Savonarola:
vern humphrey:
Christ’s comments refer to those who appoint themselves to positions of superiority, not to those who do their civic duty in accordance with the law.
Can you show me where Jesus makes this distinction? Thanks.
I’m not sure Jesus made that explicit distinction, but I think this is the best explanation I’ve seen of my impression of Jesus.
He constantly railed against those in authority who were putting down sinners who were, without question, sinners. He did NOT, in fact, admonish all sinners at least as far as it is recorded in the Bible, but stuck up for them unconditionally against those who wanted to punish them because they judged the “actions” of the sinners Jesus hung around with more harshly than their own “actions” of condemning them in their heart.
Judge a person’s acts but not a person? I find that a little bit shaky, and is nearly always used as an excuse to justify condemning them in their heart, if there forums are any indication. Therefore, whenever we go on about how a particular sinner “ought to be punished” then we are doing the work of the accuser and not the defender. That isn’t necessarily bad; justice requires both and advocate sitting on the left side of the judge, and a defender sitting on the right hand.
When we accuse and condemn in our own hearts, therefore, especially when we do it in a hypocritical fashion, we are doing the work of the DA (Devil’s Advocate) or something like that. Somebody’s gotta do it or their would be free reign. Christ will vigorously defend against anyone who accuses, though, because that’s His job. Since he has beaten satan, He no longer has to concern Himself with satan’s lies to the court, because Christ can defend against any of them.
Accuse somebody rightly and you are doing the work of the accuser. Jesus doesn’t say “do not ever judge under any circumstances” but not to judge because we will be judged with the same measure. Therefore I’m not sure it’s automatically sinful to judge another, just that by doing so we open our own lives up for similar judgment by Christ Himself, who knows whether we are being hypocritical.
So I think we can judge others, and I think we can let go of that “judge the sin not the sinner” mantra because it seems to me like it’s usually a smoke screen.
When we judge another sinner, we often invoke legalistic gobbledigook like the sin was objectively a mortal sin but the person’s culpability may be reduced so they might not be guilty of it as if it were a mortal sin? It sounds like we have redefined mortal sin to mean “destructive to someone” and come up with the culpability as a seperate argument to temper our accusation as if that would protect us from the reflexive judgment. “Oh, you have objectively mortally sinned and should not go to Communion” while saying in the fine print “unless you’re not really culpable in which case you should probably still go to confession to suit me, and a personal apology and pledge to never offend me again would be appreciated, thank you, or better yet leave this church because regardless of your culpability we don’t want people around here that do those things.”
If we were not so chicken-hearted, when we accuse someone we would be honest about where that accusation is coming from. It is coming from our own original sin, thus indirectly from the accuser, who is the one who condemns those who believes in Jesus (Rom 8: who is he that condemns). There is no condemnation for those who walk in Christ, so when this happens the condemnation must not be authentic, but of human/satanic origin.
I’d just love once to see a pharisee going off about some sinner and how they should not receive Communion. Instead of the mumbo jumbo about we’re just judging sins but punishing you, I’d love to see the pharisee say, “yes I know I’m judging you, but I’m willing to be judged myself because I think my judgment of you may help save you. Let us both go to confession before we receive again, because I have judged you as unworthy, and I do not presume to be above you.”
Alan
