What Jesus Said: Plank Eye!

“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye?” (Matthew 7:3-5)

Jesus uses such great word pictures. You can almost see this as a Monty Python or “Saturday Night Live” sketch as the clueless-but-official-sounding “doctor” keeps whacking his patient in the head with the plank sticking out of his eye as he tries in vain to pick the other guy’s speck out with a pair of tweezers. Before it was over, they’d both be blind.

whatjesus_350And that’s the point. Volunteer judges love to walk around with tweezers looking for small infractions to point out and attempt to fix in their siblings. They carry a list of rules around with them – whatever list they’ve decided is the most important one – so they can pull it out and show it to each other and argue about exactly where the lines are that must. not. be. crossed.

Meanwhile, Jesus said, they are literally blind to the giant, obvious sin in their own lives. These hypocrites – and we’ve all been there – are like murderers banging the gavel at a jaywalking trial. They are the last people who should be “fixing” other believers.

So none of us should ever point out sin in another person’s life, right? Wrong! Come back tomorrow.

Think: Has anyone ever approached you about sin your life? Did they do it judgmentally and hypocritically? Have you ever been told you have a plank-sized sin that you had previously been blind to? Who do you trust that you could ask about any obvious problem areas in your life that you might be missing?

Pray: Ask God to help you not to become a hypocritical judge of other people’s sin while being blind to even more obvious sin in your own life.

Do: Think about asking someone you trust to tell you honestly and kindly if they have noticed any obvious sin in your life that you may not have seen. (Be willing to hear what they say and really think about it, even if you don’t agree completely, at first. And refuse to get mad and punish them for telling you what they really think.)