In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Even if a person knows nothing else in the Bible, more than likely they can still rattle off those words from Jesus that we heard in our Gospel today from Luke chapter six. You know exactly the ones I’m talking about. There Jesus says very famously, “Judge not, and you will not be judged.” And yet, despite the fact that almost everyone seems to know this verse, given the way that it’s often used, it is painfully obvious that most people don’t understand what it means at all. How many of us have been in a conversation with another person before and had this verse used against us? You’re talking with someone about some moral issue that’s clearly defined as wrong in the Scriptures, something like homosexuality or abortion, and before you can even make it through the Biblical argument, everything gets derailed when the other person interjects and says, “Jesus says you aren’t supposed to judge.”

So, what I want to do in today’s sermon is simply take some time to explain the correct interpretation of this passage. By using the rest of Bible, and not cherry-picking only certain parts of it, I’m going to explain what Jesus means and what He doesn’t mean when He tells us that we shouldn’t judge other people. 

We’ll start with what Jesus doesn’t mean first. Clearly, when you read the rest of the Scriptures, and even the surrounding context of this particular verse, it becomes very obvious to anyone who’s being intellectually honest that the words “judge not” cannot possibly mean that we Christians are required to be silent on moral issues, and that we should never tell anyone else that what they are doing is wrong. Right after Jesus says, “Judge not, and you will not be judged,” in our reading He talks about the process for how Christians should go about showing someone else their sin. Jesus says in verse forty-two of the same chapter in Luke’s gospel, “First take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck that is in your brother’s eye.” Notice that Jesus does not say in these verses that we should ignore other people’s sinful behavior entirely, which is more or less the argument of those who use the words “judge not” against Christians. Rather, Jesus tells us that we should help our brother remove their sin, and that we should do this after a time of self-examination. The problem is not with pointing out another person’s sins altogether and telling them that what they are doing is wrong. The problem is with doing so before or without admitting your own sin first. That’s the kind of judging that Jesus is condemning. It isn’t about ignoring sin entirely, or God forbid approving it, it is about addressing sin everywhere that is exists, beginning with ourselves.

And if the context of this particular verse was not enough to convince someone that “judge not” cannot possibly mean approving or ignoring someone else’s sinful behavior, there is also the context of the rest of the Bible too. Consider, for example, what Jesus tells us in Matthew chapter eighteen. There are Lord literally says, “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone.” Jesus even adds in that passage that if the individual won’t listen to you, or to two or three other witnesses either, then you should go tell it to the whole Church. And if he or she won’t listen to the Church then you should treat that person like a gentile or a tax collector.

Or think about what we learn in 1 Corinthians chapter five. In that instance, Saint Paul had to rebuke the Christians living in Corinth precisely because they were refusing to speak God’s Word or judgment against a man in their church who was living an openly sinful life. One of their members was engaging in gross, unrepentant sexual sin, and even though they knew about it, the rest of the congregation did nothing at all. Perhaps they even said, “Who am I to judge?” But what did the Apostle Paul say to them in response? He said, “For though absent in body, I am present in spirit; and if present in Spirit, I have already pronounced judgment on the one who did such a thing.” Paul told the Christians living in Corinth that not only should they pronounce judgment on that man’s sin, they had to. It was their Christin duty to call him to repentance and excommunicate him from the Church so that he learned put his sin away. Otherwise, the man would never realize that what he was doing was dangerous and that, despite what he thought, he was actually outside a state of God’s grace. So, clearly, not judging someone cannot possibly mean that we never tell them that what they are doing is wrong or that we approve and accept their sinful behavior. It is impossible to get that impression from reading all of the Bible together.

While the Bible does forbid certain kinds of judging, which we will discuss later on in the sermon, there are many kinds of judging that it endorses and that it even commands. For example, we Christians must judge our teachers. We must evaluate what our preaches talk about in their sermons and in Bible class and compare it to God’s Word. And if we encounter false teaching, we are supposed to turn away from it and try to show our teachers a better way. Remember what the Bereans did when Saint Paul first came to them in the book of Acts? We read that they judged Paul every single day by comparing what he said to the Bible. And remember what Peter and John said to the Sanhedrin when the religious leaders told them to stop preaching that Jesus was the Christ? They said, “Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge, for we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard.”

Besides judging things like doctrine on the basis of the Bible, every Christian also has to make judgments in their daily vocations. Parents need to discipline their children and teach them to obey those in authority over them. Police officers and other civil servants need to make judgments all of the time in order to protect those that they serve. In some instances, Christians are even called upon to act as literal judges, who sit behind a desk with a gavel, hear cases that are brought before them and then give sentences to criminals in accordance with their crimes. All of that is not only permissible according to the Bible, it is required. As God Word tells us in Romans chapter thirteen, “There is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore, whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment.”

Every day, as the people of God, we are required to judge all kinds of different things. We judge doctrine. We judge behavior. We judge situations. We judge sin wherever we see it, including and especially in our lives. It is not judging in general that our Lord condemns, but judging things in the wrong kind of way.

And so, that is what I’d like to discuss in the last part of today’s sermon. Since Jesus’ words, “Judge not, and you will not be judged,” cannot possibly mean that God forbids all kinds of judging that there is, the question becomes, “what kinds of judging does it forbid?” The simple answer is that Jesus forbids the kind of personal judging which is not informed by God’s Word. On the one hand, this means judging things according to our own sinful thoughts and opinions instead of in accordance with what we read in the Bible. It is wrong to give a judgement against something that God is silent on. It is wrong to tell someone that they are sinning for doing something that the Bible never calls a sin. For example, during the time of the Reformation, the Roman Catholic Church said that anyone who did not fast from meat on Friday’s during Lent was sinning against God and needed to repent. But where in the Bible does it say that a person has to fast from meat on Friday’s? It doesn’t say that anywhere. In fact, in Colossians chapter 2, Saint Paul explicitly says, “Let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath.” So, that kind of judging is wrong.

However, when we Christians tell someone, for example, that is sinful for two men or two women, or anyone who is not married for that matter, to be engaged in a sexual relationship with each other, we are not making a personal judgment on their actions. We are simply communicating to them the judgment that God has already revealed in His Word. When we tell someone that abortion is murder because life because at conception and even Jesus was a little baby in the womb, or that fornicates and adulterers will not inherit the kingdom of God unless they repent, and that those who refuse to come to Church and despise the means of grace will not experience God’s grace in eternity, all of those things, and many more are judgments that have already been given to us in the Bible. They are not our judgments. They are the judgments of God. As Jesus tells us elsewhere in John chapter twelve, “The one who rejects me and does not receive my words has a judge; the word that I have spoken will judge him on the last day.”

And yes, of course, we should never presume to speak God’s judgment against someone else’s sin, unless we are examining ourselves according to those same judgments too. Obviously, before we call others to repentance, we need to be living a life of repentance ourselves. Otherwise, as Jesus says, we are hypocrites and the truth is not in us. If we are going to condemn homosexuality at the same that time that we are living with someone outside of marriage, obtaining a divorce without Biblical grounds, or watching pornography with no intention of trying to stop, then, as Christ tells us in our reading, “the measure that we use will be measured back to us.” But it’s not that we should ignore these sins and not judge any of them; rather it’s that we should speak God’s Word of judgement against all of them. We should listen to the Bible and turn away from everything that it tells us is wrong. Because again, the point here is that God’s Word is what gives us God’s judgment. And judging things by another standard, such as our own personal standard, is exactly the kind of judging that Jesus forbids in our text.  

Now, while every kind of judgment that a person makes which is not informed by God’s Word is wrong, there is one kind of judgment in particular that is the worst kind of all. And that is the judgment of trying to make God’s final judgment on person’s soul before the Lord Himself has given it. The Bible tells us very clearly that “after death comes judgment.” And it tells us that Jesus will come judge the living and the dead on the Last Day. What that means is that before the Last Day comes, or before a person dies, we should never presume that they are past even the possibility of repentance. It’s true that there is such thing in the Bible as the hardening of the heart, also known as the sin against the Holy Spirit. Jesus talks about this sin in Matthew chapter twenty-three, where He laments about how He would have gathered the people of Jerusalem as a hen gather’s her brood, but they would not come. And yet, even though it is possible for a person to plunge himself into this spiritual state where nothing will convert him, it is not up to us a Christians to determine when that has actually happened. We should never act as if no matter what takes place, we know for certain, that someone could not possibly repent and believe the Gospel. We should never withhold the Word of God from them thinking that not even God’s Word can help them. That is a terrible kind of judgment.

And once again, the context of our Lord’s Words helps us see that this is the exact application that Jesus is trying to make in Luke chapter six. Right before our reading today Jesus tells us that we should, “Love our enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, and pray for those who abuse you.” The reason why we should do all of those things is because as long as they are living it is still possible for our enemies to become our friends. It is still possible for those who despise us because we love Jesus and His Word, to be encouraged by our witness into loving Christ and His Word too. And if we withhold the love of Jesus from them, if we refuse to speak God’s Word of Law and Gospel to them, thinking that nothing could ever convert them, then we are withholding from them the only thing that possibly could.

Who are we to judge that someone is incapable of coming to faith? Who are we to say that even the most hardened of sinners could not become one of God’s most beloved saints? Were we free from sin when the Lord gave us the gift of eternal life? Were we godly people before Jesus came to us and made us God’s own dear children in our Baptism? No! We were God’s enemies too. As the Bible tells us, we were dead in our sins and trespasses, hostile to God, and living in league with the Devil. It was only by the Lord’s mercy that we were given God’s grace to begin with, and that is why we should never withhold His grace from others. As Jesus Himself says in our reading, “be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.”

We are merciful even as our Father is merciful both when we seek to gently show others their sins and when we give them God’s forgiveness as soon as they repent of them. We are merciful even as our Father is merciful, when we speak out against immorality even if it means that others get mad at us for it and want to hurt us because of it. We are merciful even as our Father is merciful when we endure hatred, and persecution, and are even called bigots and haters ourselves, simply because we try and get others to listen to what God’s Word has to say. And we are merciful even as our Father is merciful when we tell people that their sins have truly been atoned for by Jesus, no matter how bad their sins have been. We are merciful even as our Father is merciful, when we do onto others as we would have them do unto us. God saved us even though we didn’t deserve it, and that is what we should want for others too. We should not judge them by assuming that, no matter what, they could never possibly repent and believe the Gospel. We should preach the Word to them, and we should let God’s Word do the judging for us.

As I’m sure you know, many people do not come to Church nowadays because they think that Church is a judgmental place. In one sense, those people are right. You do encounter God’s judgment when you go to Church. When you listen to God’s Word it judges your entire life. It exposes all of your thoughts, words, and deeds, and shows you just how sinful they are. But that is not the only judgment that God gives us when we come to Church. Besides showing us our sins, and calling us to repent of them, God’s Word also tells us how Jesus died for them. It tells us how God’s very own Son came to from heaven to endure the full judgment that we deserve so that through faith in His sacrifice we would not have to experience any of that judgment at all. The Bible tells us that Jesus was judged in our place. He did that so that everyone who repents and believes in Him would have a place waiting for them in heaven. He was judged on our behalf, so that on Judgment Day we could stand before His throne in confidence.

So, may the Lord supply us with His mercy so that we would judge things only according to His Word, and in doing so, help others be spared from God’s judgment along with us. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.