The Sermon on the Mount: A Practical Exposition

by Charles Gore

THE UNCRITICAL TEMPER

We should observe that in the parallel passage in St. Luke vi. this exhortation follows very suggestively upon a description of the character of God which corresponds to an earlier passage in St.Matthew’s account of the Sermon on the Mount. “Ye shall be the sons of the Most High; for he is kind toward the unthankful and the evil. Be ye merciful, even as your Father is merciful. And judge not,” &c. That is to say, God is not critical; He does the best for every one. He gives to every one the gifts he can appreciate. This is to be embodied in the temper of the disciple.

“Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgement ye judge, ye shall be judged; and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured unto you. And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me cast out the mote out of thine eye; and lo, the beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, cast out first the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.”

Manifestly, what is in our Lord’s mind is the temper and character of the Pharisee. The Pharisee was in his way a strict religionist, a strict observer of religion. But you may almost say that the Pharisee tested progress in religion by the capacity to condemn other people.“This multitude which knoweth not the law is accursed.”[74] The Pharisee hadpassed through a certain probation in learning. He had, as it were, passed his examinations and stood his tests; and now he was in a position to set every one else in his proper and subordinate place. That was the very test of his progress, that he was able to “despise others”; and it followed that he could be, in regard to his own inner character, lax and self-satisfied. He had attained the right standard; he was performing the right observances. So long as he did these things, he need not be over-scrupulous in examining himself. Therefore the Pharisee was both critical and hypocritical; critical with regard to others, with regard to himself hypocritical.

Our Lord, then, did not mean to make of His disciples a new kind of Pharisee. He did not mean that His disciples, as they grew to learn and follow the strictness of their Master’s standard, should come to be supercilious like the Pharisees, and, like them, morally hollow. Therefore He warns against these two easily combined characteristics.

On the contrary, the temper which our Lord approves is the humility whichmakes the best of others, and is severe with itself. You, He seems to say, have every opportunity to know your own failings; therefore look stringently to yourself, “the mote, or the beam, that is in thine own eye.” That “bulks big” enough in your own vision. To consider it prevents you from over-estimating yourself, and humbles you in your own sight. Let it also take out of your heart and off your lips all the readiness to criticize and condemn other people.

Make the best of others. For that is, in fact, what our Lord means by “judge not.” It is what we should most naturally express by “Do not be critical.” Because a thing is strange or new to you, because it does not fall in with your ideas, do not condemn it off-hand, but try to appreciate it with sympathy first of all. Make the best of every thing and every person. And there is no doubt that if after looking for the good points in any idea, or undertaking, or person, you are at last bound to condemn, the weight attaching to your adverse verdict will depend very largely on whether you have escaped the reputation of being a “critical”and censorious person. The condemnation of one who is always finding fault carries no moral weight.

I say, If at last you are bound to condemn, and that may be the Christian’s duty. For here, again, as throughout this Sermon, we must notice our Lord’s proverbial method, otherwise we may misinterpret altogether the temper which our Lord here commends. There is a temper of universal toleration very prevalent in our age, both in conversation and in literature; which can indeed tolerate everything, because it has no fixed standards of right and wrong, of true and false, at all. But it is clear enough that this was not what our Lord meant to recommend; it would be so utterly antagonistic to His own character. No one is severer in discriminating judgement than our Lord when the occasion requires it. More than this, our Lord did deliberately intend that His Church, and the members of His Church, should have standards of goodness and truth which should enable them—aye, which should require them when duty called—to condemn their own brethren. A passage in St. Matthew’s Gospel whichhas been referred to already is clear upon this. “If thy brother trespass against thee”—are you to say, “It is of no account. It is not my business to condemn?” No. When it is not a question of the love of criticizing or of uncharitable judgement, but of maintaining the law of right and wrong, then it becomes our business to judge, and after consideration and patience to condemn.

“Go, shew him his fault between thee and him alone; if he hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother. But if he hear thee not, take with thee one or two more, that at the mouth of two witnesses or three every word may be established. And if he refuse to hear them, tell it unto the church: and if he refuse to hear the church also, let him be unto thee as the Gentile and the publican. Verily I say unto you, What things soever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and what things soever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”[75]

Our Lord does here actually commit to the Church—as on an earlier occasion to St. Peter as the chief and representative apostle—not the right, but the duty, to bind and to loose: that is, to pass judgements as to what is right and what is wrong, what is to be permitted and what is not to be permitted, in theChristian society. Again, after His resurrection He gives to His apostles the power and the duty to apply these judgements to persons, to absolve and to retain sins.[76] Thus the Church, and each of its members, is not indeed to be censorious in temper, or to make the worst of people; but, when occasion requires, is to maintain the moral standard. So it is that St. Paul expressly tells the Corinthian Church that, as a Christian society, they are to judge, not those that are without, but those that are within their own body:and he severely condemns them because they had let pass, or tolerated, a serious moral offence without discriminating judgement being passed upon it.[77]

It is the same where doctrine is concerned. The New Testament continually warns Christians that they are to have standards of judgement;to test all things, and hold fast that which is right;[78] to test the spirits whether they be of God.[79] And if any teacher come with a doctrine calculated to subvert the principles which lie at the basis of theChristian life, St. Paul and St. John alike recommend an attitude towards him which cannot exactly be described as tolerance.

“As we have said before, so say I now again, If any man preacheth unto you any gospel other than that which ye received, let him be anathema.”

“If any one cometh unto you, and bringeth not this teaching, receive him not into your house, and give him no greeting: for he that giveth him greeting partaketh in his evil works.”[80]

These injunctions are given in view of cases where fundamental matters of principle are at stake.About minor matters St. Paul adopts a tone of the widest toleration.[81]

There is then a duty of judgement: while on the other hand our Lord condemns the critical and censorious temper. Is it not true that a candid conscience finds very little difficulty in distinguishing the duty of judgement from the sin of censoriousness and criticism? And is it not the case that those who have the lowest and vaguest standards of what is true and right, are yet very often the most critical in judgement of other people?

We are then to be anxious to make the best of others: and our Lord hereagain recognizes that law which we have so often heard from His lips, that God deals with us as we deal with our fellow-men.

“Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgement ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured unto you.”

This describes no doubt how God will deal with us. And from the parallel passage of St. Luke we should gather that the retaliation will not be confined to God. As we deal with other men, so other men also will deal with us.

“And judge not, and ye shall not be judged: and condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned: release, and ye shall be released: give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, shall they give into your bosom. For with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.”[82]

From all sides you get as you give. If you deal with men in the critical, censorious, narrow temper, men will deal so with you. If you make the best of others, others will make the best of you.