Before You Dare Judge Anybody

Reverend Leo H. McCrary II

Did God save you so that you can judge and condemn others or did He save you so that you may help to uplift others?

Today’s devotional reading: Matthew 7:1-5

Who are you to sit and to judge anybody? At the start, and then throughout the rest of His ministry, Jesus preached repentance. Do you understand why Jesus preached repentance? Paul summed it up best by stating that all of us are sinners who fall short of the glory of God.

The greatest hindrance to the world today is the pretentious and the self-righteous; they are not only self-serving but they genuinely believe that only they are right. With every proclamation and every judgment, they set mankind back rather than push us forward in progress. They do this by judging that others are less than them, and determining that the world only needs them and their way.

When one judges, it ought to be a judgment of how one can help to serve another. In Jesus’ teaching of judging another, He instructs that one remove the plank from their own eyes so that they can clearly see how to remove the speck from their neighbor’s eye. The teaching isn’t that you shouldn’t judge, but that you should judge in a helpful manner.

There is nothing wrong with constructive criticism (judgment), as it encourages in a manner to uplift. Where we go wrong in judgment is that we often seek to put others down, rather than lift them up. May I encourage you today to judge how you can help somebody, rather than destroy somebody?