And why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye? 4 Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me remove the speck from your eye’; and look, a plank is in your own eye? 5 Hypocrite! First remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye
Matt 7:3–5 (NKJV)
I have always felt that one of the most abused texts from our Lord’s own mouth is this text before you. All this stuff about “judge not” and “the plank in your eye” have been plunged into our ears since time immemorial (since about the 60s and 70s in), particularly in the direction of laisseze faire leave-it-to-beaverism. As we have all heard of this text, in theory, its main concept is that Jesus is condemning “judgy” people, who tell others that they’re doing wrong things, or who are making judgment calls about who is good, bad, Christian, heathen, saved, damned, and the like.
And while we’re going to leave all that where it may lie (in the garbage) , what I actually want to write on for you all today is this idea – what is Jesus actually saying? That is, cut threw all of the crap and the specks and planks and sawdust, and , if you can, take all of that cultural bias and all of those terrible sermons out of your metaphorical eye and actually see what’s going on here.
Jesus has been preaching to the people for several chapters of solid text at this point. He has gone through the necessity of having a holiness that exceeds that of the Scribes and pharisses, of being holy because the Lord is holy, of living in the new way of resurrection and of the cross outlined in the beatitudes and following after it, and of course, on being salt, and light, and called Sons of the Father.
This is to say for all of these chapters of text, all of these verses and moves that Jesus has made, the overall thrust of it is to encourage us to be like God. To imitate and to emulate Him in all that we do. All that we need to have in mind as we come up on our particular pericope here. Because when it comes – we’ve already established that the Pharisees are caught up on the external, that they are “hypocrites” (which probably doesn’t mean what you think it does but we’ll let that be for now) , that we need to exceed them in holiness, that we need to avoid doing things to be seen or recognized or appreciated as whatever we may wish to be (holy, smart, prayerful, helpful, etc) – and live CRUCIFORMEDLY for the sake of our neighbors.
Thus , Jesus looks at the current state of affairs, particularly in how “judging” was being done in this day . How this is, we can both look at the examples of such. For example the attempted stoning of the woman caught in adultery, the bickering about who’s better between the Apostles, the shunning of the tax collectors, even the crucifixion of Jesus itself, and we can ask – what was all of that stuff for? Was it done for the good? Well, no not really. For the most part, it was done, as so many things where, which Jesus Himself already has noted – for people to see them being done. SO also with “judging.”
And while this may not seem so, let me bring it into a modern context so that you can see that it is (still) so.
Meet Tom. Tom wants to be a pastor. Hes a young man who aspires to go to seminary. But, all in all Tom is spiritually and socially immature, doesn’t quite grasp the weight of his own issues, but becuase he watches youtube videos about Christianity sometimes that he has become some sort of Chrisitan authority. He finds out one day that an elder woman in that congregation doesn’t quite believe a part of the church’s statement of faith. So, he confronts the woman and convinces her to leave the congregation. In doing this, Tom feels great about himself. The righteous indignation is flowing through his veins, he feels exhilarated, alive, and in communion with God. But that’s because Tom is an idiot. What Tom has actually done, is allow himself to be so blinded by his pride and desire to be a theological authority that he has cut another off from Christ by his words and actions. He wanted to take a speck out of her eye to be seen as one who did that kind of thing. Not because he wanted to help her. and so, in seeking to fix a theological struggle, he forced her into apostasy. In other words, wanting to be seen as one who takes specks out of eyes, Tom took a butcher knife to her face and cut the ocular organ out to show his friends.
Meet Kent. Kent doesn’t want to be a pastor, he just wants to go to church and live his life. But Kent struggles with a pornography addiction. However, nobody knows. Kent’s friend Frank, however, is a known porn addict. Frank asks Kent for some advice in kicking his addiction, because he knows that Kent is a Christian, and assumes that Kent doesnt struggle with the same issues that people outside of the church do. But instead of doing what he should do and admit to Frank that Christians struggle with the exact same sins, and point out that true redemption doesn’t come from kicking habbits, but from being forgiven by Christ, Kent, wanting to be seen as the exemplary Christian, gives to Frank what he thinks might be some decent advice. However the problem here, quite obviously, is that whatever Kent has to suggest, it very clearly didn’t work for him. In other words, Kent, who hasnt been able to get the speck out of his own eye – is now asked by his friend to take a speck out of HIS. But not only has Kent failed to figure out how to remove the speck of porn addiction from his own eye, but because he’s still got it lodged in there he can’t see very well. And yet nevertheless out of a desire to save face he gets to work, blind and bothered by his own problems trying to sort out his friends, when all the while he hasn’t got tbe slightest clue how to actually take either of their specks out of either of their eyes. And so in blind ignorance, Kent does more harm tha good, damaging his friend with bad advice that doesn’t work. Discouraging him, lying go him, and eventually leading him to failure, hopelessness, shame, and despair when he fails and thinks he’s alone and at fault in it
Meet Karen. Karen hates poor people. She thinks she doesnt, and she says she doesnt, because she’s a Christian and Chrisitans don’t hate anybody (shell make sure to tell you so) , but when a local homeless man wandered into the church sanctuary sunday morning, smelling homeless, looking homeless, and being homeless, she made sure to report him to the church staff, out of fear that he might 1. steal something, 2. bother someone, 3. ask for money, 4. stink up the place., 5., harm the women or children, 6., drink the coffee and eat the food after the service without providing some for other people or putting money in the donation plate., 7., and worst of all, stay a while and bring his friends. Karen thinks that she sees a plank. In fact, all she can see s a plank. She thinks it’s the homeless man. But in fact, he only looks like a plank to her because when there’s a plank in your eye, you can’t see anything else other than a plank. Like a menopausal woman (and maybe she is one) suffering hot flashes thinks the room is hot when its just her, so Karen thinks she sees a problem outside herself. Just as the drunk driver blames the car he hit for being at fault, so we all when we have a beam in our eye, cannot tell where our problems end and other peoples begin. This is the problem with Tom, with, Kent, with Karen, and yes, with us too.
Not so out of the realm of possibility anymore, is it?
Now what have we seen in all of this? Nothing more than Christ has already said to us in Holy Writ; if we cant see what we’re doing, or our vision is obstructed, we will do more harm than good when we set to work performing soul-surgery on our friends and their spiritual eyeballs. He isn’t saying don’t do this. He’s saying this is how.
The message friends, is this: – if you wish to heal the sins of others, you desire a good thing. But as the blind cannot lead the blind, and one drowning victim cannot reasonably help another, so we need to go about this after we have sorted ourselves out. If you want to play Doctor you need clean hands to perform the surgery. If you want to tackle some eye specks, you’re going to need some spectacles to see what you’re doing properly. And that means first that we need to see our own sin. We need to recognize that the sin in other people is the same sin in us. That we arent different and we arent over it. This means that firstly we need to take an act of humility. Realizing – that no matter how mature we feel spiritually, we need to carefully attend to speck removal, reminding ourselves, that at the very least, there’s one in our own eye obstructing our vision. Secondly, it means that we need to do things for the right reasons. If we are asked to operate on someone spiriritually, we ought to do it becuase we’ve been asked to, or tasked to, not becuase we want to, or to be known as one who does these things. We ought to do this to help the other person, not to puff ourselves up. And lastly, it means that we need to, as best we can, attend to the cleaning out of our own eyes first so that we can rightly see what we’re doing. And in all this, realize that we are not all called to soul service. Help a neighbor in need when you can, but always recognize when you cant. A toddler tying a tourniquet is a death sentence that need’nt be dealt. So it is with one’s soul.
