Regarding Judgement

I wrote the below to a family member. I won't mention who it is because that part is not important. The subject below is a quite touchy subject ingrained in a segment American culture.

I also thought I’d touch on this “judging thing” you are always bringing up. It seems that anytime anyone has anything to say about what they see in you then you think they are “judging” you. Once again any time that I have questions about the life that God has given me I like to go to the handbook. Though I think it is a very simplistic to call it that, for the purposes of this next paragraph I will do so. Lets go to the “handbook” to see if we are supposed to point out what we see incorrect in the lives of other people and also lets look to see how should we respond if someone points out something in our lives.

So here are a few examples of what other simple men (who are following God) have done in the scriptures “When Peter came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he was clearly in the wrong. Before certain men came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group. The other Jews joined him in his hypocrisy, so that by their hypocrisy even Barnabas was led astray.” Gal 2:10-20



“Moreover if thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone: if he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother. But if he will not hear thee, then take with thee one or two more, that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established.” Mat 18:15-16
... And 'trespass' here doesn’t mean “did something you didn’t like”, it is more like someone doing something that should not be done to you regarding what God says is wrong or right. Once again this “wrong against you” is not going to be based on emotions or your experience so much as it is going to be based on what scriptures teach and what God says (which should be the same) ... In regard to someone wronging you remember what God typically has to say about that is “why not rather be wronged” 1 Cor 6:7

“Brothers, if someone is caught in a sin, you who are spiritual should restore him gently. But watch yourself, or you also may be tempted. Carry each other's burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.” Gal 6:1-2 ... And 2 Samuel 12:1-15 is another one where this spiritual directive was put into practice; though I didn’t write this one out here because it was quite long. In any case when you read it you can see not only Nathan’s action of correcting David but you can see David’s response. David didn’t say “Well I don’t think that’s any of your business.”. Instead David was repentant, he did a complete turn around, and listened (he could have just killed Nathan).

I’ll keep reminding you that these issues were not about things that other people wanted but rather what God wanted. Nathan didn’t go to David because what David did bothered ‘him’. But rather Nathan went to David because what David did was against God. Oh, and here is one more "just for measure".

“Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God. But exhort one another daily, while it is called Today; lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. ” Heb 3:12-13 ... I had to look up the word “exhort” because I wasn’t 100% certain what it meant. I’ll share it with you here: 1.to urge, advise, or caution earnestly; admonish urgently. 2. to give urgent advice, recommendations, or warnings. ... But keep in mind this is not advice that comes from our experience, but rather this is “advice” that would be backed by scripture (more easy to separate opinion from truth this way). So above we have just a few of many scriptures that speak to the fact that we are supposed to look at the lives of others around us (if they are people that claim to be seeking God’s will) and we are supposed to go to them and tell them what we see when we see it (and we should welcome this coming ‘from’ others to us as well).

Now, let’s see if this is the same thing as “judging” someone else. ... If you have seen something different in the scriptures please look them up in your concordance and write those down for me and perhaps write a few words as to why the above scriptures do not mesh with what you are saying. Remember the goal here is not to find out whether you or I are right (I typically don’t care about those things) but rather to find out what God says about these things and for both of us to follow that. Whether I am right or not does not matter so much to me. In a few dozen years (or sooner) my life on this earth is going to be over and all that will have mattered is what God said was right and wrong and whether I stood every day behind the truth of Christ. 'I' really don’t matter in this regard, only God matters. So I should live for 'his' happiness, and not mine.

Paul said a few things about “judging” in the first book of Corinthians and Paul also said a few things that I think you would call “judging”. I’ll go through examples for the both of them because I think there is a lot that we can learn from what God wants us to know about judging here. First of all we can see in Chapter 3 verses one thru three Paul starts “judging” these believers in the city of Corinth; he calls them “worldly” and states that they are “mere infants”. You might expect that he was addressing some really serious issues here (by the world's standards), but all he is addressing is the fact that these believers are exhibiting “jealousy and quarreling”.

A few verses later we get to see how Paul himself reacts to “being judged”. In Cor 4:3-4 we can see that Paul wasn’t offended or upset at all when other people judged him, in fact he simply didn’t care that men were judging him because he knew that he was spending every ounce of his energy trying to please God. ... I’m sure Paul would have responded differently if someone approached him with scripture stating that Paul was doing something contrary to God’s will. But this wasn’t the case here, and Paul in verse three is demonstrating a lack of concern for those that might judge him by human standards. In verse 5 Paul writes that we should judge nothing before the appointed time.

Hmm, so that makes me think that we shouldn’t judge at all except we just finished reading in chapter three of First Corinthians that Paul was doing just that. Wasn’t Paul just judging people just one short paragraph ago. And at the beginning of chapter six (verses one thru four) Paul writes that we should actually appoint men “of little account” as judges to address these issues amongst the believers there. And not only that, if you read throughout the book of Corinthians it appears that Paul is “judging” people all throughout that book; telling them they are doing this or not doing that, and in verse eighteen of chapter four he even tells them that they are arrogant and alludes to the fact that he is going to come back to Corinth to “straighten them out” verse 21. So is this a contradiction? That question might come to our mind because we don’t know enough yet.

To open our minds to what might actually be true we have to consider the fact that the bible was written originally in Hebrew (old testament) and Greek (new testament). And to get even further on point we need to to realize that the Hebrew and Greek manuscripts were written using over eleven thousand words and most English translations don’t have much more than half that many words as those English translations attempt to teach us what was written using almost twice that many words. To bring that idea closer to home let’s get into a little more detail. Most English translations only use a little over six thousand words to try to give us the meaning that the Greek and Hebrew scriptures use more than eleven thousand words to explain to us.

Imagine if someone told you they needed you to explain something really important to someone but you could only use the vocabulary of a six year old to do it. That is what it is like to rely ‘only’ on a single English translation of the bible and never seek to gain further understanding from God and also to compare that understanding to the original Greek and Hebrew texts. These scriptures are truly useful for teaching, rebuking correcting and training in righteousness. II Tim 3:16 ... verse sixteen of second Timothy three also makes it clear once again that we should be using the scripture in order to correct each other, this ‘is’ one of the responsibilities of all believers.

But back to the Hebrew and Greek ... So, if we rely only on those six thousand words in English to try and understand what was written in Hebrew and Greek then we are obviously going to miss out on a few thousand words of understanding ... “Judgment” is one of those words.; in the Greek (not to mention the Hebrew) there are four separate words that are all translated as either “judge” or “judgment” in English. ... Many people therefore are left with the impression that judgment only means one thing and because of “popular religion” the only idea that many people have about that is that judgment is a bad thing but according to the scriptures it depends on what you mean by “judgment”. In both uses of the word judge in I Cor 4:3 we are looking at the Greek word “an-ak-ree'-no” which is a good form of the word judge, this is ok for us to do and is defined as: to investigate, examine, enquire into, scrutinise, sift, question. Then in verse 5 of I Cor 4 we simply see the word “kree'-no” used for the word judge. Now this version of the word is something that is more set apart only for what God will do, and it is defined as: to separate, put asunder, to pick out, select, choose. To be judged, i.e. summoned to trial that one's case may be examined and judgment passed upon it.

We also see that kree'-no is used in I Cor 5:12 as well. Here Paul states that this is something he has no business doing as it relates to those that are ‘outside’ the body of Christ. But in the same verse these says “Are you not to judge (kree'-no) those inside?” ... So even this “more final” form of the word judge (kree'-no) is something that “the saints” are permitted to do as it relates to those that are ‘inside’ the body of Christ but not those that are ‘outside’ the body of Christ. All of this information is freely available in books at the public library and also on the Internet. We see that there are certain forms of judgment that should not be exercised by anyone except for God. However there are certain kinds of judgment that ‘are’ good and they should be exercised by all of us. ,, Namely the type of judgment where we look at ourselves ‘and’ others (if those others say they are our brothers or sisters in Christ) and we should assess (or judge) whether those brothers or sisters are acting in accordance with the life that God desires that we all should live.

The scriptures are littered with examples of this and show that this ‘is’ something that we should do. “You ‘are’ to instruct and train others according to the scriptures” is one of the things that are taught by the scriptures. This means that it ‘is’ the responsibility of every believer to watch out for the spiritual condition of other believers. Again In the eleventh verse of Galatians two, Paul says ”When Peter came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he was clearly in the wrong.”. ,,, Can either of us imagine if we were Peter? ... I bet Peter, being the man of God that he was, really appreciated what Paul did. I think it is likely that he had inadvertently gotten caught up in something that he “knew better” about. But then again maybe he didn’t appreciate it at first. Perhaps it took him a few minutes to get over his human defensive side, or perhaps a few hours to get it. But in any case I am sure, because he was a brother in the faith, that he ‘did’ get it and he did accept correction. Not silly correction regarding something that is unspiritual ; ie "I think you should not go to the movies so often", or "I think you should change your oil in your car more often", or "I think you should help your child with their homework", or "I think you should vote”. Also not on a silly opinion, but instead a correction based on the scriptures and Christ.

In other scriptures it is clear that if we find “our brother in sin” that we who are spiritual should carefully point out to him what he is doing wrong and bring him back up in the faith. Sin is one of those “religious words” that simply means something that you do that separates you from God.