"Judge not, that ye be not judged... " Mathew 7:1

"Judge not, that ye be not judged... " Mathew 7:1

"Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment." John 7:24

How do we as Christians reconcile these two apparently contradictory passages? While one says clearly not to judge in case we be judged ourselves, the verse in John's Gospel clearly assumes that we are to judge and simply adds the qualification that we must judge not according to a prima facie case but with all due care and consideration and then make a proper judgement.

Many people use the first verse in a way that goes something like this:

"Who are you to tell my friend what to do? You call yourself a Christian and yet don't you know what the Bible says: Judge not Lest you be judged!" 

or words to that effect. But let's not accept this accusation at first blush, let's have a closer look at what's going on. Let us observe what the second verse advises us to do. Hasn't the person making that statement cut off their own branch that they were standing on? Have they not judged you?  Have they not made a value judgement of the state of your soul? Well, yes they have, and they have pronounced on the basis of that statement that you are wrong.

Let's face it we all make judgement calls all the day long, they are simply unavoidable. If someone is really doing wrong then to make no evaluation at all -as some have said- is wrong in itself. To decide nothing in the face of evil is to decide for evil. The old adage applies : "All it takes for evil to succeed is for good people to do nothing." So what does the first verse mean, what does it say in context? In the context of that chapter it is that those who cast stones shouldn't live in glass houses! The context gives a clear warning not to be a hypocrite. So the warning is not so much about not judging full stop, but about judging with true judgement, not from a warped view of reality such as what happens when we ourselves are found to be doing the same things. The verse actually calls into question the motive behind the one judging- when they themselves are doing the same thing. When one has had the log removed from one's own eye, we are then qualified to see a speck in the other. In this way then, we see that this has reconciled the difficulty with the second verse. A perfect example of this is when we see Jesus say to the people who had loaded themselves up with judgemental stones to cast upon the woman taken in adultery: 

"So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her." John 8:7 

Providentially, Christ being without sin, was the only one qualified to cast a stone and he chose not to- but he did tell her to go and sin no more. There needs to be a recognition that it is one thing to make a judgement about a behaviour, or a persons character, it is quite another to condemn the person, which really means to pass sentence on a person. And this is often where the confusion lies. Who knows, but that God may grant repentance to that person? They are not ours to write off.

Calling Christians "hateful" for pointing out sinful behavior is a tactic born of slick corporate image consultants, but it is not an argument. By declaring the intent of Christians either hateful or bigoted (i.e. sinful) for simply expressing what God teaches is to profoundly misrepresent the intentions and beliefs of Christians. Not to mention the fatal inconsistency of calling Christians "sinful" for their declaring certain behaviors as "sinful". How can one consistently say that anyone who calls someone's behavior "sinful" is sinful? Isn't this the pot calling the kettle black? Aren't you guilty of the very thing of which you accuse another? Furthermore, how do you know if Christians are wrong? What standard is being appealed to here?

This sinister scheme of marginalizing Christians for their beliefs actually promotes the most ignorant form of intolerance there is. For it pretends objectivity while giving a wholesale monopoly to secularists to determine for all of us, what is, and what is not, sinful ... thus making themselves into the new gods of the age.

Fact is, contrary to bumper-sticker wisdom, true Christians do not think they are more moral than others... we believe we are all in the same boat and many times much worse than you are. We believe the world that has been pulled over ALL of our eyes to blind us ALL from the truth. The truth revealed by God that we are ALL slaves born into bondage. We are merely sinners pointing other sinners to freedom and to bread ... and the intent, for the most part, is not from the vantage point of moral superiority, but rather one of love, to help mankind by pointing to their only hope for escape. Any so-called Christian who does it for any other reason is probably a moralist, or at least not being consistent at all with Christianity's central teaching of grace. For we believe that morality will damn just as much as immorality, apart from the Savior. (From Monergism Books)