Who Made You Judge?

If there is an aphorism derived from Scripture best known and oft quoted in our day, surely it is, “Judge not, lest ye be judged.”[2] Its use is typically meant to refute moral judgment on a particular sin, and its effect is typically the equivalent of “Mind your own business.” The source of the expression is our passage today, as well as Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount in Matthew. And while I am all for encouraging quotes of Jesus in our culture, I’m not for taking Scripture out of context, for whatever reason. As we will see in our passage today, Jesus was no more dismissing sin than encouraging it, but he was confronting it, a sin that often hides comfortably in the church.