Do not speak against one another, brothers and sisters. The one who speaks against a brother or sister, or judges his brother or sister, speaks against the law and judges the law; but if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge of it. – James 4:11 NASB

 Judge not lest you be judged (Matthew 7:1) is without question, the best known, most memorized verse in the history of history. Bible believing Christians as well as those who have never darkened the door of a church know it by heart.  Precious few hesitate to whip it out anytime a discussion veers into any sort of moral judgement call about any activity under the sun. 

But what did Jesus really mean? 

Is Matthew 7:1 really a blanket condemnation of condemnation? Is Jesus flatly forbidding the making of moral judgements? 

Nope.

 Jesus made all sorts of hard and fast judgments concerning all sorts of issues. Those issues include (but are not limited to) divorce and remarriage (Matthew 19:1-10), those who refused to care for aging parents (Mark 7:6-9), murder (Matthew 5:21-22), unforgiveness (Matthew 5:23-26) and adultery (Luke 18:19). Moreover, the entire New Testament was in a very real sense written by Jesus (John 1:1-3, 1st Timothy 3:15-16). The New Testament includes all sorts of passages that make judgments concerning a myriad of behaviors and attitudes (1st Corinthians 6:9-11, Galatians 5:19-21, Colossians 3:8-10, 2nd Timothy 3:1-5, 1st Thessalonians 4:3-8). Furthermore, Jesus is God, if He was concerned about the Bible coming off as judgmental He could have easily done something about it. 

Seriously. 

 The notion that Jesus somehow forbids moral judgments concerning right and wrong is absurd. Matthew 7:1 is (in my opinion) more about making assumptions (which are really just judgments) concerning how and why people end up in certain situations. Jesus wants us to understand no one can really know anyone else’s backstory. Therefore, it is totally inappropriate for anyone to make judgments about who does and does not deserve to be in a particular mess. 

Individuals have always tended to assume every mess or bad situation is a consequence of sin. Jesus confronted this thinking head-on in John chapter nine. Jesus and His disciples met a man born blind. The disciples just naturally assumed that the man was blind because someone sinned. They weren’t sure if it was the man or his parents but they KNEW someone in this situation must be a terrible sinner. 

 Jesus responded with: 

“Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him”-John 9:2-3. 

 Christians today are every bit as inclined to believe people in difficult situations “did something” to deserve their misery than people in Jesus’ day.  This is because the modern-day church has been intensely impacted by the enlightenment and modern psychology.  

The enlightenment was a period of scientific discovery that impacted every sphere of life. Prior to the enlightenment individuals were utterly clueless as to why stuff happened. Superstition was the norm. This was not good. Prior to the enlightenment many people groups were convinced a baby born with red hair (who didn’t have a parent with red hair) was a bad omen. The vast majority of people believed illness was the result of sin and judgment. Enlightenment leaders taught that things happen for a reason. Thanks to the enlightenment now we know recessive genes can be tricky and illness are caused by microorganisms called germs. Modern psychology sought to explain the roots (or reasons) for human behavior. Freud normalized the idea that everything we do is directly related to our childhood experiences. The western world has been deeply impacted by the teachings of Freud, they literally color how we see almost everything (Colossians 2:8). 

It’s not wrong or sinful to believe there are explanations for why things happen. It is wrong and sinful to assume that we know the “reason” why certain things happen, it is (in my opinion) a direct violation of Matthew 7:1. There are scenarios that breed judgement concerning the backstories. Some of those include:

Divorce

Cirrhosis of the liver 

Problems with their adult children 

Getting fired 

In the case of divorce, our assumptions will depend a little bit on our life experiences but typically we tend to assume the woman wasn’t a good wife or the man was abusive. We assume no one ever gets cirrhosis of the liver unless they’re an alcoholic. We assume issues with adult children are always due to bad and/or abusive parenting. Everyone assumes one ever gets fired unless they “deserve” it. 

I have been deeply convicted of my own tendency to make these kinds of assumptions. I do not believe I am alone in this. We all do it. However, truth-be-told, none of the above are universally true. Sometimes bad things happen. Period. Anytime, we make an assumption concerning a backstory we quickly lose our compassion. Or we stop listening to the hurting person and look for opportunities to instruct them on how to fix the problems that we believe got them in the bad situation in the first place. When we do this, we often end up giving advice that’s not related to the person’s problem and it ends up isolating the hurting person (Colossians 3:12, 1st Peter 3:8)

However.

Because we know Jesus we do better. We can learn to withhold judgment, we can take the time to really listen to their stories without assuming anything at all. We can love them like Jesus loves them.