F4F | Matthew 7: Logs, Specks and Judging

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Welcome to another installment of fighting for the faith. My name is Chris Roseboro. I am your servant in Jesus Christ.

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This is the channel that compares what people are saying in the name of God to the Word of God. Alright, so you've heard the phrase, it gets kicked around all the time, judge not lest you be judged.

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You know, so you point out that such -and -such a false teacher. Oh, Joel Osteen twisted up that Bible verse.

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That's not correct. Judge not lest you be judged. And so we're gonna take a look at this passage from the

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Gospel of Matthew chapter 7 in the opening verses. And we're going to take a look at the judge not bit, but we're also gonna take a look at a highly misunderstood portion of this text dealing with logs and specs.

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There is a big controversy raging right now, and it has been for some time, within confessional

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Lutheran circles relating to logs and specs because of something that was said in the new large catechism with annotations.

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But what we're gonna do, rather than look at what is said in the large catechism, we're gonna look at how do we properly understand logs and specs.

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When Jesus talks about a log versus a spec, is he doing so because a spec is a small sin and a log is a big sin?

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Is this about a hierarchy of sins? No, it's not. In fact, we'll do a little commentary work on this today.

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So this will be actually kind of like straight -up Bible teaching. So a little bit of a change of pace here at Fighting for the

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Faith. So let me do this. Let me whirl up the desktop. Again, one of my favorite street photos that I took from back in 2019 in London.

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It's at St. Paul's, and that's the Millennium Bridge. Alas, I'm not gonna be able to get to London this year.

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All right, so let's do this. I'm going to pull up my Accordance Bible.

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Let's take a look at the passage in question. Highly disputed, misunderstood text. One that is important for us to understand.

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All right, so judge not that you be not judged. This is Christ speaking. Now the question is, what is meant by this?

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So let me see if I can find this. I'm gonna look for judgment, and I am going to minimize my range.

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I want my range to be all text, but I want it to be gospel. And I know that in the

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Gospel of John, Jesus makes a claim that we are to make a right judgment.

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So let me see if I can find it. Let's see here. So there's the Gospel of John. Resurrection.

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I can do not judge by appearances. Ah, here we go. John chapter 7 verse 24.

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Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment.

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So you're gonna note here, Jesus in John 7 24 tells

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Christians that they are to make a right judgment, and we're told to judge. Okay, so what do we do with like, you know, like Matthew chapter 7, where Jesus says, judge not lest you be judged.

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This is a kind of judging that Jesus is forbidding here in this text. Self -righteous judging.

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Okay, one where you don't even recognize your own sin. Okay, somebody wielding the law in a self -righteous way.

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So he says, for with the judgment that you pronounce, you will be judged, and with the measure that you use, it'll be measured to you.

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So this is hypocritical, self -righteous judging. Okay, we are to make a right judgment.

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Jesus says that, but we aren't to judge hypocritically, self -righteously. Okay, and then

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Jesus says these words, and this is where a lot of the problems are today. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but you do not notice the log that is in your own eye?

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Or how can you say to your brother, let me take the speck out of your eye when there is the log in your own eye?

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And here it is. You hypocrite. This is about hypocritical judging.

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We're not supposed to do this as Christian. First take the log out of your own eye, then, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye.

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So that's what the judging is going on here, but now this is kind of a secondary question, because this is where all the focus is right now, is that if I were to say to you, you know, listen, you people out there who are judging certain people for particular sins that are egregious, for sure, okay, but are you doing that hypocritically?

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Are you not doing it in a way that where you recognize that you too are a sinner? That's kind of the question that that needs to be answered.

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And so Jesus is making it clear. Hypocritical judging is off the table. When we make a right judgment, we always make a right judgment understanding that we are sinners.

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So what is under, how, why is Jesus using this log speck language? Is he doing so so that there's a hierarchy of sin?

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Logs are really bad sins. Specks are like small sins and those don't really count.

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Is that what he's doing? Answer, no. In fact, let's do this.

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Let's do this. This isn't a long episode of Fighting for the Faith, dealing with a singular topic. Consider a look at what this looks like, okay?

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You're gonna note something here. This kind of helps us get the impression of what's going on.

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So here we got a fellow with a big old log sticking out of his eye and he's saying to this guy, hey hold still,

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I'm gonna try to get that speck out of yours. Does this not look absurd?

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The answer is, yeah, it looks ridiculous, right? Or how about this guy, hey bub, you have a little something in your eye.

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Does that not just sound like ridiculously ironic? That's the point.

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The log and the speck are not about big sins versus little sins. That's not it at all.

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So when somebody compares your sin and says that's a log in somebody's eyes and somebody else's sin is a speck, they're not saying, well, your sin is worse than the other person's.

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That's not what they're saying. In fact, to help us out here, we're gonna look at a couple of resources.

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Number one, we're going to consider what Dr. Jeffrey Gibbs, the contributor to the

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Matthew Commentary Series in the Concordia Theological, in the Concordia Commentary Series, he wrote the commentaries on the

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Gospel of Matthew. And here's what he writes about this passage, and I think what he says is important for us to consider.

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So that Jesus has in mind an attitude in which a person is blind to his own shortcomings and failings is made clear by the picture of a beam stuck in one's eye.

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The hyperbole of Jesus's language is once again remarkable.

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It isn't even possible to have a literal beam in one's eye. Such a thing is unthinkable and even grotesque.

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It is even more grotesque to criticize or find fault with a fellow disciple without full and humble awareness of one's own faults.

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This awareness, in fact, is the sine qua non of brotherly correction and encouragement.

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If I do not realize that I have sinned and that I too have many faults in need of correction,

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I cannot approach a fellow Christian and offer him admonition or call him to repentance.

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If anyone should try to call a hypocrite, to try such a hypocritical approach in dealing with a fellow disciple, he flirts with eschatological disaster, just as he would if he were to withhold forgiveness from another believer.

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Only God who is without sin can judge without any awareness of personal sin and in need of for humility.

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And no one should seek to be in the place of God. Such idolatry will be condemned on the last day.

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So the whole point that Jeff Gibbs is getting at is that the log spec language is intended to be hyperbole and it's absurd on its face, grotesque even, right?

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This person clearly is not even aware of their own sin while they're trying to help somebody else remove sin from their life.

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This is not right. Christians are not to judge hypocritically.

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Hypocritically? Hypocritically, right? That's kind of the point. Now, let's take a look at a different resource on this and then we'll take a look at another commentary.

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And this other resource, this next resource, is the sponsor of this episode of Fighting for the

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Faith. And let me explain. The Word of the Lord endures forever. You've heard me say it on a recent episode of Fighting for the

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Faith. If you want to learn your Bible, and you should, oftentimes we as Christians need help to properly understand the biblical text.

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This podcast is chef's kiss, brilliant, all right?

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And I highly recommend this podcast for helping you learn

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God's Word. The name of it is The Word of the Lord Endures Forever. And the host is

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Pastor Will Whedon, personal friend of mine, colleague, known him for several, several long years, right?

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Known him for a long time. And Pastor Whedon does a bang -up job on this podcast of walking us through entire books of the

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Bible. He's currently in the book of Acts. But you're going to know it when you click on the archive button, here you got, there's an entire

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Bible study through the entire book of Genesis, the book of Amos, Hosea, Joel, Matthew, Mark, John, Romans, Corinthians, Ephesians, Thessalonians, Hebrews, 1st

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John, Revelation, and these are in good bite -sized pieces.

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He does a fantastic job. So, let's check in with Pastor Will Whedon and what does he think of this whole log beam speck thing going on here?

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Why is Jesus talking about it? Is it because logs are worse sins and specks are less than, you know, less than important sins?

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Is that what this is about? Let's listen to what Pastor Whedon does with this text, because it's actually quite in line with what

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Jeffrey Gibbs wrote in his Concordia commentary. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?

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Or how can you say to your brother, let me take the speck out of your eye, when there is a log in your own eye?

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This is almost comical the way he puts it, specks and logs? Right, that's the point.

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It's comedy. Jesus is speaking hyperbolically and engaging in intentional comedy.

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The picture is comedically grotesque. That's the point, right?

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So, let's come back to what Pastor Whedon continues to say. Seriously, but he has to make us see this.

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The disciple who is blind to their own sins and rebellions is absolutely of no use to others.

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He's blinded by the log. He can't see it, but everybody around him can. All he can see is the faults and failures and sins of the people around him.

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And he's swift with the criticism and the complaining and pointing it out. You know what the problem with you is?

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Hey, as soon as you speak the word, you know the log is blocking your vision. But how is it even possible not to notice the thing?

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Well, that's simple. You think about the law all the time as it applies to others, but you haven't taken the time to look in the mirror of the divine law and consider yourself.

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Right, exactly. That's what hypocrites do. They judge everybody else, but they never apply the law to themselves.

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Let me give you an example. Hang on a second. All right, I'm gonna do a little off -roading here.

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I need a biblical text, and I'm gonna look for the word Matthew. Hang on a second here. Matthew, M -A -T -H,

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Matthew. And I don't want it to be, I actually want it to be words. I want it to be words.

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I'm gonna look for the word Matthew. Ah, Matthew chapter 9. Okay, watch this. Okay, talk about hypocritical.

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Okay, Matthew chapter 9. And here is this account, wonderful account, by the way.

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You'll note who wrote the gospel of Matthew. You sit there and go, uh, Matthew? Right.

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Okay, but note something here. When Matthew writes about his first encounter with Jesus, Matthew is so humble, he doesn't even write about it in the first person.

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He writes about himself in the third. He knows that he's a great sinner. So watch this.

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Okay, as Jesus passed on from there, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth, and he said to him, follow me.

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And he rose, and he followed Jesus. And as Jesus reclined at table in the house, this is

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Matthew's house, okay, behold, watch this, many tax collectors and sinners, sinners came, and they were reclining with Jesus and his disciples.

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No! You can't eat with sinners! Now, I gotta note something here.

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I want you to think this through. If Jesus didn't eat with sinners, Jesus wouldn't have been able to eat with anybody, right?

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Poor Jesus. Every time Jesus has a meal, because he's not allowed to eat with sinners, he had to go off in a corner and eat all by himself.

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But Jesus doesn't do that, right? So Jesus was eating with tax collectors, he was eating with sinners, they were coming, they were reclining with Jesus and his disciples, and the

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Pharisees lost their minds. And when they saw this, they said to his disciples, why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and with sinners?

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What a stupid question. Do the Pharisees not see that they are in that category too?

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The answer is yeah, they don't see it. That's the scary bit.

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He's eating with sinners. They're applying the law to those people, but they're never applying it to themselves.

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They don't see themselves in the category of sinner. So when they heard this, he said, though, when

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Jesus heard this, he said, those who are well have no need of a physician. Christ died for the ungodly, the scripture says.

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By the way, you qualify, so do I. That's the point, right? Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick, they're the ones who need the physician.

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So go and learn what this means. I came, I desire mercy, not sacrifice. I came not to call the righteous.

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I came to call sinners. So if you don't think you're one of these, you don't need

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Jesus. If you're not a sinner, you don't need Jesus. Good luck to you on the Day of Judgment, by the way.

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It ain't gonna work. It ain't gonna work well. So this is a great example of people with logs in their eyes.

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These Pharisees going Jesus is eating with sinners. No kidding, right?

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When I was in seventh grade, we'd say, no duh, right? Seriously? Those are the only people that Jesus can eat with, because that's the only type of person there is on planet

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Earth. Don't believe me? Let me show you this. Romans chapter 3. Romans chapter 3.

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What then? Are we Jews any better off? Well, no, not at all. We all have charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin.

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As it is written, none is righteous. No, not one. No one understands. No one seeks for God.

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All have turned aside. Together they have become worthless. No one does good.

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Not even one. You think you're righteous? This absolutely condemns you.

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Their throat is an open grave. They use their tongues to deceive. This is describing you. It's describing me.

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The venom of asps is under their lips. Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood and their paths are ruin and misery.

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The way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes. Now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law.

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So that every mouth may be stopped and the whole world may be held accountable to God. The law shuts us all up.

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So they go, but I'm a good person. Law says zip it. No you're not. You are a completely ungodly sinner.

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You are, you stand condemned and you've earned the fires of hell by your sin. What about my neighbor?

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He's worse. Haven't you seen what he does? And the law sits there and goes,

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I'll deal with him later. We're dealing with you right now. Right? We know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law.

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So that every mouth may be stopped and the whole world may be held accountable to God, including you. For by works of the law, no human being will be justified in God's sight since through the law comes the knowledge of sin.

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That's his job. If you are using the law to judge everybody else, but you're not looking into the mirror of the law and you're not seeing the reflection coming back and the big old label stamped across your forehead that says, sinner, that's hypocritical judging the thing that Jesus is condemning in Matthew chapter 7.

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But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law. Although the law and the prophets, they bear witness to it.

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The righteousness of God that is through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe, there is no distinction.

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All, pontes, it means all by the way, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, me, you, every one of us.

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And we are justified in God's sight through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus and whom

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God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith. This was to show

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God's righteousness because in his divine forbearance, he passed over the former sins.

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It was to show his righteousness at the present time so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

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The good news is this, Christ has bled and died for your sins. You recognize that you're a sinner and ungodly, that you're sick.

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Christ has come. He's calling you. Christ didn't come to call the righteous. He came to call the sick.

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He came to call the sinners. And so you'll note that as Christians then we never have the right to judge somebody else as if we have no sin, as if somehow we've got our whole act together.

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And what that person is doing is just reprehensible. Me, I'm as pure as the wind -driven snow.

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No, you're not. And if that's what you think about yourself, you don't need Jesus. You just need a good example to follow.

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You know, maybe a good TED talk to help improve some things in your life.

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But Christ died for the ungodly. That's you and I. So this completely rules this out.

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So I think you get the point here. Now let's come back then to here. And I'm going to point out another great resource.

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Fantastic. If you're looking for a good commentary series that's faith, the faithfully, you know, like Exegetes, the

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Greek New Testament. This one from the 1960s, Lenski's commentary, R .C

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.H. Lenski, The Interpretation of St. Matthew's Gospel. He's got a whole series that works through the entire New Testament.

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Brilliantly, well, well, well researched, good commentary that's super helpful. In Lenski's commentary, he completely attacks and rules out this idea that logs are bad sins and specks are small sins.

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That's not the point that Jesus is making. Consider what Lenski writes here. It says, the whole matter is now illustrated in a personal and most striking way.

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He's here talking about the Matthew text. Jesus addresses the false judge. Now, why dost thou see the sliver in the eye of thy brother, but the beam in thine own eye thou dost not perceive?

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Why is that? Or how sayest thou to thy brother, hold, I will take the sliver out of thine eye, and lo, the beam in thine own eye.

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Hypocrite, hypocrite. First take the beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to take out the sliver that is in thy brother's eye.

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In real life, the suppositions here used are frankly impossible. Nobody could possibly have a piece of timber such as a plank or a beam in his eye.

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The same is true regarding carthos, which is more than a moat or a tiny speck.

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It is a dried twig or a straw. Who could endure that for even a moment? The supposition is intended to be ridiculous.

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Jesus is using absurdity to make a point. The whole point is that the picture itself is ridiculous.

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A man with a plank in his own eye seeing a splinter in his brother's eye and then attempting to draw it out.

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In the interpretation of this parabolic language, the eye is often overlooked. The splinter is thought to be some small moral fault and the beam a fault of correspondingly greater.

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That's not the point. He says, but why are splinter and beam placed in the eyes? Why not in other parts of the body?

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Jesus is not speaking of faults or sins in general, one being tiny, the other immense, but of moral perception, which is slightly wrong in the one man, totally wrong in the other.

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He who is devoid of all truly moral judgment pretends to aid another who is slightly wrong in his judgment.

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The very idea is farcical, yet men act thus.

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So, I think you get the idea here. So, what is the attitude that we should have as Christians?

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I think Paul exemplifies it beautifully. The Apostle Paul in 1 Timothy chapter 1, he says these words.

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Remember the Apostle Paul's history. The Apostle Paul's history was this. He was a murderer of Christians.

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In his zeal, he put Christians to death. In fact, the very first Christian martyr,

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Stephen, everybody laid the coats at the feet of the Apostle, of Saul of Tarsus, who would become the

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Apostle Paul. That was before he was an Apostle. Listen to what Paul writes near the end of his life.

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It says, I thank him who has given me strength, Christ Jesus our Lord, because he judged me faithful, appointing me to his service.

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Though formerly I was a blasphemer, a persecutor, and I was an insolent opponent, but I received mercy, because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief.

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And the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.

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So, the saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom

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I am the foremost. I am the chief. But I receive mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost,

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Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life.

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So, I would note, it is completely the right way of approaching other people who are sinning to approach them as a forgiven sinner.

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In fact, that is the whole point that Jesus is making. Hypocritical sinners do not even see the beam in their own eye.

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But Paul here, later in his life, he calls himself the chief of sinners, the foremost of them all.

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But the saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, Christ came into the world to save sinners.

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Jesus said, I did not come to save the righteous, but I came to call sinners.

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The apostle Paul being one of the worst of the worst, and he even knew it, and he confesses it all the way to the end of his life, that he is the foremost chief of sinners.

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And this is our attitude as Christians. Chief of sinners though I be, Jesus shed his blood for me.

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Died that I might live on high. You get the idea. That is the attitude that we are to have. And when we have that attitude, that makes it possible for us to help others when they are sinning, and to help get real specks and even logs out of people's eyes as people who have had those logs and specks removed by the blood of Christ.

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And we don't do it arrogantly. We do it knowing that we have needed that for ourselves. So I think you get the idea.

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So hopefully you found this helpful. If so, all the information on how you can share the video is down below. And a big shout out to those of you who support us by being a crew member.

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Our crew members make it possible for us to continue to bring Fighting for the Faith to you. And if you would like to support us financially, there's a link down below where you can go to our crew member page and you can join our crew and support us as we continue to bring

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God's Word to you and help you rightly understand God's Word and compare what people are saying in the name of God to the

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Word of God. So until next time, may God richly bless you in the grace and mercy won by Jesus Christ and his vicarious death on the cross for all of your sins.