Luk 6:38 | KingComments | STEP | When the previous teaching is taken to heart, there is another danger. This danger is feeling better than others, feeling above others. God did not act like this in this world. If the disciple forgets that, a spirit of criticism gets hold of him who expresses itself in criticizing everything that does not correspond to this former teaching. The Lord warns His disciples of a haughty spirit, the self-imagination to be able to judge everything and to think to have to do it. Judging is the forming of a strong opinion about something someone does and of which is judged that it is not good, without the disciple being entitled to this judgment. Condemnation is the rejecting of someone who, in the opinion of the disciple, is not acting correctly. The disciple must count on being judged and condemned, as he judges and condemns. The Lord says it in negative form. If you don’t do it, it won’t happen to you either. Therefore, we must let go of our own opinions about others, give freedom to others and leave them to the Lord. We will experience that ourselves as a true liberation. Always thinking you have to judge and condemn everything is bondage. If we learn to let go, we will live in true freedom, that is to be able to serve the Lord as He likes. Instead of criticizing others, we should give others. If we do that, we will also receive recompence, and in an impressively abundant manner. The Lord takes an example from the market. Someone who bought grain bought it in a measure. The merchant put the grain in it. He could do it loosely, but he could also try to do as much as he could do in it by pressing and shaking the grain. He could even put a head on it, so that the measure would overflow. Thus will God deal with us in abundance. We will receive from God beyond what we really have deserved. The general principle is that we are done, as we have done ourselves. This goes for both exercising criticism and giving. In a parable, the Lord Jesus speaks of making God’s own features visible. We cannot see God, but His sons can be seen. They can be real sons, those who are made seeing by Christ and therefore know God and can show His features. However, it may also be about those who presume to be connected with God. They say they know Him and show themselves up as leaders for others. The Lord addresses us on our confession, on what we pretend to be and show to others. Do we think we see and are able to lead others? In any case, a blind person cannot lead a blind person. A blind person is someone who has no view of Christ. If we do not see Him and don’t look like Him, we can never show the right way to anyone else. We will die, with those who follow us. That can be our children, that can be fellow Christians. A pupil should not pretend to be above his teacher. A real pupil wants to look like his teacher, like a real son wants to look like his father. And that not just a little, in some aspects, but in everything. “Fully trained” is one who is fully taught and formed entirely by the teaching of the teacher and therefore resembles him. He will be like his teacher in everything in which he is formed by this teacher. Christ was and is perfect, and we grow up to Him in all things, to the measure of the full growth of the fullness of Christ’s perfection ( ; ). Perhaps our problem is not so much that we are blind. We see, we know the Lord, but our problem may be that we see so little of Him. We may not be blind, but we are severely limited in our vision and that without noticing it ourselves. We even think we see so sharply that we can notice the speck in our brother’s eye. It is only tragic that we do not realize that we have a log in our own eye. The Lord uses this exaggeration to indicate how blind we can be to our own deficits, while others see them clearly. And we just think that we can judge the small deficit in our brother’s life very clearly. We need to know two things: Who the Lord is and who we ourselves are. A person who does not see the log in his own eye has not turned his eye to the Teacher and does not know himself. It goes even further. There is not only the presence of the log in the own eye and despite of it perceiving the speck in the eye of the other. There is also the presumption to remove the speck from the eye of the brother without even the slightest sense of the log in the own eye. Disciples can be completely blind to their own ostentatious mistakes that irritate many around them. It is truly astonishing how such people easily point to a small obnoxiousness in a fellow disciple which irritates them and, moreover, also offer to remove what they consider to be an irritating obnoxiousness. The Lord calls such disciples hypocrites. They should first look at themselves. Only when they have seen and judged themselves in God’s light they will be able to help someone else.

‏ Luke 6:38

Judging Others

When the previous teaching is taken to heart, there is another danger. This danger is feeling better than others, feeling above others. God did not act like this in this world. If the disciple forgets that, a spirit of criticism gets hold of him who expresses itself in criticizing everything that does not correspond to this former teaching.

The Lord warns His disciples of a haughty spirit, the self-imagination to be able to judge everything and to think to have to do it. Judging is the forming of a strong opinion about something someone does and of which is judged that it is not good, without the disciple being entitled to this judgment. Condemnation is the rejecting of someone who, in the opinion of the disciple, is not acting correctly. The disciple must count on being judged and condemned, as he judges and condemns.

The Lord says it in negative form. If you don’t do it, it won’t happen to you either. Therefore, we must let go of our own opinions about others, give freedom to others and leave them to the Lord. We will experience that ourselves as a true liberation. Always thinking you have to judge and condemn everything is bondage. If we learn to let go, we will live in true freedom, that is to be able to serve the Lord as He likes. Instead of criticizing others, we should give others. If we do that, we will also receive recompence, and in an impressively abundant manner.

The Lord takes an example from the market. Someone who bought grain bought it in a measure. The merchant put the grain in it. He could do it loosely, but he could also try to do as much as he could do in it by pressing and shaking the grain. He could even put a head on it, so that the measure would overflow. Thus will God deal with us in abundance. We will receive from God beyond what we really have deserved. The general principle is that we are done, as we have done ourselves. This goes for both exercising criticism and giving.

In a parable, the Lord Jesus speaks of making God’s own features visible. We cannot see God, but His sons can be seen. They can be real sons, those who are made seeing by Christ and therefore know God and can show His features. However, it may also be about those who presume to be connected with God. They say they know Him and show themselves up as leaders for others. The Lord addresses us on our confession, on what we pretend to be and show to others. Do we think we see and are able to lead others? In any case, a blind person cannot lead a blind person. A blind person is someone who has no view of Christ.

If we do not see Him and don’t look like Him, we can never show the right way to anyone else. We will die, with those who follow us. That can be our children, that can be fellow Christians. A pupil should not pretend to be above his teacher. A real pupil wants to look like his teacher, like a real son wants to look like his father. And that not just a little, in some aspects, but in everything. “Fully trained” is one who is fully taught and formed entirely by the teaching of the teacher and therefore resembles him. He will be like his teacher in everything in which he is formed by this teacher. Christ was and is perfect, and we grow up to Him in all things, to the measure of the full growth of the fullness of Christ’s perfection (Eph 4:13; Col 1:28).

Perhaps our problem is not so much that we are blind. We see, we know the Lord, but our problem may be that we see so little of Him. We may not be blind, but we are severely limited in our vision and that without noticing it ourselves. We even think we see so sharply that we can notice the speck in our brother’s eye. It is only tragic that we do not realize that we have a log in our own eye. The Lord uses this exaggeration to indicate how blind we can be to our own deficits, while others see them clearly. And we just think that we can judge the small deficit in our brother’s life very clearly.

We need to know two things: Who the Lord is and who we ourselves are. A person who does not see the log in his own eye has not turned his eye to the Teacher and does not know himself. It goes even further. There is not only the presence of the log in the own eye and despite of it perceiving the speck in the eye of the other. There is also the presumption to remove the speck from the eye of the brother without even the slightest sense of the log in the own eye.

Disciples can be completely blind to their own ostentatious mistakes that irritate many around them. It is truly astonishing how such people easily point to a small obnoxiousness in a fellow disciple which irritates them and, moreover, also offer to remove what they consider to be an irritating obnoxiousness. The Lord calls such disciples hypocrites. They should first look at themselves. Only when they have seen and judged themselves in God’s light they will be able to help someone else.