Perhaps the most misunderstood, misused, distorted piece of the entire Bible is Jesus' words, "Do not judge." Many of us who are indignant when someone calls out our questionable or outright ugly deeds are quick to pull these words from our hip pockets, thinking they mean, "don't point out that I'm doing something morally wrong or destructive, because you're not God."
The trouble is, when Jesus instructed us not to "judge," He is not referring to rebuking someone for doing something wrong. If that were so, each of us as believers would be rendered hypocrites each time we bring attention to the President's or some other politician's morally vile deeds and lies. We draw arbitrary lines as to which sins are okay to denounce, and which are not - usually, the line is drawn in front of our own sins, to protect ourselves from criticism and conviction. The Bible plainly teaches us what is right and wrong in God's eyes, that we are to abhor what is evil, and even rebuke a brother or sister should they fall into such behaviors, so long as the plank of hypocrisy doesn't blind our ability to discern.
The "judgment" Jesus condemns among believers is actual judgment - one day, all of us will stand before the Great White Throne of Christ to answer for all things we've done, good or bad (2 Corinthians 5:10). A fact that should delight no Christian, but rather grieve them, is that the unsaved and unrepentant will be sentenced to eternal damnation (Daniel 12:2, Revelation 20:11-15).
Only Christ has the authority to make these judgments and pronounce these sentences; for a human being to declare that someone else should go to hell for their deeds is to try and usurp His righteous judgment, His authority - and His alone - to pronounce punishment.
After all, all of us deserve death, but God gave His Son so that those who accept Him will, by His grace, be saved (John 3:16).
This is what Jesus forbids when He forbids judging another - to declare, "you're going to hell; you're beyond redemption; Jesus' blood is not powerful enough to save you."
I've known this for years, and have been deeply irked when people shriek the words "don't judge me!" when confronted with some unrepentant behavior that goes against God's Word. I've written many things on this subject, harping about it and beating my breast with indignation.
However - gasp - I, a fallible human being stumbled in lack of understanding, committing the very same sin for which I so often denounced others.
2017 marked the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, of which Martin Luther was a pivotal figure. Were it not for God's use of this man, many more would still be misled by the mire of man-made rituals and lies concerning Jesus, the Scripture, the Church. Not that man-made rituals, doctrines of men taught as if they were commandments of God, don't still frustrate the faith of many who seek Jesus. But God used Martin Luther (and countless other heroes of the Church, like John Wycliffe, William Tyndale, John Foxe, to name but a few) in an upheaval of human greed in God's name.
In 2017, my church group began a several weeks-long study of the Luther and the Reformation. Aside from John Foxe's Book of Martyrs, I knew relatively little about many of the heroes of Christian history. So, I did some research on Martin Luther and
gooooood GASH!!!
I was surprised and mortified to find that Luther, for all the truth and wisdom he spoke, for the mighty vessel he had been in the Reformation, was an unrepentant anti-Semite. He held a disdain for Jews, encouraged their fiery persecution, and, though he originally wrote a book aimed at Jews to show them that Jesus was the Messiah for whom they'd waited, he later gave up and wrote an entire book called On the Jews and Their Lies. That's not something I learned in my church group's study. I felt a portrait of a man abundantly superior to other sinners saved by grace had been painted; of all people who should have known that hatred of Jews is wrong, it would be someone who knew the Bible well - someone who had literally translated it!
I went to my one of my fellow Christians, bewildered, asking "what gives?!" I felt a bit dismissed when he replied with a link to an article from The Gospel Coalition that described many other noted theologians who did awful things. But I still felt shocked; I could accept that Martin Luther was a racist - no one, no matter how many mighty works God gives them to do, is infallible. God uses awful people to speak truth and do mighty things all the time (such as yours truly, who - after being saved and having the knowledge that it was wrong - once stole money from my friend's son's piggy bank to buy an ice cream sandwich; and trust me, that's nowhere near the worst thing I've done in my stumbling and backsliding during my walk with Christ). Nonetheless, I felt that Martin Luther's terrible deeds concerning the Jews should be brought to believers' attention in studies of the man, to show how wrong he was, to avoid turning him into an idol against whom no one should speak ill, and to demonstrate, again, that even the mightiest of people are prone to wrong.
After ruminating on the whole thing, I told myself a sad and horrible truth - or what I decided was a truth: Martin Luther, the great teacher of God, will be sentenced to eternal damnation on the Day of Judgment. As someone who encouraged the burning of synagogues, he was, I decided, a ravenous wolf in sheep's clothing. He was the epitome of those described by Jesus in Matthew 7 - those who prophesy, cast out demons, and do many wonders in His name, but who never truly knew Him.
I harbored this feeling for almost two years. My resentment grew deeper toward many Christians whose reverence for the figures of the Reformation is so fervent it's akin to idol worship.
Sometimes, you can read a Bible passage a hundred times, know it by heart, but not truly grasp every jewel of truth it has for us. I'd read Jesus' "Sermon on the Mount" countless times. I'd written and spoken endless diatribes on the true meaning of "judging" and what it entails. But it wasn't until yesterday, quite literally, that I realized I had been judging Martin Luther in a most sinful way.
My judgment of Luther was not in my disappointment and shock that he was an anti-Semite. If I didn't have that feeling of disappointment, what kind of person would I be? Rather, my judgment of Martin Luther was what I'd told myself about his eternal fate; my sin of judgment was that I'd decided he should and will spend eternity in weeping and gnashing of teeth because of his unrepentant hatred.
I, too, declare Jesus' name and the salvation He offers to all people. And I, too, struggle with an abundance of sinful behaviors. I tell myself, "at least I know my sins are wrong; at least I want to do better." But my own righteousness is, as Isaiah 64:6 tells me, filthy rags. I have no right, no wisdom near suitable enough to decide Martin Luther's punishment for condemning Jews. Just as he would have had no right or righteousness near approachable to God's perfection to declare that I should go to hell for the slew of terrible deeds I've done in my life.
There are no doubt countless examples of people who we can observe and study and be certain that that person will not see heaven - the go-to examples of human evil being people like Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, and etc. But there's a vast difference between knowing evil must be punished, and knowing evil can only be punished by God. If He is the only One righteous and perfect who could cleanse us of sin, He is also the only One righteous and perfect to fit the role of assigning our fates and consequences of those sins.
Like Martin Luther, like all of us, I deserve hell. But by the promise and sacrifice of Jesus the Son of God, I've been delivered from that eternal terror. Luther knew this, too. I can rant all I want that he also knew racism to be wrong, that he knew that a Christian who reviles is a Christian to be avoided (1 Corinthians 1 5:9-13). But I, who must adjust my heart, mind, and body to the Holy Scriptures, also know, by the grace of God who softened this sinful skull so that I would understand, that my sentence of Martin Luther to damnation was gross hypocrisy. May it be burned up and remembered no more at my own appearance before Christ:
"For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on this foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each one's work will become clear; for the Day will declare it, because it will be revealed by fire; and the fire will test each one's work, of what sort it is. If anyone's work which he has built on it endures, he will receive a reward. If anyone's work is burned, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire." -1 Corinthians 3:11-15
The trouble is, when Jesus instructed us not to "judge," He is not referring to rebuking someone for doing something wrong. If that were so, each of us as believers would be rendered hypocrites each time we bring attention to the President's or some other politician's morally vile deeds and lies. We draw arbitrary lines as to which sins are okay to denounce, and which are not - usually, the line is drawn in front of our own sins, to protect ourselves from criticism and conviction. The Bible plainly teaches us what is right and wrong in God's eyes, that we are to abhor what is evil, and even rebuke a brother or sister should they fall into such behaviors, so long as the plank of hypocrisy doesn't blind our ability to discern.
The "judgment" Jesus condemns among believers is actual judgment - one day, all of us will stand before the Great White Throne of Christ to answer for all things we've done, good or bad (2 Corinthians 5:10). A fact that should delight no Christian, but rather grieve them, is that the unsaved and unrepentant will be sentenced to eternal damnation (Daniel 12:2, Revelation 20:11-15).
Only Christ has the authority to make these judgments and pronounce these sentences; for a human being to declare that someone else should go to hell for their deeds is to try and usurp His righteous judgment, His authority - and His alone - to pronounce punishment.
After all, all of us deserve death, but God gave His Son so that those who accept Him will, by His grace, be saved (John 3:16).
This is what Jesus forbids when He forbids judging another - to declare, "you're going to hell; you're beyond redemption; Jesus' blood is not powerful enough to save you."
I've known this for years, and have been deeply irked when people shriek the words "don't judge me!" when confronted with some unrepentant behavior that goes against God's Word. I've written many things on this subject, harping about it and beating my breast with indignation.
However - gasp - I, a fallible human being stumbled in lack of understanding, committing the very same sin for which I so often denounced others.
2017 marked the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, of which Martin Luther was a pivotal figure. Were it not for God's use of this man, many more would still be misled by the mire of man-made rituals and lies concerning Jesus, the Scripture, the Church. Not that man-made rituals, doctrines of men taught as if they were commandments of God, don't still frustrate the faith of many who seek Jesus. But God used Martin Luther (and countless other heroes of the Church, like John Wycliffe, William Tyndale, John Foxe, to name but a few) in an upheaval of human greed in God's name.
In 2017, my church group began a several weeks-long study of the Luther and the Reformation. Aside from John Foxe's Book of Martyrs, I knew relatively little about many of the heroes of Christian history. So, I did some research on Martin Luther and
gooooood GASH!!!
I was surprised and mortified to find that Luther, for all the truth and wisdom he spoke, for the mighty vessel he had been in the Reformation, was an unrepentant anti-Semite. He held a disdain for Jews, encouraged their fiery persecution, and, though he originally wrote a book aimed at Jews to show them that Jesus was the Messiah for whom they'd waited, he later gave up and wrote an entire book called On the Jews and Their Lies. That's not something I learned in my church group's study. I felt a portrait of a man abundantly superior to other sinners saved by grace had been painted; of all people who should have known that hatred of Jews is wrong, it would be someone who knew the Bible well - someone who had literally translated it!
After ruminating on the whole thing, I told myself a sad and horrible truth - or what I decided was a truth: Martin Luther, the great teacher of God, will be sentenced to eternal damnation on the Day of Judgment. As someone who encouraged the burning of synagogues, he was, I decided, a ravenous wolf in sheep's clothing. He was the epitome of those described by Jesus in Matthew 7 - those who prophesy, cast out demons, and do many wonders in His name, but who never truly knew Him.
I harbored this feeling for almost two years. My resentment grew deeper toward many Christians whose reverence for the figures of the Reformation is so fervent it's akin to idol worship.
Sometimes, you can read a Bible passage a hundred times, know it by heart, but not truly grasp every jewel of truth it has for us. I'd read Jesus' "Sermon on the Mount" countless times. I'd written and spoken endless diatribes on the true meaning of "judging" and what it entails. But it wasn't until yesterday, quite literally, that I realized I had been judging Martin Luther in a most sinful way.
My judgment of Luther was not in my disappointment and shock that he was an anti-Semite. If I didn't have that feeling of disappointment, what kind of person would I be? Rather, my judgment of Martin Luther was what I'd told myself about his eternal fate; my sin of judgment was that I'd decided he should and will spend eternity in weeping and gnashing of teeth because of his unrepentant hatred.
I, too, declare Jesus' name and the salvation He offers to all people. And I, too, struggle with an abundance of sinful behaviors. I tell myself, "at least I know my sins are wrong; at least I want to do better." But my own righteousness is, as Isaiah 64:6 tells me, filthy rags. I have no right, no wisdom near suitable enough to decide Martin Luther's punishment for condemning Jews. Just as he would have had no right or righteousness near approachable to God's perfection to declare that I should go to hell for the slew of terrible deeds I've done in my life.
There are no doubt countless examples of people who we can observe and study and be certain that that person will not see heaven - the go-to examples of human evil being people like Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, and etc. But there's a vast difference between knowing evil must be punished, and knowing evil can only be punished by God. If He is the only One righteous and perfect who could cleanse us of sin, He is also the only One righteous and perfect to fit the role of assigning our fates and consequences of those sins.
Like Martin Luther, like all of us, I deserve hell. But by the promise and sacrifice of Jesus the Son of God, I've been delivered from that eternal terror. Luther knew this, too. I can rant all I want that he also knew racism to be wrong, that he knew that a Christian who reviles is a Christian to be avoided (1 Corinthians 1 5:9-13). But I, who must adjust my heart, mind, and body to the Holy Scriptures, also know, by the grace of God who softened this sinful skull so that I would understand, that my sentence of Martin Luther to damnation was gross hypocrisy. May it be burned up and remembered no more at my own appearance before Christ:
"For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on this foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each one's work will become clear; for the Day will declare it, because it will be revealed by fire; and the fire will test each one's work, of what sort it is. If anyone's work which he has built on it endures, he will receive a reward. If anyone's work is burned, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire." -1 Corinthians 3:11-15
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