It’s not judging when one person says to another: that’s a really rotten thing you just did.  It’s not judging to say you’re hurting our relationship and you’re hurting yourself.  It’s not judging to say to someone: you’ve gotten yourself on the wrong track; please repent, please come back, please come home.  It is judging to say to someone, “there is no hope for you”; it is judging to say to someone, “you are beyond God’s help.”  When Jesus teaches “Do not judge, or you too will be judged” (7:1), he is not saying keep your mouth shut and let people—including brothers and sisters within your own congregation—pursue whatever they think will make them happy no matter what the Bible says.

Jesus taught his followers to do as he did: proclaim the kingdom, call sinners to repentance, baptize and teach.  Jesus also instructed his disciples to shake the dust off their shoes as they left a place that would not receive them, would not receive the Good News.  Paul instructed the churches to have nothing to do with believers who had chosen to devote themselves to sin: this was in order to catapult the sinner to repentance and restoration.  I’m sure the sin-devotees would be quick to say that they were helpless and powerless to resist.  The sin-devotees would be quick to argue (1) that their sin really was no sin at all, that (2) far from disapproving or condemning—judging, as it were—God was quite pleased with them, and that (3) what the up-tight, judgy set (in their ignorance and narrow-mindedness) was calling sin was actually an act of God-honoring faith.

It’s judging when we feel more attracted to condemnation than to restoration.  There’s a sort of thrill in condemnation, especially if you’re angry already; there’s a sort of rush that comes with letting people have it.  Yes, Jesus did on one or two occasions, but this was not his typical way of teaching and calling people to renewed life.

It’s judging when we let those around us struggle under their heavy loads and refuse to lift a finger to help.  Everyone is struggling.  Not everyone understands that the help he or she most needs is Jesus Christ.  Not everyone even in the churches understands yet that it’s simply not sufficient to talk about loving Jesus while pursuing one’s driving desires regardless of God’s Word.  It’s not enough to talk about loving Jesus yet not practice that love in gospel compassion for those around us.

Yes, we encounter resistance; so did Jesus.  Those struggling around us can sometimes bruise us with their burdens.  Sometimes, you and I will have to feel the wounding weight of the load for a time, before the right time comes to mention Jesus, offer an invitation to get better acquainted.  In the meantime, all these struggling people can become more familiar with Jesus through you and me, through our faithful discipleship in a world that does not reward faithful discipleship to Jesus Christ.  Faithful discipleship has more to do with compassion than condemnation.  Faithful discipleship tells the truth; it tells the truth in love.  If there’s concern that there’s too much of condemnation in this preaching and not enough of compassion, I invite you to listen more closely.  If the truth feels hurtful, that’s the Spirit probing the wound; the Spirit probes to heal, bring healing, grace, forgiveness, hope.  This is always the aim and goal of what I share with you.  There is a way forward!  We are not left hopeless and helpless!

Christianity has always proclaimed abundant life; the world has always accused Christianity of stifling life.  Believers are not therefore called to capitulate, agree, apologize, and prostrate ourselves before the corrupting desires empowered and enthroned in this world.  We are called to prepare the way for the Lord.  Let us help everyone to see Jesus as he is, as Scripture gives him to us; let us give Jesus to those around us.  No fake Jesus.  No partial Jesus.

People who have no stomach for all God’s Word are quickest to say don’t judge.  Don’t Judge becomes shorthand for sit down, shut up, and don’t be so Bible-y.  Capitulate.  Conform.  Nobody enjoys conflict, and like their Savior and Lord, Christians always will encounter conflict when we call others to repentance.  You and I ought to know better than many that only sinners need repentance.  While most people might be willing for the sake of ending the conversation to admit they are sinners, they won’t want to do a thing about it, until the Spirit moves them.

We all rely upon the Spirit of God.  Those who are so fond of reminding everyone not to judge (in other words “shut up; how dare you question me”) should spend some time sitting with and praying over what Jesus goes on to say: “For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you” (7:2).  So which is it, don’t judge, period, or judge as you would wish to be judged?  Now, how would I wish to be judged?  That’s not asking whether I wish to be judged or not.  I will be judged; that’s clear, that’s final, that’s certain.  God is my judge!  Amen and amen.  God is love!  Amen and amen.  God also is holy.  Amen?  Like holiness, love has expectations.  Like love, holiness wants the very best for the beloved.  Is sin the very best?  Is rejecting the clear Word of God the very best?

There are at least two different ways of pointing out that someone has not lived up to the very best God desires of us: the way of condemnation and the way of grace.  Neither way overlooks the sin.  Neither way excuses the failure or acts as if the failure is in fact a blessed, beautiful success.  The difference is in the disposition of the heart.  The condemner is content to condemn without reflecting on his or her own condemnation.  The one who offers grace is well aware of the condemnation under which he or she sat, before Christ lifted.  The one who offers grace wants to offer Christ and Christ’s lifting.  The one who condemns walks perilously close to pride.  The plank, the log, the beam, is pride.  Jesus instructs his disciples in how to bring a matter of concern before a brother or sister, and, if the brother or sister refuses to acknowledge the seriousness of the matter, how to bring the matter before the church.  Those who would go to the brother or sister for the sake of condemnation as from some position of supposed superiority go in the wrong spirit: they go without the Spirit!  When we prayerfully and humbly seek to counsel a brother or sister for the sake of restoration, we are showing the love of God in Christ Jesus.  We are showing grace and offering mercy.  Christ came to call sinners to repentance.  He never could do much for those who refused to recognize and rightly name their sin.  Whatever harshness Jesus had or ever used, he saved for those who were quite sure that they weren’t doing anything requiring repentance.

I am no one’s judge, and I trust what Scripture tells me.  I trust God’s Word.  That means God helps me to recognize sin, in myself and others.  I don’t go searching for it.  I don’t have to.  The cluster of sins differs from person to person.  If I recognize sin in another but do not notice sin in myself, my condemnation is pride.  If I recognize the sin in another because I recognize the sin in myself, grace moves me to seek reconciliation for my brother or sister, and restoration to God.

Jesus has told his disciples, many times in many ways, that it is the disposition of the heart that matters.  The heart disposed to righteousness is God’s work of love.  The heart disposed to pursue self is all our own work, and even believers can find ways to make God’s Word and God’s salvation serve our sins.  This is why we must constantly immerse ourselves, bathe, in God’s Word, drink it in, and let the wonder of the Word wash over us, and through.

Let us continually concern ourselves with the quality of our own walk with the Lord.  That walk is not exclusively my walk or your walk.  In the church, as the church, it is always our walk.  Your hunger for righteousness has an effect upon me, as mine does upon you.  We are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord.  One Body.  Illness, brokenness, in the body anywhere should be of concern to the body everywhere.

Yes, let each of us spend more time meditating upon and working upon our own discipleship, rather than investigating the discipleship of one another.  Amen!  Only, let us each work on our discipleship, and not indulge the many soft whispers and gentle beckonings of sin still itching in us; let us not heed the booming voice of command that would have us throw ourselves into the waiting tentacles of temptation, as though we had no choice, no voice, no will and no way.  Our baptism means something, still.  Our faith means something, still.  We are claimed by God.  We belong to God.  That means we are no longer free to do as we like: as the sin arguing with us would like.  Sin does not set us free.  Sin makes us slaves.  Christ makes us free.  Christ is obedience to the will of God.  If we would know Christ alive and at work in us more powerfully, more nearly, more gloriously, let us do God’s will: especially when that will feels contrary to our bent inclination.

The disposition of the heart affects how we see and, to an extent, the disposition of the heart governs what we see and do not see, will not see.  We are not to go on the hunt for sin everywhere in everyone.  Neither let us act as if sin is not there, as if we aren’t seeing sin when sin is done before us, as if we were expected and required to praise and congratulate the one sinning.  Perspective.  We’ve got to put everything in perspective.  Agreed!  But what perspective?  Whose?  Scripture provides perspective.  It’s not merely one perspective among many.  Scripture is God’s perspective.  If we wish to see clearly, we’ve got to put on God’s eyeglasses.  God’s eyeglasses are very curious: with them we see the world around us with brilliant clarity, we see those around us with grace and truth, and we see ourselves with much sharper precision.  We see ourselves in others; we see others in ourselves, and we behold ourselves and one another in Christ.

Today is Reformation Sunday, when we remember Martin Luther’s trembling, stunning act of bravery, prophetically calling the Church to confession, repentance, and renewal.  That act won him few friends in the Roman Catholic Church: basically all the church there was in the West at the time.  Luther was many things: monk, theologian, teacher, disciple.  By all accounts, he was achingly aware of the sin that always wanted to have a field day in his life.  Scripture showed him his sin and left him with no excuse or evasion.  Scripture showed him salvation without condition or exception.  The more time Luther spent in Scripture, with Scripture, the more it re-shaped his perspective, the disposition of his heart.

It’s when we each devote ourselves to serving the Word of God, rather than the institutions and ideologies of men, that God draws us nearer, and draws much nearer to us, in Jesus Christ by the Spirit.  It’s vital for us to recall that I am no priest and there is no altar here—that piece of furniture is the Communion table, not an altar.  I do not intercede before the Lord on your behalf.  I call us into prayer unto the Lord.  I offer no sacrifice: I point to the one sacrifice; I tell you about it and encourage you to find out more about it, to partake of it more deeply, more lovingly, more joyfully, more faithfully.  We are the Church, together.  The Reformation calls us to remind ourselves continually—because the world would continually have us neglect and forget—that we are the Church, together.

Now to Him who by the power at work within us is able to do far more abundantly than all that we can ask or imagine, to Him be glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, for ever and ever.