Obstructed Vision

Show me a condemning, hyperjudgmental person, and I’ll show you someone with a sign of possible sin in his or her life. In fact, the thing they’re always criticizing other people for actually may be their issue. Maybe they’re projecting their own sin onto others.

Jesus said, “And why worry about a speck in your friend’s eye when you have a log in your own? How can you think of saying to your friend, ‘Let me help you get rid of that speck in your eye,’ when you can’t see past the log in your own eye?” (Matthew 7:3–4 NLT).

In other words, we cannot see a single speck in a friend’s eye if we have a telephone pole in our own.

I think Jesus was using humor here to make a point. Certainly a camel going through the eye of a needle is a humorous illustration (see Matthew 19:24), and this is as well.

Jesus was saying, “Why are you looking for a tiny piece of sawdust in your friend’s eye when you have a telephone pole in your eye?”

We’re so quick to go after minutiae in another Christian’s life when we are guilty of a lot worse in our own lives. And maybe the reason we’re so quick to see sin in someone else is because we’re so familiar with it ourselves.

Jesus was saying, “Don’t be that person. First confess your own sin.”

Forgiven people should be forgiving people.

And if we’re so quick to judge, then are we prepared to be judged with the same type of judgment we use for others? Because Jesus also said, “For you will be treated as you treat others. The standard you use in judging is the standard by which you will be judged” (Matthew 7:2 NLT). So be careful.