When one of you has a grievance against a brother, does he dare go to law before the unrighteous instead of the saints? Do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world is to be judged by you, are you incompetent to try trivial cases? Do you not know that we are to judge angels? How much more, matters pertaining to this life! If then you have such cases, why do you lay them before those who are least esteemed by the church? I say this to your shame. Can it be that there is no man among you wise enough to decide between members of the brotherhood, but brother goes to law against brother, and that before unbelievers?
Merriam-Webster tells us that the verb “to judge” means “to form an opinion about through careful weighing of evidence and testing of premises.”
Jesus tells us that we are not to judge, or else we will ourselves be judged.
The Apostle Paul, however, tells us that Christians—”saints”—are to judge the world and angels alike.
Is Paul contradicting Jesus? If he is, what are we to make of his many letters which are a substantial part of the New Testament?
If Paul is not contradicting Jesus, how can his counsel and Jesus' admonition both be true?
I am persuaded, to borrow from Ayn Rand, that contradictions ultimately do not exist. I am especially persuaded that, contrary to the insistence of many who claim Christian faith, there are no contradictions in Scripture. God does not quarrel with Himself.
This matters especially when we apprehend Scriptural teachings on judgment. If we accept on faith that the Bible contains God's Word, we must accept that its teachings are not at odds with one another. We must accept that, or our Scriptural introspections collapse into an ego-driven and hypocritical exercise in cherry-picking verses to make our carnal desires out to be righteous.
Thus we must reconcile Paul to Jesus, just as we ourselves must be reconciled to God.
How shall we do that?
I begin by apprehending the meaning of the word. If we are to properly refrain from judging, we must understand what we are saying when we speak of judgment. If we are to judge the world and angels properly, we must again understand what we are saying when we speak of judgment.
When we judge, we reach an opinion and form a conclusion.
We cannot function in the world without exercising at least some judgment. We must assess the actions of others, and choose how to react and respond. We must decide what is an evil to be opposed and what is a good to be defended. Guided always by God's Law, we must judge the world around us if we are to move at all through the world.
Christians are not only fated to judge the world, we are compelled to do so.
It is noteworthy that Paul teaches that Christians are to judge the world in the context of admonishing the Corinthians for settling disputes among themselves according to the secular laws and secular courts of the Roman Empire.
There is a certain logic to this. If our faith is true we are already guided by a law far superior to man's laws. If our faith is true we are guided by God's Law, which obviates any need for man's laws.
Why seek redress from inferior law when one has access to the superior law?
Similarly, when Jesus gives us the admonition not to judge, He follows with a challenge: why do we focus on what our brother is doing wrong and ignore our own failings? Why do we not attend to our failings first and then worry about our brother’s misdeeds?
Why indeed.
When we “offer" to help our brother mend what is wrong in his life, what else are we saying?
Are we saying “you are evil, I am righteous”?
Are we saying “we are sinners together, let us help one another”?
Are we like the Pharisee praying in the temple, filled with contempt for the tax collector while congratulating himself for all the good things God has given him?
Are we like the tax collector, yearning only for righteousness, seeking forgiveness for all his many sins?
When we seek to “help", are we healing or hurting? Are we hoisting up or holding down?
When we speak about those living wicked and unrighteous lives, are we mindful of our own wickedness, our own unrighteous behavior?
When we testify the Good News of Jesus Christ, do we congratulate ourselves on our salvation, or do we work passionately for the salvation of all mankind?
Do we encourage people to do as we do, and be as we are? Do we rather encourage people to do as God wills, and to be as God calls them to be?
Do we form conclusions about people, labeling them as “wicked", or “weak”, or in some way less than ourselves?
Do we call out our own unrighteous behaviors when we call out the unrighteous conduct of others?
Jesus is crystal clear on this point. No one is so filled with righteousness that they are justified in lording it over others. If we harp on the sins of others, we add to our own sins the sin of hypocrisy.
If we form opinions—judgements—about others, if we make their fallen state somehow different from our own, we are not bearing true witness either to the Good News of Jesus Christ or to the fallen state of the world.
Nor is Jesus’ admonition at all new or revolutionary. We do well to remember the verse in Leviticus preceding the Biblical commandment to love our neighbor as we love ourselves: “You shall not hate your brother in your heart, but you shall reason with your neighbor, lest you bear sin because of him.”
Is this not what Jesus taught repeatedly throughout the Gospels?
Thus Jesus’ admonition comes to the same nexus as Paul's: if our faith is true, we are guided by God's Law, at the core of which is the teaching from Leviticus that we are to love our neighbors as we love ourselves.
When we are confronted by acts which go against God's Law, are we justified in calling those acts out as evil?
Absolutely.
We are must call out evil as evil or our witness to the world is not true. We are called to reason with those who do wrong, in hopes we may persuade them back to a path of righteousness, but such reasoning by its nature begins with acknowledgment of sin.
Silence at such moments is a sin unto itself, an evil unto itself.
When we are confronted by acts which go against God's Law, are we justified in calling the actors out as evil?
Absolutely not.
As we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, we are all evil. Jesus Himself taught that “no one is good except God.” We can only be justified in calling other people evil if we admit that we ourselves are also evil. To assume otherwise is to focus on the speck in our brother’s eye while ignoring the log in our own.
Such hypocrisy is also a sin unto itself, an evil unto itself.
There is no contradiction between what Jesus teaches about judging and what Paul teaches. Both teachings bring us to the same place, where God's Law is supreme, and where our faith binds us to God's Law.
Both teachings insist we embrace the fullness of God's Law, beginning with the Great Commandment to love God with all our heart, all our mind, and all our soul. Both teachings lead us directly to Great Commandment’s corollary, to love our neighbors even as we love ourselves.
Both teachings are particularly relevant in the increasingly polarized and agitated era in which we live.
Words such as “fascist”, “Nazi”, and “Hitler” are being used with increasing abandon, and with little regard for the meanings society historically ascribes to them.
The commentaries we see in traditional media outlets, in alternative media outlets, and on nearly all social media platforms are increasingly more concerned with arguing how different this group is from that group, how one side is “good” while the other side is “evil.”
People are demonstrably more concerned with the speck in their neighbor’s eye and not at all concerned by the log in their own eye. People are focusing more on how man’s laws and man’s governments can be used against those with whom they disagree than on saying and doing right and righteous things.
We are judging one another for who we think people are. We are not judging what they have done or what they have said. We are in many cases not even recognizing what they have done, declaring that everything of theirs must be evil, since they are evil.
We are making man’s laws into weapons to hurt one another.
How is any of this in keeping with the teachings of Jesus?
How is any of this in keeping with the teachings of Paul?
Simply put, it isn’t. None of this is what we are called to do. God did not call us to this. Jesus did not teach us this. Paul did not teach us this.
Regardless of our politics, regardless of what we hold dear, we are still called to love our neighbors. We are still called to deal with everyone honestly and righteously.
We can and will disagree with people. We can and must continue to love them as we love ourselves. If we do not do this, we are not loving God at all, let alone with all our heart, all our soul, and all our mind.
My prayer especially now is that God will give me the discernment to see past disagreements and see the humanity that is within everyone. My prayer especially now is that I will find the words to call out sinful, wicked, conduct while recognizing that we are all sinners together. My prayer especially now is that I will be always mindful that sin is something all men have in common, and that I will resist the temptation to hold myself above others, simply because they do not believe as I believe, or think as I think.
My prayer especially now is that God will give you also the discernment to see past disagreements and see the humanity that is within everyone. My prayer especially now is that you also will find the words to call out sinful, wicked, conduct while recognizing that we are all sinners together. My prayer especially now is that you also will be always mindful that sin is something all men have in common, and that you also will resist the temptation to hold yourself above others, simply because they do not believe as you believe, or think as you think.
There is no contradiction between what Jesus teaches about judging and what Paul teaches. Both teachings bring us to the same place, where God’s Law is supreme, and where our faith binds us to God’s Law.
Both teachings insist we embrace the fullness of God’s Law, beginning with the Great Commandment to love God with all our heart, all our mind, and all our soul. Both teachings lead us directly to Great Commandment’s corollary, to love our neighbors even as we love ourselves.
We can and will disagree with people. We can and must continue to love them as we love ourselves. If we do not do this, we are not loving God at all, let alone with all our heart, all our soul, and all our mind.
Another superbly reasoned and well-stated gem, Peter - you are a treasure! This is an issue that probably all Christians struggle with, and frequently get wrong. Hate the sin, love the sinner!
Paul is saying Christians need to handle problems between Christians. Jesus is saying , you’re no better than anyone else because we all sin, so don’t be a hypocrite. I think Paul is difficult to understand because he uses words in a different way than most people. He was probably a genius. I prefer to read Jesus or Peter and all the gospels, but obviously Paul’s writings are important.