Judge not, that ye be not judged

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This was a first for me. While in a heated abortion debate with ad adament pro-choicer, I was quoted Matthew 7:1-2, saying that since I don’t support women getting abortions and think it is a sin, I can guilty of the same sin, since I judged that person. Well, we went 'round and 'round, and I explained he was distorting scripture.

Anyway, this debate got me wondering. How do you all interpet these verses? How far can our judgement go before we are sinning? I’ve always thought if someone was committing an act against God’s laws, our Christian duty is to help them repent and sin no more. Knowing they are sinning and helping them can be done free from judgement. So what do you think?
 
These aren’t really arguments to your position, they are simply misinterpretations of scripture used to shut you down. BTW, pro aborts usually fall back on them when they find themselves unable to defend their position.

Short simple answers:

We are allowed and even called to judge actions (both our own and others). The verse refers to judging other people’s souls.

The other distortion you hear from pro-aborts is about Jesus saying he who is without sin cast the first stone.

Note that Jesus did not state that the woman was innocent of sin (He tells her to sin no more). And furthermore, He wasn’t even stating that those who are immoral shouldn’t be reprimanded. His statement was used to point out the fact that the crowd was being vengeful instead of distributing justice for the sake of person’s involved. Indeed if we wanted to punish abortionists just because we dislike them, or think ourselves morally superior this would be wrong. However our arguments are based on the defense of innocent human life. Finally point out that in preventing the stoning Jesus was pointing out that every human life, even those who have committed great sins, has an inherent value and is capable of being redeemed- The whole passage was Jesus defending a life that others deemed unworthy!
 
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MooCowSteph:
This was a first for me. While in a heated abortion debate with ad adament pro-choicer, I was quoted Matthew 7:1-2, saying that since I don’t support women getting abortions and think it is a sin, I can guilty of the same sin, since I judged that person. Well, we went 'round and 'round, and I explained he was distorting scripture.

Anyway, this debate got me wondering. How do you all interpet these verses? How far can our judgement go before we are sinning? I’ve always thought if someone was committing an act against God’s laws, our Christian duty is to help them repent and sin no more. Knowing they are sinning and helping them can be done free from judgement. So what do you think?
This is my understanding:

You can judge what actions are evil. When these actions are done voluntarily with understanding of their evil nature the person sins.

You cannot judge a person to be sinful. Only God judges a person to be sinful. Only God and the sinner know the persons heart.

Some actions are evil by their nature. We should certainly try to make these actions illegal. Murder of innocent life is an action that by its nature is evil and any just society would make this illegal. I will leave it to God to decide whether those who do this evil have committed sin.
 
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SHEMP:
This is my understanding:

You can judge what actions are evil.

I will leave it to God to decide whether those who do this evil have committed sin.
Now this is interesting!

Can a person who does an evil action, and by doing that evil action, have comiited a sin?

This raises many questions, does it not?
 
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MooCowSteph:
I was quoted Matthew 7:1-2, saying that since I don’t support women getting abortions and think it is a sin, I can guilty of the same sin, since I judged that person. Well, we went 'round and 'round, and I explained he was distorting scripture.
We are also told to admonish the sinner…
 
It is my understanding that Jewish law from the time of Moses on required those aware of an act of adultery to admonish the sinners (plural, not singular) to stop sinning. If they did not do this, they were considered equally guilty of the sin. If the adulterers persisted, both the man and women were to be stoned.

In this account there is no indication that the accusers followed the process required by Jewish law. Furthermore, they presented only one of the guilty parties. Their motive for bringing the woman before Jesus clearly had nothing to do with love of God and obedience to His law.

The lessons I take from this:
  1. We are each called to lovingly correct our erring brothers and sisters, otherwise, we are complicit in their sin.
  2. We are to live up to the same standards we admonish others with.
  3. Jesus came to forgive, not condemn. In order to receive his mercy, we must repent --demonstrated by our going and sinning no more. (Although we will most likely continue sinning, we must make every sincere effort to avoid the sin for which we have begged mercy.)
  4. We are to uphold God’s law because we love God and want to obey Him, not because we want to demonstrate our superiority or bring someone else down.
How does this apply to the abortion debate?
  1. We are obligated to defend the unborn, who are unable to defend themselves.
  2. We are obligated to speak the Truth to those participating in this atrocity out of love for God, the victim and the perpertrator. After all, the imortal souls of the perpetrator are just as precious as the babies’ and ours.
  3. We are to speak of God’s infinite mercy as well as His perfect justice. He is merciful because He gives those involved with abortions many opportunities to stop and repent. He is perfectly just, in that He knows fully what choice they ultimately make and judges them accordingly.
  4. We are to constantly examine our own sinfullness and seek forgiveness from God when we work to stop the murder of innocent lives.
 
In Matthew 18:15-20, Jesus instructs us to go to our brother if he has sinned against you and confront him with his fault. If he listens and confesses, you have won back a brother. If not, you are to take one or two other brothers with you, and confront him again. If he still refuses to listen, he can be excommunicated, for “whatever you bind on earth is bound in heaven, and whatever you free on earth is freed in heaven.”

Wonder how your friend would interpret that passage?
 
Jesus meant TWO things…
  1. Dont judge the REASON which brought that person to that particular sin, ie… if we find someone has sexualy abused a child…of course that must be dealt with…but WE may have no knowledge if THAT person themself was a victim of abuse… etc…
  2. BEFORE judging a particular action…make darn sure that YOU are not guilty of the SAME sin…and THEN only admonish with charity and love.
 
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Jennifer123:
We are also told to admonish the sinner…
In every place that I know of, when we’re told to admonish the sinner, the person sinning is a believer. In the case of the OT, they were Jews who supposedly had accepted God.

We can (and should) tell people who are not Christians that their actions are evil (when they are, of course). But we shouldn’t judge their motives.
 
To piggyback on the previous replies, we need also to keep in mind that silence could be considered tacit approval of the sin.

The Book of Ezekiel has some interesting things to say about this. Chapter 3 verses 16-21, and Chapter 33 verses 1-20.
 
You are not judgin the person you are judging the act…As Christians we are call to do one and not the other…
 
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