Judging Others

“The fear of the Lord is to hate evil: pride, and arrogancy, and the evil way, and the froward mouth, do I hate. (Proverbs 8:13)
It is easy to hate the sins of pride, arrogancy, rebellion and lust in others, but do we hate these sins with an equal passion when we see them in ourselves? We are quick to give ourselves the benefit of the doubt and make excuses for our own behavior, even as we rake over the coals others guilty of the same sin. I have discovered that often the sins we find so condemnable and annoying in others, are the very sins we struggle with ourselves. We must judge ourselves first before we attempt to judge others. Jesus made this principle plain in Matthew 7:1-6 when He commanded us not to concern ourselves with the mote (splinter) in our brother’s eye, if we have a beam in our own eye. It is an impossibility to help someone with pride, for example, if we have not dealt with our own.
The Lord says that we will be judged in the same manner that we judge others. With that in mind, we should err on the side of grace and mercy, instead of condemnation. Some teachers use this passage of scripture to teach that we are not to judge at all; however, we are commanded to judge and discern the following: 1) ourselves to see that we are in the faith (II Corinthians 13:5); 2) false teachers (Galatians 1:9, I John 4:1); 3) other believers for the purpose of church discipline (I Corinthians 5: 11-13); 4) the character of others (John 7:24). While it is true that we should hate what God hates, there is no reason to hate sin in others more than we hate sin in ourselves. When we call others to accountability for their sin, we should do so in love and mercy, and we should remember our own imperfections in the process.