Judge not, that ye may not be judged;
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.
for with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged; and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you.
Jesus has just told His disciples not to judge. Here He gives the reason: the standard you use on others comes back onto you. So what judging does He forbid? And who hands the measure back?
The first mistake is to read this as a ban on all discernment. Yet the same chapter commands the very thing such a ban would forbid.
The Lord here does not at all blame spiritual discernment of persons or things. Such discernment is a clear and weighty privilege of the Christian, for his own guidance and for the help or warning of others… What the Lord warned the disciples against is the bad habit of censoriousness. It so often leads to suspecting evil motives without ground, against the holy instincts of love… The very context proves that we can and ought to judge. The Lord supposes it not only workable but right and necessary when He says, "Do not give dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before pigs."
The line runs between judging what is set before us and judging what is not. One is obedience; the other is a takeover of an office that is not ours.
To judge things and people when it is our duty is to be obedient and to serve. But to judge what is not before us for judgment is another matter. To volunteer in it, to pronounce on motives and springs of action, to assume knowledge of what is not open to us — this is to take authority, not to be subject to it. It is to assume what belongs only to the Judge of all, and so it intrudes on His office.
This is not advice but a law. One writer sets it beside sowing and reaping.
What our Lord says here is a law the believer cannot escape. It is like that other law in Galatians: "Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap."… Many will yet learn, through sad experience and much heartache, that this law is never slow. The word that criticised a brother's motives, and belittled him to lift up the self of the accuser, was soon spoken. But it will not take long before someone steps up with the same measure and the same judgment and does the same to us. Nothing is so damaging to spirituality as a habitual critical spirit.
It matters who hands the measure back. One writer points to people rather than to God's final sentence. (In his older translation, Luke 6:38 reads "shall men give into your bosom" — men give it back.)
Harshness comes back as harshness. The measure we give to others comes back to us. The language shows that God permits this in His government, but it is not the sentence of the divine Judge. The parallel passage in Luke (6:38) states it openly: "good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap."
Commentators differ here. Another reads the verse as describing how God Himself deals with us, though never unjustly:
Of course this does not mean that God will deal unrighteously with someone who judges unrighteously. He will judge every man according to His perfect righteousness. With this goes the assurance that the disciple who judges in love and grace will also receive loving treatment from his heavenly Judge.
Why does anyone fall into this habit? The trouble starts in the critic, not in the other person.
The inevitable effect of a judging spirit is that we get judged ourselves. Everyone speaks ill of the soul whose habit is censorious… Where this proneness to judge is, there is another still more serious evil. It is an evil in the spirit that the person never judges, and it makes him restless and eager to prove others wrong too… And He shows the way to deal rightly, if we desire the good of His people and their deliverance from evil: begin with self-judgment.
The same law runs the other way, and that is where its promise lies.
In the words the Gospel writers record, grace was giving a revised version of the law of retaliation. The Lord was not saying to them, "eye for eye, tooth for tooth." He was laying on them a newer and nobler command: "give, and it will be given to you… For with the measure you use it will be measured back to you."
- Measure — one law, two directions. Harshness comes back as harshness. Generosity comes back pressed down and running over.
- Motives — the ban is not on discernment. It falls on verdicts about springs of action we cannot see, and that claims an office belonging to the Judge of all.
- Mirror — a critical eye signals an unjudged beam at home. Self-judgment is the way to help a brother.
- Mercy — commentators differ on whether people or God hand the measure back. Both readings ask the same of us: judge in love and grace, and loving treatment comes back.
- Momentum — this law is never slow. The quick word comes back just as quickly. Choose now which measure you want handed back.