In what is arguably one of the most important books ever written, Charity and Its Fruits, Jonathan Edwards sounded the theological alarm about a censorious spirit being contrary to Christian love. In the course of his sermon on this subject, Edwards set out three ways “wherein a censorious spirit or a disposition uncharitably to judge others consists.

Sinclair Ferguson once lamented the fact that whenever he overheard others discussing some public theologian or individual at a conference, the statements were almost always prefaced with a negative comment such as, “Well, you know, the problem with him is…” Sadly, those sorts of conversations are far from uncommon among those of us who have been in the church for any length of time. We are all almost certainly guilty of making similar statements about brothers and sisters and, we have, no doubt, been the objects of such pejorative statements. So what are the marks of this all too common spiritual deficiency? And, how can we check our spirits so that we rid them of this censoriousness?

In what is arguably one of the most important books ever written, Charity and Its Fruits, Jonathan Edwards sounded the theological alarm about a censorious spirit being contrary to Christian love. In the course of his sermon on this subject, Edwards set out three ways “wherein a censorious spirit or a disposition uncharitably to judge others consists:

1. A censorious spirit appears in a forwardness to judge ill of others’ states.
2. A censorious spirit appears in a disposition to judge ill of others’ qualities; to overlook their good qualities, and to think them destitute of them when they are not, or to make very little of them, or to magnify their ill qualities and make more of them than they are, or to charge them with those ill qualities of which they are free.
3. A censorious spirit appears in a disposition to judge ill of others’ actions.

First, A censorious spirit appears in a forwardness to judge ill of others’ states. When we are not walking in love toward others in the body, we are apt to make a sinful judgment about the spiritual condition of another based on our own faulty assumptions, observations or presuppositions about them. Edwards wrote:

“Persons are guilty of censoriousness in condemning others’ [spiritual] state when they,

…condemn others as hypocrites because of God’s providential dealings with them, as Job’s three friends condemned him as a hypocrite for the uncommon afflictions with which he met…

…condemn them for those failings which they see in them, which are no greater than are often incident to God’s children; and it may be no greater, or not so great, as their own, though they think well of their own state…

…condemn others as those who must needs be carnal men for differing from them in opinion in some points which are not fundamental.

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