“Judge not, that you will not be judged.” How often do we hear people saying that we must never judge others.” And how we misunderstand the meaning of this particular saying of Jesus! Jesus is talking to the leaders of his time, who were strict observers of the very complex Law of God, who regarded themselves as morally superior for keeping it in its entirety, and who looked down upon people who did not follow their very strict interpretation, Jesus included. In fact, they were not judging, but condemning their fellows.
Judgement is something quite different. The Greek word for a judge is dikaios, which comes from the word for righteousness. In English, the word judge means someone who justifies. When someone has committed a crime, he is brought before a judge, who decides on a penalty which will make peace between the offender and the society he has offended. In the language of an earlier era, when a man, say, had served six months in prison for burglary, he was said to have “paid his debt to society”. The purpose of legal judgement, then, is not to condemn, but to make peace, to reform, to save a man from himself.
This is the sense in which judgement is to be found in Christianity. We have all fallen short of the glory of God; we have all offended Him by sinning against Him. But God does not desire our punishment or destruction. He loves us, and wants us to come back to him with all our heart, in sorrow for sin. With God, judgement is for the purpose of salvation. As the old translation of the Second Preface for weekdays has it, “In love you created man, in justice you condemned him, but in mercy you redeemed him.” Notice the two terms surrounding justice: love and mercy. And there is not even any debt to be paid; the Lord Jesus paid the debt for all sins of all people in all times when he died on the cross as a sacrifice for sin. God’s purpose is summed up beautifully in the story of the women caught in adultery as told in John’s gospel: “Woman, has no-one condemned you?” “No-one, sir.” “Then neither to I condemn you. Go, and sin no more.”
The same applies to us. Paul warns us about condemning in Romans 8. But judging? If God did not judge us, then his mercy and forgiveness would be meaningless, since there would be nothing to forgive. Judgement is for the purpose of love and forgiveness. Do parents not judge their children when they do wrong? But they do not condemn their children; rather, it is a step on the path to goodness, to healing a broken relationship. We have to recognise when someone has gone wrong, if we are to be a means of their finding the right path. We often condemn without forgiveness, because we want to be rid of a person or institution in our lives. To repeat; judgement is not condemnation, but a step on the road to peace and forgiveness. And it is not the first step, either. It is merely the middle step. We begin with love; we end with mercy. In between, whether about ourselves or another, judgement is merely a recognition that something is wrong, joined to a desire to put things right. And the first person we should judge is – ourselves! God loves us, and wants to show mercy towards us. This is how we should be, too. Let us put aside condemnation, and seek the good of each other in love. Then everything else will fall into place.
Fr Phillip
