“Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. 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? 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? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.” Jesus says we must remove the plank, which implies that after you’ve done that, you can handle the speck. These four snap shots that we’ve covered, I think reveal a lot about the nature of the plank.

How We Became Hypocrites

As I think on Matthew 7:1-5, I can’t imagine anyone sits down and thinks,

“I’m going to use someone else’s sin to avoid dealing with my own.”

Then again, maybe we do.

Honestly though, I think what normally happens is that in our own desires and conclusions, we tend to feel that we are righteous and that our judgment often feels like we are simply choosing good values, defending something honorable, and that we should be doing something to make a stand. Inevitably this is all wrapped up in our own sinfulness.

Yet here in Matthew, I think Jesus is describing someone who considers themselves very good at being right about other people and at the same time has completely exempted themselves from their own standards. You see, the plank in the eye isn’t just a metaphor for obvious hypocrisy. Instead I think it’s a metaphor for a blind spot so big that it has contaminated the whole life.

When you think of an actor, you wouldn’t necessarily say that he’s a liar, nor would you say that he’s just being himself. No, he’s making a point to be something that fits a part. In the same way the hypocritical judgement that we find in Matthew 7 has created a self that fits a narrative or a performance, and over time this created self becomes the only self a man or woman ends up believing and knowing.

My question is how does a man end up here? Indeed I think many people end up here without ever really knowing how they got there. The heart truly is deceitful.

As I thought over this and looked around in scripture, I found four stories that kind of show us how this begins to grow in our lives. Let me show you each.

David and Nathan: Trying To Ignore Sin (2 Samuel 12)

David has committed adultery, he has had Uriah placed at the front of the battle and then pulls the other men back in order to kill him. What he did was awful and I’m not sure how much time David had to sit in this sin after he committed it, the Bible doesn’t say, but it seems like there was a moment of silence. I think it’s safe to say, at one point, the man who wrote “search me, O God, and know my heart” was not very interested in being searched in this moment. Especially because the text says that God sent Nathan. God is really patient, so the idea that he finally sends someone to David tells me that David wasn’t doing well in his own heart.

So, Nathan arrives with a story. I think this was wise on his part because a direct accusation might have triggered defensiveness in David (in the later examples we will see the use of stories as well). 

The story goes like this,

“There were two men in a certain city, the one rich and the other poor. The rich man had very many flocks and herds, but the poor man had nothing but one little ewe lamb, which he had bought. And he brought it up, and it grew up with him and with his children. It used to eat of his morsel and drink from his cup and lie in his arms, and it was like a daughter to him. Now there came a traveler to the rich man, and he was unwilling to take one of his own flock or herd to prepare for the guest who had come to him, but he took the poor man’s lamb and prepared it for the man who had come to him.”

David’s response is immediate and filled with rage. He says the man in the story deserves to die, must pay back fourfold, and there should be no pity.

He was probably right to feel such rage. But he is also, in that moment, describing himself perfectly.

What Nathan did was drive David to admit what he knew was righteous in that moment, and in doing so, he forces David to stop covering up with his outward appearance and to face what he was dealing with inwardly. He forced him to see his and admit own sin by showing him the very same sin through another man. He forced him to stop acting.

So I think the first way that a man begins to grow this life of hypocritical judgment is by not recognizing or confessing his own sin for what it is, in all of it’s forms, and even trying to cover it up. Indeed men can be guilty of the worst kinds of sin and yet still, in their minds, have the ability to carry on life as if it never happened. They can get mad at other people’s sins while trying to ignore their own.

Simon the Pharisee (Luke 7:36-50)

Another great story that I think sheds light on this subject, is the story of Simon in Luke 7. We find Jesus at his house and Simon is simply sitting at his own dinner table, hosting what seems like a respectable gathering, and then something unexpected happens. A woman comes in who is from the streets and who seems to have a rough lifestyle. What’s amazing is that Simon keeps his reaction to himself. Which is usually how judgment likes to carry itself.

He says,

“If this man were a prophet, he would know what kind of woman this is.”

He dismisses the woman altogether, questions Jesus, and even considers himself above her. This all happened in a single thought, without a word ever spoken.

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