Judge Not?
“Judge not that ye be not
judged.”
There is one verse in the
Bible that every scoundrel knows thoroughly.
It is the nuclear weapon that every rascal and moral reprobate has in
his arsenal to quiet any criticism of his activities. It requires his detractor to suspend his intelligence and
pretend that he has no moral right to pronounce certain activities to be wrong.
The scoundrel knows that his
greatest enemy is the conscience of good people. If he can neutralize conscience, then he has a license to coerce,
corrupt, and do as he pleases.
Jesus was not speaking of
humble people exercising moral judgment.
He was not saying that it is wrong for people to be what they are, the
image of God with the capacity and duty of knowing what is right and
wrong. Jesus was opposing those who
would usurp the place of God, exercising the prerogative of God alone, in
judging the hearts and souls of men.
There is a great difference
between judging a man’s behavior, and judging his soul. A man who steals, who lies, who commits
sexual sin is not immune from having his activities judged and brought into
court, being punished for his crimes.
No one has a right to consign another soul to hell, but that does not
mean that we are to pretend that we are blind, deaf, and dumb to wicked
activity. To say that would be to
overthrow law and order, and set aside all value and morality.
Jesus emphatically did not
do that. He said that it was wicked to
commit adultery. He said that it was wrong
to lie. He said that it was wrong to
serve idols. He was not a moral cipher,
a moral monstrosity that was unable to make moral decisions.
The rascal piously does what
he condemns in others. He inverts
morality by condemning those who make moral judgments, calling them
hypocrites. It works for him in the
minds of ignorant, morally empty people.
The rascal becomes the good guy who is filled with love; those who
“judge” him are wicked self-righteous people.
His secret agenda is obtained:
He can now do what he pleases for he has shut the mouths of all of those
who might question his behavior. He now
has a free pass.
When that happens, juries
will acquit of murder, slander, perjury, obstruction of justice, for “Who are
we to judge?” The result is complete
moral bankruptcy, and the weak and the poor are delivered to the scoundrel and
the socio-path, for nothing stands in the way of the oppression of the poor and
the weak but the rule of law and the testimony of good people.
The scoundrel uses blackmail
to silence his enemies and to reinforce his contention that those who make
moral judgments are hypocrites. Every
weakness and error is magnified in order to show that every good man is as bad
as the scoundrel. Human goodness is
never absolute. Every man has sin, but
every man does not commit crimes.
Crimes are actionable in law and require testimony and witness from
citizens in order to bring convictions.
When good men are neutralized by fears that they do not want to be known
as hypocrites, the criminal gets his way.
The foundation of a free and
safe society is the willingness of good men to bear witness of crimes and for
honest judges to judge and punish evil.
This means confession of their own sins. Good men in the public arena do not pretend that they are
without fault, but there are differences between sins and crimes. There must be witness made to crimes and
adjudication by the proper authorities.
God reserves the punishment of sins for Himself; He has established
human government to deal with crimes.
Write:
Pastor
C. W. Powell
Trinity
Covenant Church (RCUS)
6050 Del Paz Drive
Colorado Springs, CO 80918
Email: budpow@ureach.com