Luke 6:37 “Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven;” This episode talks about how God is calling us to live better. Music:"Adding the Sun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Let’s Judge & Condemn Less and Forgive More
Luke 6:37 “Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven;”
This verse was from the Gospel reading at church Sunday. As soon as I heard it I knew I wanted to use if for an episode. I feel these are three things that come so easily to human nature. We often find ourselves judging, condemning and being unforgiving. There almost seems to be an epidemic of that these days. Everyone lives such public lives, there is little that people keep private. Because people are living their lives so publicly it seems we have decided that if they are going to put it out there for all to see, then they can’t get upset when they are judged or condemned for it. We have an attitude that if they don’t want to be criticized then they shouldn’t put it out there. I understand this thinking and I am sure I have even said it in the past. However, today what is on my heart is, What about our responsibility to not judge or condemn? What about our responsibility to forgive?
I often think about going to Heaven. Not in the way where I want to get there sometime soon, but I do think about what I need to do to get there and what it will be like when I get there. I have a lot of goals in life and my number one goal is to be a saint. This is probably not something a lot of people think about. I was at a conference once and the speaker asked how many people in the audience wanted to be a saint and only 2 people raised their hands. It is not something we think about because I think most people think that it is not something they can do. However, saints are not perfect people. You don’t have to be perfect to be a saint. Saints are people that have dedicated their lives to loving God and doing their best to follow the leading of the Holy Spirit. Do they fall short at time, absolutely. However, they never stop trying. They know that they can’t do it on their own. Saints are people who are humble enough to know that they can do nothing without the Lord. They are humble enough to know that in their human frailty they are weak. However, with God they can do anything.
I don’t think we give enough thought to what happens after this life. If we are talking in terms of eternity, this life is pretty short. Do we really want to trade eternal happiness in the next world for moments of fleeting happiness in this one? Or maybe its not fleeting moments of happiness, maybe we feel extremely happy and fulfilled right now in this life, and yet we are not living according to God’s commandments and what He says is right and wrong. Is it worth spending eternity separated from the Lord? Lately, the Holy Spirit keeps bringing me back to Matthew 7:13-14, “Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it. For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it.” The gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction. Has your life been a little to easy lately? Have you been choosing easy because, well, it’s easy? Don’t you see that the easy way is leading to destruction? It may be easy, but are you getting the outcomes you want? What is the fruit you are receiving from taking this easy way?
Jesus is telling us in the Bible that the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life and few find it. I think we can often reassure ourselves that something we are doing isn’t so bad because if it were, there wouldn’t be so many other people doing it. This is the opposite of what Jesus is telling us. We have so much anxiety these days because we want to fit in, we want to be like everyone else, we are worried about what people might think of us. And yet, God is telling us that we don’t want to be like everyone else. He is telling us that following the crowd is not going to lead us to life, it leads to destruction. Jesus is telling us that the road to life is a difficult one. It is full of hard choices and unpopular decisions. Take a moment and consider how you are living. Are you taking the easy road or the hard one? I know for me, it is not just one or the other. Sometimes I take the hard road, but then I get tired and weak and start taking the easy one. I know this about myself and so I bring this to God and ask Him to help me say on the hard road, I ask the Holy Spirit to convict me when I am taking the easy road. And yet, I still find myself on the easy road sometimes, more often than I would like if I am being completely honest. If this is you too, that’s ok, God doesn’t expect us to be perfect. He just wants us to keep trying over and over again to get it right. He also wants us to turn to him when we get it wrong. He wants us to apologize and then move forward. He will help us find the narrow gate if we ask Him.
God is giving us clues as to how to find the narrow gate all throughout the Bible. Actually, it is not even clues, He gives us very clear instructions if we are willing to hear them. Today he is saying, “Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven;” I think verses like this are so powerful because they are a reminder to us that our actions do matter. God does care if we judge others. The verse doesn’t say, “don’t judge others, unless they put their information on facebook for all to see, and then it is ok to judge them.” It says, don’t judge others, and you will not be judged. It says the same about condemning and being unforgiving. There is not context where it says it is ok to do these things. I wonder if we would do these things less if we remembered this verse? What if we put this verse up somewhere where we saw it often? Would we do these things less if we remembered that if we do them to others God will do them to us?
I know learning that God will forgive me in the same way I forgive others was definitely a game changer for me. I don’t know that I was ever really particularly unforgiving, but when I learned this I learned how to be very forgiving. Think about all the times we mess up and do the wrong things each and every day. How do we want the Lord to forgive us? Do we want Him to give it freely and abundantly, or do we want Him to hold every tiny thing against us? Do we want Him to forgive and move past it, or continue to hold on to each thing we do and stack them on top of each other like a tower of sins hanging over our heads? This is not the only time in the Bible that God references that He will forgive us if we forgive others. We know that the Lord keeps His Word. So, if we believe His promises, why wouldn’t we take at His word about this? If we want to be forgiven, we must forgive. If we struggle to forgive, ask the Lord to help. If we don’t want to be condemned, we must not condemn others. If we don’t want to be judged, we must stop judging others. We might think that the comments we are making are not a big deal. The Lord is telling us that they are. He is telling us that we need to stop. What if you placed this verse on your fridge for the next month, or even a week? Would it help you do these things less? Is it worth a try? You future may depend on it.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, please help us to judge and condemn less. Lord, we want you to forgive us so please help us to learn to forgive more easily. Lord, show us where we are taking the easy road in our lives. Gently convict us and show us how to get back on the hard road that leads to the narrow gate. Lord, if we are not thinking about you and how we can spend eternity with you, please put that on our heart. Lord you are amazing, you are so merciful and we don’t deserve you. We don’t deserve your love or forgiveness and yet you give it freely. We are so grateful, thank you! We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Have a blessed day!!