And observe the phrase, “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” Our Lord is not in any sort of way promising us that we shall not suffer trouble if we put our trust in God. What He tells us is simply that “According to thy day, so shall thy strength be.” We are in God’s hands. God gives us the evil and the good. We are only, like our Lord, to trust in His divine fatherhood; and doing our best to-day, exercising our judgement to the best of our power, we are to repose in His love.
CHAPTER IX
CHRISTIAN CHARACTERISTICS
THE seventh chapter—the last which belongs to the Sermon—is occupied with a number of accessory topics. The character of the citizen of the kingdom of God has now been portrayed for us; the relation of this character to the old law has been explained; its main motive or principle has been described. Now there follow some characteristics which flow naturally from the relation in which the citizen of the kingdom stands both towards God and towards man. The first of these is the uncritical temper. “Judge not and ye shall not be judged.”
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.