Relationship Principles of Jesus ~ As You Judge, You Will Be Judged

Let’s take a quick review of the Relationship Principles we have learned from Jesus so far. The first principle is really just making sure that relationships, our relationship with God and with others, are the top priority in our lives. If they are not we won’t invest our time and energy into making them better, so the 1st principle is to place the highest value on relationships. The 2nd principles is to learn to love as Jesus loves which means choosing to be involved in fellowship and choosing to forgive, but we also saw that the ability to love as Jesus loves only comes when we are also willing to follow Jesus completely. And then last week we learned that because communication is the fuel for every relationship it is important for us to stop, THINK and pray before we speak. Today’s relationship principles comes from some of the most practical teaching Jesus gives and it’s found in Jesus’ sermon on the mount in Matthew 7:1-5.

This is not only a familiar teaching of Jesus; it is also a powerful teachings for relationships. If we interpret and live out this teaching about judgment the right way – relationships can be strengthened and even transformed. If we fail to understand what Jesus is saying about judgment and if we fail to live it out properly – relationships can be easily destroyed. Criticism and judgment are some of the most destructive forces in relationships so it’s important to understand and put into practice what Jesus is saying.

The first thing Jesus says is that we need to stop being hypocrites. Hypocrisy is searching for the speck of dust in someone else’s eye while there is a plank sticking out of our own. Hypocrisy is saying one thing and yet doing the complete opposite. It’s pointing out the sin in someone else’s life while ignoring the sin in our own, and as we read through the gospels we see that Jesus talked a lot about hypocrisy and his favorite target were the religious people of his day. Look at Matthew 23:23-28.

Jesus says here that the religious leaders were more concerned about their appearance then they were about the attitude of their heart or the action of the hands. The religious leaders were only interested in being seen by others as righteous and holy, but their attitudes weren’t righteous and their actions weren’t holy. They were filled with pride and greed and they trampled on anyone who got in their way. In an effort to promote themselves they neglected the poor and needy and they were critical of anyone who truly sought to live for God. The religious leaders of Jesus’ day had planks sticking out of their eyes and yet they were the ones who constantly pointed out the specks of dust in the eyes of others. Not only does this kind of hypocrisy and critical judgment break down our relationships with one another, but it breaks down our relationship with God because God is a God of truth and love and there is no truth in hypocrisy and no love in being judgmental.

So we need to stop pointing out the speck of dust in someone else’s eye and start taking notice of the log in our own, but how? Well think for a moment about what we do when we actually get something stuck in our eye. When a speck of dirt gets into our eye, we really only have a couple of choices, we can go to a mirror and see what is in there and where it is and then work to get it out, or we can ask someone for help. If we want to avoid hypocrisy in our lives then we have to do one or both of these very things; we have to either do some serious self-reflection, or we have to ask others to help us examine our lives, or we can do both, but none of this is easy.

I don’t know about you, but I absolutely hate anything near my eyes (which is why I don’t wear contacts) and I can literally have a full blown anxiety attack just thinking about going to the eye doctor. There is nothing more traumatic for me than eye exams or worse yet any kind of eye surgery. A few years ago I had to have some sties removed from my eye and I was a complete mess, and the truth is that serious personal reflection can be just as messy and painful because we may not like what we see, and asking others to help examine our lives can be even more humbling and difficult, but it is necessary if we want to become the people God has called us to be and it is essential for healthy relationships.

You will find in the bulletin an insert with some questions that can be used if you want to do some serious self reflection, or better yet find a trusted friend and share what you find in yourself with one another. It’s a difficult and painful first step – but it will help all of our relationships in the long run because after going through a process of self reflection and examination we will be more patient and understanding and forgiving when we deal with others.

While discovering the plank in our own eye is the first step, it’s not enough to just discover it – we have to be willing to take it out. Jesus doesn’t say, find the plank in your own eye then point out the speck in your neighbors. Look at Matt. 7:5. When Jesus says we need to take the plank out of our own eye he is saying is that we need to be living lives of integrity. Last we talked about being men and women of our word where we say what we do and do what we say and that’s part of integrity. The other part of integrity is being willing to live out the faith we profess. It’s not enough to say we love others and then not act in loving ways toward them. It’s not enough to believe in forgiveness and then not be willing to forgive and welcome and accept those around us. We have to be people of integrity which means living out the faith we believe in our hearts and profess with our lips.

I love the word integrity because while we think about it in terms of morality, it really just means being whole. The word itself comes from the Latin word integer and an integer in math is any whole numbers like 1, 2, 3, 4. When God calls us to be men and women of integrity it’s a call to be whole people where what we believe and say and do are all the same. Integrity is doing what we say we will do, it’s letting our yes be yes, and our no be no. It’s living out our faith in such a way that people will know we are Christian by the love and acceptance and grace that they see in us Integrity is important to God because God is one. What God says he lives out in every aspect of his being, and as God’s people it is this kind of wholeness, this integrity, that God wants from us.

As Christians it is important for us to have integrity because if there is one common criticism people outside the church have about Christians it is that we are not people of integrity. Patty Taverno sent me a video that was made at PS recently and it’s man on the street interviews with students. When asked what Christians should be known for they said, community, love, forgiveness, kindness and good deeds, but when they asked what Christians are known for they said, not following their faith, being judgmental and angry, and having a false sense of integrity. Since this is often what people already think of us as followers of Jesus, if we are going to build relationships where we can share God’s love and truth and grace, then we are going to have to work even harder on our integrity. This does not mean we have to be perfect, we will always struggle and fail, but it does mean we have to own up to our shortcomings both as individual believers and as God’s church. Integrity involves confessing our sin when we see it or when it is pointed out to us, and it means working together to overcome it. Integrity means being willing to be held accountable so we can move forward with the power and the grace God gives us.

Integrity is not just important to the image of the church or to our lives as followers of Jesus, integrity is important to relationships because integrity is the foundation of trust. If people see us as men and women of our word, if they see as whole persons who live what we believe, they will be able to trust us and relationships built on honesty and truth will be healthy and strong. So integrity is important to our relationships and if you look in the bulletin you will find some questions for reflection as we strive to take the plank out of our eye. Have I confessed my sin to God? Am I willing to confess my sin to another person? Am I willing to have someone hold me accountable?

These are difficult questions that call us to be honest and vulnerable with one another and while we may not want to do this, God did not create us to live our lives or our faith by ourselves. We need each other and one of the things we need from each other is the honest eye and faithful heart of those who can help us overcome sin and live the lives of faith we want to live. When I was in Altoona I had a good friend and we met regularly to hold each other accountable and it was some of the most powerful times of faith in my life. While it’s not easy to find people with whom we can be completely open, honest and vulnerable– we need to try. Perhaps God has placed someone in your life today with whom you can begin to build this kind of relationship. You might not be there yet, but if you will step out in faith and continue to build this relationship – God will bless you with strength and power to live a life of integrity and deeper faith.

So to strengthen relationships we need to stop and notice the plank in our own eye and then we need to work to take that plank out. This process alone can strengthen relationships by making us more understanding and patient when it comes to dealing with others, but according to Jesus we don’t work to take the plank out of our eye just to get the plank out of our eye, we are to do that in order to help others. Look again at Matthew 7:5. God calls us to clean up our own lives so we can be better prepared to help those around us. We are to take the plank out of our eye so we can not only see the speck of dust in someone else’s, but know how to help them remove it.

For strong, healthy and growing relationships it is important to be able to talk to one another about concerns we see. It is important to help one another grow in character and faith, and sometimes this means speaking the truth in love, but for our words to be received with grace and to be effective in bringing about change, it’s important to first acknowledge our own problems and be working on overcoming them. If we point out someone else’s problems without first confessing our own– our efforts to help will be misunderstood. We may think we are being loving and helpful, but without humility and mercy, our help will just be seen as being judgmental. So it’s important to all of our relationships to first acknowledge and confess our sin and then work to overcome those problems before we reach out to help those around us, but we can’t neglect reaching out to those around us. God calls us to help one another.
In Proverbs 27:17 it says, as iron sharpens iron, so are we to sharpen one another. In Hebrews 10:24 God calls us into relationships where we spur one another on to love and good deeds and part of that process is to help one another overcome sin and that means helping people see the speck of dust in their eye, but before we point out that speck we have to make sure we are examining our own lives on a regular - ongoing basis and we have to make sure we are asking others to walk along side of us as we strive to overcome our own problems, then and only then should we reach out to help others. If you are at a place where you want to help someone work on that speck in their eye, first take a moment to reflect on the questions in the bulletin before you speak the truth.

2 final questions to ask before we point out the speck of dust in someone else’s eye, and these are the same questions we heard last week when it came to speaking the truth in love.
First: is this relationship strong enough to handle the truth? If not then don’t point out the speck yet, work on building trust and love in the relationship first. If there is a solid relationship that can stand up to the truth, then the second question to ask is, Am I willing to walk with and help this person as they remove the speck from their eye? If you think about it, it’s easier to remove a plank from your own eye then a speck of dust from someone else’s because a plank is easy to see and you can just grab hold of it and pull, but a speck of dust is hard to see and it might take some time and patience and effort to remove it. Are we committed to the time and patience and faith and love needed to work with and walk with others?

Healthy relationships call for us to first overcome hypocrisy and then walk with integrity so that we can offer mercy and grace to others.