Who can tell me what John 3:16 says? "For God so loved that world that he gave his only son, that whoever would believe in him might not perish, but have everlasting life."
Who can tell me what John 3:17 says? "God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world."

So if Jesus’ way is not to condemn, but to save, how much more should we as his disciples keep away from judging others and condemning them. But the first thing we need to remember is what happened last week, in the previous verses. Specifically, the verse right before this: "Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful." We are to be like our Father. And now, Jesus gives us more insight into what it means to look, to act, to have a heart like our Father in heaven. 3 Lessons

Lessons from the Market Stall
And so he begins, "Do not judge and you will not be judged. Do not condemn and you will not be condemned." Last week, Jesus overturned the idea of simple reciprocation in the sense of:
- Don't love those who love you, anybody does that.
- Don't do good to those who do good to you, everybody does that.
- Don't lend to someone when you know you are going to get it back.'

He got rid of reciprocation. But here, he brings it back, but in a different way. If you judge, you will be judged. If you do not judge, then you will not be judged. If you forgive then you will be forgiven. If you give, it will be given to you. Now what is Jesus saying here?

First of all we need to ask: who is it that is going to judge me if I judge? Who is going to forgive me if I forgive? Two Options: 1. Other people:
- If you judge other people, they will end up judging you back.
- And if you forgive others, then they will be more likely to forgive you.
And there is some truth to that.

2. God
- If we judge others, then we invite God's judgment upon ourselves.
- But as we forgive others, we also ask for God's forgiveness upon ourselves.
I think the next phrase about giving gives us clue. It goes on to say, "A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap." The image here is of being in the market, with the trader weighing out the produce that he is going to give you. For example grain or flour or spices. Rather than having this fluffy powder that is full of air - it is pressed down, shaken together, getting the air out. In fact, running over the top of the measuring cup.

This sounds more like how God works, not us. And so, I believe that it is God who will pay us back. This verse brings us face to face with the judgement of God on us as Christians. This is not the final, eternal judgement which decides our final, eternal destiny of heaven or hell, but there is still a judgement: Paul, speaking to Christians says: "For we must all appear before the judgement seat of Christ, that everyone may receive what is due to them for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad."2 Cor 5:10

"A good measure..." In other words, not only by judging are we judged by God, but we set our own standard for our own judgement. If I scrutinise others and their lives and practices, both in and out of church activities, then that standard, however high, will come back upon myself.

Do not judge, and you will not be judged. It is God who will do the judging, the condemning, the forgiving, and the giving. But we also need to realise that God uses others to accomplish his aims. And so in effect although it may be God who gives us back what is coming to us, he might use others.

Do not judge. Do not condemn. What does that really mean? Actually in the next passage which we will get to next week, Jesus tells us to judge, because he says, "No good tree bears bad fruit. Nor does a bad tree bear good fruit. Each tree is recognized by its own fruit." But this is talking about discernment, not judging in the sense we have here.

What Jesus is speaking against here is the judging or condemning that sets us above other people. 'I see your sin and your faults clearly, so I take it upon myself as the wiser, the more mature, to set you straight.' That is what it means to be a judge; to condemn, as opposed to forgiving. And actually, the word here isn't even forgive. The word in Greek that is used for forgive is actually a different word than is normally used. This word means "to release."

In other words, we might translate it, "release others and you will be released."

Now the connotation here is forgiveness. But it has a fuller meaning. Because what do we do when we judge or condemn someone? We put them in a box? We say, 'This is you. You are your sin. I condemn you.' But to release is to say to a person, 'You are in a box, and I want to help you to be free of that box. And so out of love, I want to do whatever I can to help you be free.'

It means that when we talk with another person, we may recognize something they do as sin, but we need to release people of their past, and even their present. How often do we keep people boxed in by their sin, rather than releasing them to be something new in the future?

Judgment and condemnation does not release people. It does not help people. More often, it just holds people back, because we hold them back.

2. Lessons from the Pit
Moving on through the words of Jesus, he told this parable. "Can a blind man lead a blind man? Will they not both fall in a pit?" Do you imagine they had cones and barricades in first century Palestine? Do you think that if there was a hole in the ground, they’d put up cones and signs? No, there wouldn’t be anything covering it. It was just a hole in the ground waiting for somebody to fall in. The point is that they expected you to be looking where you were going. To keep your eyes open.

Well, if you are a blind person, you are in trouble. You need a guide with you. But what if you have a blind person leading a blind person? Trouble! Neither have any idea that there is a hole waiting to swallow them. So, who is Jesus talking about here when he talks about a blind person?

Well, the blind leader refers to the one who is judging and condemning others. Remember that when we judge and condemn others, what we are doing is putting ourselves in a place above them. The best of motives would say, 'I am trying to lead you in the right direction.' The problem is that too often we do that leading from the wrong vantage point. If we are not in the right place, if we don't know where we are going, how can we lead someone behind us?

Jesus explains it a little bit more in the next verse where he says, "A student is not above his teacher, but everyone who is fully trained will be like his teacher." We are not above our teacher Jesus Christ. So if Jesus wasn't in the business of judging and condemning, how much less should we be involved in it.

The verse refers to Jesus as teacher. What was Jesus teaching? Let’s compare him to the rabbi’s and scribes. They taught the law - all 613 Old Testament laws. But not only them, but the countless oral laws that had been built up. 'You can’t do this, you can’t do that...'

But that is not how Jesus taught. He didn't come bringing laws to follow, but a life to follow. Disciples of Jesus Christ are not to be seeking to follow this law, and that law, or the other law. We are to be seeking to follow the life of Christ. We are to be students of the life of Jesus. And that is so much more than just keeping the law. Because to be like our teacher means that we need to be transformed. It means that we no longer live a life based on following rules, but we live a life based on a heart that looks like our Father's heart. A heart of mercy. A heart of love. A heart of compassion. A heart of forgiveness. A heart of generosity.

The blind person is the person who only sees the law, but doesn't see the deeper truth that they need to be transformed. And so a person who knows the law inside and out and who tries to help a struggling wanderer, all that person can do is lead the other person to look at the law saying, ‘You shouldn’t be doing this you shouldn’t be doing that...’

But a disciple of Jesus Christ needs to follow the footsteps of Christ, who didn't say, 'Look, you need to follow this law.' He said, 'You need to follow me.' The blind will only lead the blind into a pit. The pit called law and legalism. But when we have been transformed, given a new heart and a new life - when we have become like our teacher Jesus - then it is possible to help others. Not out of the sense of legalistic righteousness, but out of the sense of love.

3. Lessons from the Timber Yard
Jesus goes on then to give us one more image to explain what he is trying to say; an image from his personal experience as a carpenter who worked with wood. He is talking about that speck of sawdust that gets into your eye. Have you ever had that? Getting dust or sand or grit in your eye hurts! And the first thing you do is screw up your eyes. And if you can manage to get your eye open, everything is blurred from the tears that are streaming out.

Well, if that’s bad just imagine that you have a plank in your eye. Obviously, this is a little bit of exaggeration, because if you really had a plank in your eye, you would no longer have an eye. You wouldn't see anything. But the point Jesus is trying to make here is that if we have this blindness, if we have this plank in our eye, then we shouldn't be worrying about other people's specks.

To remove grit from your eye is a delicate operation. Such delicacy is impossible with a plank in your own eye - you can’t see well enough to carry out such an operation.

So, what is this plank? We all understand the picture, but what is the specific meaning of the plank? Well, following the context, it is the same thing as the blindness. The plank is a legalistic view of the world, rather than a view of the world through a transformed heart. It is a human view of the world, rather than God's view of the world and of other people. Indeed, the plank could be the judging attitude that we have to others.

The other person may have sinned or erred in some small way, but that is nothing compared to the plank in our own eye of a judging and censorious spirit. And until we remove that plank, the blindness that we have, it does us no good to seek to help another. Because not one of us have a pure heart.

Everything that we ever do has some sort of mixed motive. And we need to seek God and ask help for him to transform us. Not so that we might then go out and condemn. You see a person who has been transformed by Jesus no longer finds any pleasure in the act of judging or confronting another person. A person transformed by Jesus will only challenge another person, will only seek to take the speck out of their eye, out a deep sense of loving humility, and only when called to do so by the Holy Spirit.

But it seems sometimes so right to judge, because you think, "I am on the side of truth." Should any Christian to be able to confront any other Christian about a sin they see.' I'm not so sure. If we were all perfect, yes. But if we were all perfect, we wouldn't be confronting each other would we?

So let's look briefly as we close at a couple different places where we may need to learn in this whole area of not judging, but rather releasing and freeing people.
1. Remember last week we talked about our enemies. Well, an enemy by very definition is a person that we have boxed in because of their sin, because of what they have done to us. So the very first thing that we need to learn is, 'Don't judge our enemies.' But unfortunately, that is the totally natural thing to do. We need see our enemies as people who need to be released from the bondage that they might find themselves in. Not judged. How often did judging a person really help them change? Very seldom. And if it did, it was probably because the Holy Spirit was working overtime, not because of our judgment upon them.

2. Well how about in the Christian community? Sometimes in a church there is more judging going on than anywhere else - and not the good kind of discerning for their help. But, 'Oh, can you believe they did that?' And then we talk about it, and we make it a prayer request. That is not releasing a person. That is tightening the prison they are already in. How do we as a Christian community learn not to judge, not to condemn, but to free people up?

Look at Jesus Christ. Who did he hang out with? He hung out with tax collectors, prostitutes, thieves. He hung out with pretty much anybody. He didn’t hang out with them in order to condemn them. Jesus seemed to have this openness to him. Where just by his love for them and his own releasing and giving - that in and of itself seemed to be enough to convince most people that there was something missing in their lives as they spent time with Jesus. What if we became people like that as a church?

Expanding this idea a little bit, we can also judge and condemn whole groups of people. How often do we judge the homeless or people living off benefits. ‘They are so selfish!' When you say that, you have just condemned, you have just judged, hundred’s of thousands of people, and it didn't help them. Sometimes we can too easily judge when it is not so personal, but this is still not living out of a heart of mercy, like our Father in heaven.

3. Finally, often the judgment and condemnation isn't even directed at other people. Sometimes it is directed inside. Sometimes you and I have a very difficult time accepting the forgiveness of God. We aren't going to release even ourselves. We have built our own box that we fit in. And we don't free ourselves from the sins of our past, but we keep re-living them over and over again. Maybe beating ourselves up, saying ‘I can't believe I did that.'

Sometimes even years later we will punish ourselves for something that we did that was wrong. And just as we should not be judging and condemning others in that way, we should also not be judging and condemning ourselves. If we have a heart that is transformed by Jesus Christ, if we are becoming more and more like our teacher and master, Jesus Christ, then we will be able to forgive both ourselves and others.

Luke