Reflection on Mt 7:5
This verse is preceded by the words: “And why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye? 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?” So we see the speck in our brother’s eye, which indeed is there, but we cannot see the plank in our own eye. It means that we see even a little fault in our brother but we do not notice our faults and sins. Jesus says: “remove the plank from your own eye” and He emphasizes the word “first”. Despite our good will we tend first to remove the speck from our brother’s eye. Therefore we must literally make a step of faith associated with true repentance – that means admit our own fault, and by this repentance we remove the plank from our own eye, i.e. from the system of our false thinking. After we remove our plank, Jesus does not say that we can then be indifferent to our brother and to appeal to false mercy or false love – no. The next step we are to make is to help remove the speck from our brother’s eye. Jesus says that if we remove our plank, we will be able to see spiritually. Without removing the plank, we will not see spiritually.
Imagine a surgeon who wants to perform an operation but is blind. To be able to operate he would first have to see again. How often a wise rebuke at the right time, in the light of true humility and repentance, is an indispensable service to our brother in removing the speck. The speck in the eye causes pain. It needs to be removed and cannot remain there. But we have to remember that in order to serve our brethren by removing the specks from their eyes, we first need to enter into God’s light, to admit our own faults and sins before God and to have the intention to remove them, and then we will obtain the experience and the light and be able to serve our brethren. If we do so without removing the plank, we will cause harm to both our brethren and ourselves.
What precise spiritual principles Jesus has left us in so simple words and, unfortunately, how little we apply them! So we must remove the plank first and then the speck, and as regards judging our brother, we should use the measure of true mercy because we likewise will need mercy before the judgment seat of God. This true mercy is mercy for the soul connected with true love. It is no false mercy which serves evil and destroys God’s laws.
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