dogs here, don’t picture your favorite domesticated, furry pet. This is talking about wild, vicious savage dogs. Don’t picture a domesticated pigs if you have one of those for that matter either. Picture just filthy, unclean, muddy animals with pearls. Jesus is saying be careful in the way you interact with people who are showing that they do not want or treasure what God wants and treasures. So that can apply to sharing the gospel with people who may hate the gospel and may be using what you’re sharing with them to attack you or could apply to people who you’re trying to love in ways Jesus has just outlined, but they’re using your actions to turn around and attack you. So get the picture. The intent is good. You want to see someone restored, helped, but they don’t want to receive that in a way you cannot control. And Jesus is saying, don’t be foolish to try to control their response in ways that don’t actually lead to good.

Maybe a couple Proverbs will help us understand this. Proverbs 9:7–9 “Whoever corrects a scoffer gets himself abuse, and he reproves a wicked man incurs injury. Do not reprove a scoffer, or he will hate you. Reprove a wise man and he will love you.” You see the contrast there? A correction and reprove. These are good things, but trying to do so with a scoffer, a ridiculer is not wise. If your genuine loving efforts to correct reprove help are not received, then there comes a time to step away from that person altogether because it’s not leading to good. You do the same thing with a wise person, it will lead to good. Proverbs 26:4 puts it this way, “Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest you become like him yourself.” So if someone and their folly keeps attacking you, there comes a point where you stop answering them, lest you become like them.

Now what’s really interesting is the very next verse in Proverbs 26:5 it says, “Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise at his own eyes.” “Answer not a fool according to his folly.” “Answer a fool according to…” Which one is it? And this is where Proverbs, we could talk a lot about it. This is not like laying down a law, always must do this, always must do that. It’s giving guidelines which drive us to God to say, God, help me to know when it’s wise to answer a fool for their good or when it’s wise not to answer a fool lest I’m becoming like them, which would not be good. This is where we need the Holy Spirit to help us with wisdom only he can give and wisdom he promises to give. So pray. Pray for wisdom to know when to confront and when to avoid.

Matthew 18 we’ve talked about is a time to confront, Jesus says. At the same time, Paul writes later in Titus 3, “As for a person who stirs up division, after warning him once and then twice, have nothing more to do with him, knowing that such a person is warped and sinful; he is self-condemned.” There’s comes a time when you don’t continue to engage someone based on how they have responded, even as you obviously continue praying for that person. Similarly, pray for wisdom to know when to speak and when to be silent. So there’s times to speak and times to be silent. Jesus shows us this. When he’s questioned by Herod. He knew Herod was not interested in what was true and Herod’s heart was hard. So when Herod asked Jesus questions, Jesus said nothing in response.

Or pray for wisdom to know when to press in and when to step away. It’s not that we give up on people, but just think about the times when Jesus told his disciples to shake the dust off their feet and move on. When Paul, his companions did that exact thing at multiple points in the book of Acts. And the point in all of this is we need the Spirit of God to help us, to guide us. And I should add a note here, but an important one. We need the Spirit of Jesus in us and in others around us to help us here because we are all so tempted to judge in bad ways, to be hypocritical, or hypocritical, or foolish. And we’re often poor judges of our own motives. Look at 1 Corinthians 4:4, which means we need mature brothers and sisters in Christ who are willing to check us in our judgments when they’re without mercy, or unfair, or harsh, or any of the things we mentioned that Jesus says, don’t judge this way.

We live in a world where we’re constantly surrounded by encouragement to judge in ways Jesus is telling us not to judge. We need brothers and sisters in Christ who will look us in the eye and gently, carefully say I don’t think you’re judging fairly, gently, generously in this circumstance. We need each other to help us not be a hypercritical, hypocritical, or foolish. We need the Spirit of Jesus in us and in ourselves, which leads to where we’ll close. So we’ve seen what Jesus is not saying. We’ve seen what Jesus is saying. It’s totally different than the way this world operates.

So as we close, hear this encouragement from God in his Word to you today. By the Spirit of Jesus in you, so for everyone who’s a follower of Jesus, let us not follow the hypercritical, hypocritical, foolish spirit of this world, but out of the overflow of the Spirit of Jesus in us let’s do the following. 

Living by the Spirit

One, do see yourself correctly. See yourself correctly as we talked about. See your sin for how serious it is. Like Paul, I’m the chief of sinners. See your sin for how serious it is and see God’s grace towards you for how glorious it is.

So this is not Jesus saying how to loath you of yourself, just think about yourself as the sinner all the time. This is Jesus saying, have a true view of yourself as one who has sinned and is prone to sin in eternally serious ways against God and who has been forgiven and has an open door before God to be forgiven because of his grace and his love for you, and not just forgiven of your sins. See yourself correctly. You are filled with the Spirit of Jesus inside of you. This is who you are. You have powers to live like Jesus lives and to love like Jesus loves in a way that’s totally different from this world.

You have supernatural power in the fight against hypercritical, hypocritical, foolish tendencies in this world. So see yourself correctly. Second, do see others compassionately. Jesus loves sinners. The Spirit of Jesus is in you, so you love sinners around you. We live in a world of critical spirits all around us, social media, school, work, social relationships with family and friends. But the church is different. We are different. We have the Spirit of Jesus in us who loves others so much, he lays down his life for them. So that’s what we do. We love others, we serve others, we build others up. We want to restore others. Yes, when they’re caught in sin, we want to do that humbly, gently, wisely, helpfully. But how we do that, like Chrysostom, early church fathers said, “If someone who is sinned or sinned against you, correct him but not as a foe, nor as an adversary, exacting a penalty, but as a physician providing medicines, as even more, as a brother or sister longing to see a family member restored and redeemed.”

And then for those outside the church, be the most encouraging people in non-Christians lives. Of course, not encouraging sin in their lives, but caring for them deeply, serving them selflessly, pointing them to the one who’s laid down his life for them and their sin. If you’re not a Christian today, as I mentioned earlier, it’s what I hope, I pray you’ll hear and see and everything we pray and sing and say, that God loves you so much that he’s made a way for you to be forgiven of all your sin before him through what Jesus did on the cross for you. And you’ll trust in Jesus to forgive you of your sin and restore you to relationship with God. He loves you so much and when you trust in his love for you, it changes everything about how you live, which these are the last encouragement here and by the Spirit of Jesus in you see yourself correctly, see others compassionately and do see God clearly.

I mentioned when we are hypercritical, hypocritical, foolish in all these ways, it’s because we have a warped view of ourselves, others, and ultimately it’s because we have a warped view of God. So I want to encourage you in terms of seeing God one, remember God is ultimately the judge with a capital J, and you are not. So you need not try to take his place. It’s why Romans 12:19 says, “Don’t try to avenge yourselves. Leave it to the judgment of God.” Don’t try to play God when it comes to others’ faults. Trust God and his judgments and praise God as the ultimate judge who is merciful to all who trust in him. This is where I want to encourage you to see God for who he is to you as a follower of Jesus and live in light of your relationship with him.

Live and love others in the light of God as your judge, your savior, your father, your friend. And just let each one of those soak in. When you’re tempted to have a critical spirit toward others, hypercritical, to judge harshly, quickly, rashly, destructively, proudly. Whenever you’re tempted to be hypocritical, see in others where you’re blind to in yourself, whenever you’re tempted to foolishly try to control the situation, manufacture a response you can’t make happen, just look up and see God as your judge, which means you can trust his judgments now and forever. Your Savior, the God who saves you from the judgment you deserve. And see God in this way as the one who looks at you Christian, not condemningly, but compassionately. So many Christians live their Christian lives viewing God as constantly disappointed in them and condemning of them. And that is a lie from the adversary, from the devil himself.

He is the accuser. That’s his name. That’s not God’s name. God is the Savior who loves you so much. He is not disappointed in you. He delights in you. This is who you are. You are his child. He’s your father who loves you, who doesn’t hold your sin against you. Who’s not constantly looking at you, thinking about what you did in the past. He’s looking at you and seeing the righteousness of his own son. And he, God is your judge, your savior, your father, and your friend. God is your friend who loves you, walks with you in love for you through every single second of your life. Look up and see him clearly, then live and love others in light of his Spirit inside you, not the spirit of the world around you. So I want to lead you to a moment before God in prayer to reflect on this question, so just between you and God. In what ways do you need to repent today of a hypercritical, hypocritical, or foolish spirit?

I want to give you a moment just to ask God to help you see any evidences of this sort of spirit in you. And just ask him. And as things start coming to your mind, don’t just start justifying yourself. They deserve that or just before God. God, show me any ways that I’m judging, that are not from the Spirit of Jesus. And then ask God to forgive you, cleanse you, knowing he wants to forgive you and that he wants to replace that spirit with the fullness of his Spirit. So ask him to do that and he will, just press in right now and pray. God help us to think, make judgments, live, love, speak out of the overflow of the Spirit of Jesus.

Observation (What does the passage say?)

• What type of writing is this text?
  _{(Law? Poetry or Wisdom? History? A letter? Narrative? Gospels? Apocalyptic?)}
• Are there any clues about the circumstances under which this text was originally written?
• Are there any major sub-sections or breaks in the text that might help the reader understand the focus of the passage?
• Who is involved in the passage and what do you notice about the specific participants?
• What actions and events are taking place? What words or themes stand out to you and why?
• Was there anything about the passage/message that didn’t make sense to you?

Interpretation (What does the passage mean?)

• How does this text relate to other parts of the Scriptures
  _{(e.g., the surrounding chapters, book, Testament, or Bible)?}
• What does this passage teach us about God? About Jesus?
• How does this passage relate to the gospel?
• How can we sum up the main truth of this passage in our own words?
• How did this truth impact the hearers in their day?

Application (How can I apply this to passage to my life?)

• What challenged you the most from this week’s passage? What encouraged you the most?
• Head: How does this passage change my understanding of the Lord? (How does this impact what I think?)
• Heart: How does this passage correct my understanding of who I am to the Lord? (How should this impact my affections and what I feel?)
• Hands: How should this change the way I view and relate to others and the world? (How does this impact what I should do?)
• What is one action I can take this week to respond in surrender and obedience to the Lord?

[Note: some questions have been adapted from One to One Bible Reading by David Helm]