To Judge or Not to Judge

TODAY'S READING: Job 34; 1 Corinthians 4,5,6

SCRIPTURE: 1 Cor. 4:3-5; 1 Cor. 5:12, 13; 1 Cor. 6:1-8
³ I care very little if I am judged by you or by any human court; indeed, I do not even judge myself. ⁴ My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me. ⁵ Therefore judge nothing before the appointed time; wait till the Lord comes. He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of men’s hearts. At that time each will receive his praise from God.

¹² What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? ¹³ God will judge those outside. “Expel the wicked man from among you.”

¹ If any of you has a dispute with another, dare he take it before the ungodly for judgment instead of before the saints? ² Do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if you are to judge the world, are you not competent to judge trivial cases? ³ Do you not know that we will judge angels? How much more the things of this life! ⁴ Therefore, if you have disputes about such matters, appoint as judges even men of little account in the church! ⁵ I say this to shame you. Is it possible that there is nobody among you wise enough to judge a dispute between believers? ⁶ But instead, one brother goes to law against another—and this in front of unbelievers! ⁷ The very fact that you have lawsuits among you means you have been completely defeated already. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be cheated? ⁸ Instead, you yourselves cheat and do wrong, and you do this to your brothers.

OBSERVATION: The Bible is not an easy book and a person must be willing to "wrestle" with it to try to glean the correct understanding of its ideas. The seemingly opposite instructions in the verses above are what drive some people to distraction. In 1 Cor. 4, Paul says not to judge anything; wait for the Lord to judge in his time. Then, in the later verses in chapters 5 and 6, he clearly says that believers are to judge each other. So which is it? Are we to judge or not to judge? The point Paul makes in chapter 4 is that we cannot judge the intentions of other peoples' hearts. We can't even judge our own hearts without the insight of the Holy Spirit. So we leave that judgment to God. However, in the later chapters Paul is speaking about judging behaviors. He makes it clear that certain behaviors are inconsistent with having a Christian testimony and that we can even bring reproach to Christ in the eyes of unbelievers if ungodly ac tions are tolerated and not renounced. The Church is weak and ineffective today because we have bought into the cultural lie that we should be tolerant and non-judgmental toward everyone. The world sees little difference between believers and unbelievers. Living together before marriage, divorce, greed, unkindness, etc. are just as prevalent in the Church as outside of it. Isn't Christ supposed to make a difference in us? Shouldn't we have power to overcome our sinful nature? Yes!

APPLICATION: We cannot allow our culture to dictate our attitudes toward sin. The Church is the one place where sin should be called what it is and people should be instructed that they cannot have the power and fellowship of God and live in disobedience. They will reap a bitter harvest if they do. We have so much more heartache and suffering in Christians than we need to because they are not warned by leadership to stop sinning and obey the Lord! I have seen many pastors afraid to speak up and confront sin when they see it because it could cause them to lose people and the income they bring to the church. Are we engaged in a worldly business or in kingdom work? Ought we to turn a blind eye to sin and let people suffer the consequences they will surely reap if they don't repent? Shouldn't we care enough about their welfare that we are willing to risk their being offended with us in order to spare them from spiritual and emotional harm? Don't we care that others may see them sinning without any challenge from church leadership and be emboldened to succumb to temptation and become trapped themselves? We must not let our culture dictate to us. We must be willing to lovingly confront our fellow Christians with the view to restoring them to living in obedience. Until we do this consistently, the Church in America will be weak and ineffective.

PRAYER: Oh Father, how we need you to cleanse us all! Forgive us for caring more about not offending each other more than we care about offending you. Help me to be true to the instructions in your Word even if others are not. But I pray you would place a hunger for righteousness in your Church. May we not fear being hated by the world but may the fear of the Lord lead us to wisdom. This I pray in the blessed and strong Name of Jesus. Amen.