Posted on 10/21/2012 10:41:14 AM PDT by CHRISTIAN DIARIST
“Only God can judge me.” - Elizabeth Escalona, 23-year-old Texas mom who beat and glued her 2-year-old daughter’s hands to a wall.
“Holier than thou critics have nothing on Lance Armstrong.” - de Volkskrant, the Netherlands
“Be Cool. Be Kind. Don’t Judge.” - A tee shirt on sale at the Ellen Degeneres online store.
Ever notice how often those who lead Godless lives, who engage in immoral behavior, who commit unspeakable acts invoke the words of the Lord to defend their unrepentant sinfulness?
“Judge not lest ye be judged.”
Usually they direct the words at Christ followers, whom they disparage as “judgmental” or “sanctimonious” or “holier than thou.”
Of course, if the Godless, the immoral, the unrepentant actually read the Bible, rather than selected verses, they would understand the context in which the Lord said “Judge not.”
He was talking about hypocritical judgment.
“Why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye?” the Savior admonished.
“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? Hypocrite! First remove the plank from your own eye, then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.”
What the Lord was saying is that, before those of us who believe ourselves upright presume to judge those we perceive as ungodly, we should examine ourselves.
If I am an adulterer, if I consort with prostitutes, if I frequent strip clubs, if I download pornography on the Internet, who am I to condemn others for their sexual sins?
If I have a gambling problem or a drug habit or a violent temper, how can I chastise those who similarly struggle with demons?
If I forget the Sabbath day, choosing football over church, if I kill, by supporting institutions that support abortion, if I steal, by working for a business that cheats its customers, what standing do I have to criticize those who break other of God’s commandments?
But those who are committed Christ followers, who are not just hearers, but doers of the Word, not only have the moral authority to judge the ungodly, they have a God-ordained imperative to do so.
Indeed, the Psalmist declared, “The mouth of the righteous speaks wisdom, and his tongue talks of judgment.” The Apostle Paul echoed that “he who is spiritual judges all things.”
It’s not about condemning sinners to hell. It’s about calling them to repentance, so that their eternal souls are not cast into the lake of fire of which the Bible warns.
It’s not about hating on transgressors, for we are, every one of us, sinners, who fall short of the glory of the Lord.
It’s about hating the sin.
So Christ followers do the will of God when they call out those who brazenly flout His law; who unabashedly and unrepentantly persist in their sins.
The unsaved may acknowledge God. They may even quote the Lord. But that matters not.
So they believe in the Father and the Son. That’s well and good. “Even the demons believe,” the Bible notes, “and tremble!”
I don’t have to judge whether homosexuality is wrong any more than I have to judge whether murder is wrong. God said it is, that is all I need to know.
Judge fairly, judge wisely, judge compassionately,judge reasonably. Don’t be a fool, a martyr or a tyrant. Judge appropriately, judge realistically. Don’t lie down, walk forth, when appropriate tiptoe as not to intimidate and when necessary stomp violently upon that which threatens you. Judge all you do and judge others as you would judge yourself.
http://www.capalert.com/judgenot.htm
No matter how that is placed before us, we still have a sin nature. We are simply not yet in our perfected bodies. As long as we live in the earth suit, we still have a struggle with sin.
No doubt, you will consider the apostle Paul to be one of the greatest men that ever lived, but he said this:
1 Timothy 1
15 This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief.
He places this in present tense with the use of the word “am”.
Also, he goes into great depth of his own sin problem in Romans 7 & 8.
Romans 7
21 So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22 For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; 23 but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. 24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? 25 Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!
So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature[d] a slave to the law of sin.
Not a one of us lives perfectly, and we need to manage ourselves properly. One problem in the church is that we take this idea of “grace” and use it as an excuse to live how we want to live, and merely lay it out to God as a weakness of the flesh. I am willing to make that statement for myself, even no one else will.
We wander around thinking of ourselves as “good”, but that is simply not true. Yes, according to Galatians 5:22 (I think) we can walk in goodness, which is one of the fruit of the Spirit. We must not see it as our goodness, but actually the goodness of God, thorugh His Spririt, as he works within us.
Consider the words of Jesus here:
Mark 10
18 And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God.
Those words came from the mouth of Jesus, who died for our sins. By His own words, He was not good. That says a lot about the attitude we as Christians should hold. With that, I have no good in me, aside from the goodness given to me by the Spirit of God. I also struggle with sin, and need to be in continual prayer and repentance. Otherwise, I am sure that my ego will get the best of me.
There is a such thing as judgment, but it must start inside my own skin. I know I am forgiven, but the attitude i show towards the unsaved can show a sense of “self-righteousness”, even though I do not intend it.
Your argument would have been much more engaging had it been in a normal font size, without the bold and multiple exclamation points. As it is, I have to assume that it is not worth reading, as it screams, rather than speaks.
Just a little fyi about netiquette.
We do not have a sin nature, we have sin residing in the flesh. The word “sin nature” is not even in the Bible. If you’re going to use it, use the term the Bible uses.
Everything that we were in Adam, the “old man,” or “old self” as the Bible calls it, is dead. We died to sin when our old man died, the day we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ. Now we are in Christ. We were given a new heart and a new spirit under the New Covenant. Israel as a nation will be given the same as Jeremiah and Ezekiel prophesy, when Jesus comes back to rule on this earth.
We are to walk—that is live our lives—in the power of the Holy Spirit in us. We have a new walk, a new lifestyle. If there’s no change, there’s no salvation. Do we still sin? Yes, unfortunately we fail to control the lusts of the flesh. Sometimes it is a struggle. But there is power in the Word of God, if we will study it and believe it, and there is power in the Holy Spirit who indwells us, and there is the victory that was won over sin on the cross.
BUT—we do NOT continue the way we were, as the Scriptures I gave plainly say in Ephesians 2—we have everything we need for life and Godliness.
We aren’t called saints for nothing.
All true believers are on the road to maturity, or being perfected in Christ. He promises to finish what He has begun in us. We are being conformed into the image of Christ and will be in our glorified bodies, perfect or complete, when we see Him either in the air or when we are raised.
Judge not. aka “Don’t judge me because it will hurt my feelings. What I think is your judgment will make me feel bad and cause me to feel shame. And feeling shame will hurt my self esteem. yada yada yada.”
Yet obviously, it is not the judgment of another that makes one feel bad, it is one’s own self judgment over what another says that makes one feel bad. If one really has nothing to rue, one would not fret over the judgment of another.
Excuse me, I mean if you’re going to use the term “sin nature,” you should define what you mean. The Bible uses the word “old self” or “old man” for what a person is born in and the term “flesh” and “sin in the flesh” for what we war against, since we are a new man in Christ with His Holy Spirit in us.
“In all fairness, judgement should be left up to judges, who are competent to judge, as having the evidence before them.”
I never tell people I am a judge...I’m a fruit inspector.
If we are not to discern between good and evil whats the point of the Gospel’s teachings?
We had better be able to judge what’s good and what’s evil.
That one verse is used out of context, in an attempt to thwart any attempt at spiritual discernment. And thus condone anything and everything.
OK. I wasn’t going to touch this thread, but since I have recently addressed this in my adult Sunday School class here in rural Virginia...let’s shuck it down to the cob.
The word “judge” carries the meaning of assigning punishment. Unless we are, by the will of God, in a civil judicial role, we should honor the notion of allowing God to repay, i.e. set the punishment. The better term is “discern.” We must be discerning and unafraid in speaking truth to power. This wacko PC age views any discerning dissent as “judgmental.” The idea of the leftists is to simply make us shut up and tolerate the intolerable.
Not gonna happen with this old guy. I would relish the opportunity to call Obama a Marxist liar to his face.
Shabbat Shalom
It seems that pagans are always telling us not to judge based on one fragment of Scripture.
We are instructed to judge other Christians and how to do so.
We are given courts as an instrument of common grace so that all may receive judgment.
Liberals who throw this out ALWAYS forget the "go and sin no more" part.
Jesus did not pat the adulteress on the head and say: "poor dear, those meanies are sinners, too. Keep on committing adultery."
We are not to judge souls, just actions, which is why we will be surprised by some we see and some we won’t see in Heaven.
>>We Christians are NOT as much sinners as “they”—unbelievers—are.
I think we both understood what I meant. I know that I am forgiven by the grace of God and the blood of Jesus Christ, but as the Bible states “All have sinned.”
“All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” Romans 3:23, is in the context of Paul’s saying that there is no distinction of people, for we’ve all sinned...and all those who believe in Jesus Christ are justified (declared righteous) as a gift by His grace through Christ’s redemption.
So, though we’ve all sinned and fall short of the glory of God, those who believe are by His grace, through Christ’s redemption, declared righteous, and now begin a new life in Christ that puts sin out of one’s life. Saints are able to say “no” to temptation.
This is the walk, or lifestyle, or fruit-bearing season of life when the believer lives by faith, progressively being delivered from the power of sin in his life, as he makes different choices in the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit and the Word of God to directing his paths.
The lifestyle (walk) of a believer is totally different than the lifestyle of an unbeliever, as the Bible teaches.
2 Peter 1:1-11 describes the qualities of a person who knows God and the Lord Jesus Christ.
There is a warning in v. 10 about being diligent to make certain about His calling & choosing of us—as these qualities are ours and increasing if we are truly know the Lord Jesus Christ.
>The lifestyle (walk) of a believer is totally different than the lifestyle of an unbeliever, as the Bible teaches.
I agree completely.
This article below is illuminating. Yes, we should judge just about everything. I have this book and it is full of simple (profound) insights. If we don’t judge and indeed prejudge, then we define deviancy down. Witness the fact that Obama has had an outright scumbag and misogynist in the White House. Yeah, his bro Jay-Z, he of the bitch and hoe genre. Hell yes, judge and discern to the max and never tolerate that which is evil.
http://www.newenglishreview.org/Rebecca_Bynum/The_Cult_of_Non-Judgmentalism/
And Degeneres has made the judgment that to judge is not cool, therefore she judges those who are judging as not cool. The conclusion is that by her own standard she is not cool.
I have two passages for you that deal with this. I think these speak for themselves. Please forgive my formatting.
James 4 tells us this:
17 Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn't do it, sins.
1 Corinthians 8
9 Be careful, however, that the exercise of your rights does not become a stumbling block to the weak. 10 For if someone with a weak conscience sees you, with all your knowledge, eating in an idol’s temple, won’t that person be emboldened to eat what is sacrificed to idols? 11 So this weak brother or sister, for whom Christ died, is destroyed by your knowledge. 12 When you sin against them in this way and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ. 13 Therefore, if what I eat causes my brother or sister to fall into sin, I will never eat meat again, so that I will not cause them to fall.
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