Reflection on Mt 7:1-2
Here the Lord Jesus points out again the practical part of the life of every man, namely the relationship to our neighbour. The first commandment says that we should love God with all our heart… And the second is like it – we should love our neighbour as ourselves. The opposite of love is egoism. Love forces man into self-denial and self-sacrifice. Egoism makes our “self” the centre of universe. Self-love is connected with spiritual blindness which is called pride. Pride is the deadly poison which penetrated into human nature with the first sin. It was manifested in disbelief in God’s word – the truth – and belief in and surrender to lies and hence the spirit of lies – the devil. The fruit of this sin is death which passes to all men. We have to fight all our life against this hotbed of evil in our soul. The Scripture calls it the old self or sin in us (cf. Rom 7:17). It is, in fact, our corrupt nature. We have an automatic tendency to lies and pride, i.e. spiritual blindness. We see our brother’s fault but we cannot see the same fault in us. Jesus points out this problem when speaking about a speck in our brother’s eye and a plank in our own eye.
The question of judging others: Jesus says: “Judge not, that you be not judged.” One must be clear about what this requirement means – judge not. It does not mean to abolish the courts and to let criminals rob and kill, appealing to this verse from Scripture. If a teacher or parent, who is obliged to educate and bring up, fails to require discipline and order or to judge what is good and what is harmful, he will be to blame for the ill fate of many. We must judge with righteous judgment. We are obliged to judge ourselves with righteous judgment too. This is true love. To judge in Greek (“diakrinein”) means to distinguish or separate – so we must judge ourselves, or separate ourselves from bad ways and choose good ones. And being superiors or parents, we are obliged to judge our subordinates or children with like judgment. If we neglect to judge with righteous judgment, we are careless and we will be responsible for crimes and rude behaviour. Thus, “judge not” refers to unjust condemnation or hasty judgment at an inappropriate place or time.
Jesus continues: “With what judgment you judge, you will be judged.” From this it follows that we have to judge. Again, if we are to judge others with righteous judgment, we first need to judge so ourselves. We should judge justly and with love, so that our brother may understand that it is no revenge but that we love him and condemn evil and the core of evil which he is unable to see in himself. We thus save him and do him good, though he may not understand it yet.
Jesus explains further: “…and with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you.” There are three measures – a measure of injustice, a measure of justice and a measure of mercy. The Lord Jesus justly condemned sin on the cross. And He voluntarily bore the punishment that was due to us. He calls us to learn from Him and to follow Him. False mercy is a greater evil than a just punishment. We can see nowadays how liberal theologians along with pseudo Pope Francis misuse the term “mercy” to promote an evil and self-destructive system and to destroy God’s laws. So there is true mercy and false mercy, mercy towards evil, which actually has the same impact as the greatest cruelty.
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