Toward the end of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus gives a short discourse on judgment (Matthew 7:1-14). The more I read it, the more I’m struck by its profundity. In a few short verses, Jesus gives us keen insight into the human propensity to judge one another. Yet, at the same time he asserts that judgment is in fact not in God’s nature. If we could learn not to judge one another, then neither would God judge us. Remarkable.

God Follows Our Lead

The passage begins with a description of the relationship between God’s judgment and our own. He says,

Do not judge, so that you may not be judged.
For with the judgment you make, you will be judged.
And the measure you give will be the measure you get. (7:1-2)

If Jesus is to be believed (and of course Jesus should be believed!), God follows our lead when it comes to judgment. If we judge others harshly, God will judge us harshly. But if we refrain from judging others, God will refrain from judging us. God judges us with the judgments we make. God measures out to us what we measure out to others.

Jesus seems to mean that when we arrive at the pearly gates (so to speak) we won’t all be treated equally. Some of us will receive harsher judgments than others, not because what we have done is any worse or any different than someone else, but because we ourselves have been harsh judges of others during our lifetimes. Likewise, those of us who have been merciful to others will be treated more mercifully.

In a sense, we’re in charge of our own final judgment!

Log? What Log?

In the next verses, Jesus goes on to speak some truth about the nature of human judgmentalism. With  his typical Jesus wit, Jesus says,

Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye,
but do not notice the log in your own eye?
Or how can you say to your neighbor,
“Let me take the speck out of your eye,”
while the log is in your own eye? (7:3-4)

The image Jesus gives is comical. We are to imagine ourselves with a huge log jutting out of our eyes. Yet even with a tree sticking out of our face, we still manage to pick on the speck in our neighbor’s eye.

While the image is humorous, it’s also profound. In Jesus’s little parable the flaw is located precisely in the eye. Our flaws protrude from our eyes, distorting our vision of the flaws of others. We can’t see others clearly because we can’t see around our own flaws. What we perceive as a defect in someone else is more than likely simply us seeing our own flaws and thinking they belong to someone else.

Jesus’s insight into the nature of human judgmentalism seems exactly right to me. So often our complaints about another person are really born out of our own unacknowledged sense of our own imperfections. We judge others because we are afraid that we ourselves are in need of judgment. We point out the flaws in another because we are afraid someone else will point out our flaws. We point out the speck in their eye, because we view everything through eyes distorted by our own flaws, consciously or (more than likely) not.

Jesus then invites us first to “take the log out of your own eye” before offering to help someone else remove the speck from theirs (7:5). Jesus invites us here to a little bit of introspection. Only by acknowledging our own imperfections can we learn to view others with compassion rather than judgment. We realize that we are all flawed, and that there is no call for judging another.

According to the biblical witness, of course, this is also the way God sees us. The psalmist tells us that “as far as the east is from the west, so far he removes our transgressions from us” (Ps 103:12). God doesn’t focus on our transgressions. God doesn’t call attention to the logs in our eyes.

God merely asks that we do the same for one another.

Judgment in Our Bones

A few verses after this discussion of judgment, Jesus describes the way to the kingdom of heaven. He says,

Enter through the narrow gate, for the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it. For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it. (Matt 7:13-14).

I have often heard this passage interpret as meaning that the narrow way is choosing Jesus, and that a very few people (just us Christians!) can do that. It’s understood as a way of viewing ourselves as better than others—because we have found Jesus and others have not.

But the “narrow gate” that leads to life isn’t about belief in Christ. Rather,  it’s fundamentally about our treatment of others.  “As you judge, so you will be judged” (7:1). It’s as simple as that. If we refrain from judging others, God will refrain from judging us. If we treat others with mercy, God will be merciful to us.

It is that path is difficult. It is that gate is narrow. We have judgment deep in our bones, and it imperils our very lives.

“Do not judge, so that you may not be judged.” Therein lies the path to life.

Discussion Questions

• In verses 1-2, Jesus says that we will be judged according to the measure that we judge others. What do you think of the idea that God treats us the way we treat others?
• Jesus says that the logs in our own eyes (our own flaws) can distort our vision about the flaws of others. Do you think this is true? Can you think of a time when anxiety about your own flaws has caused you to judge someone else unfairly?
• Practically speaking what would it look like to refrain from judging others? What steps could you take? What problems do you think you might encounter?