Articles
That Little Speck
There's a passage of scripture that I've read hundreds of times in my life, heard lesson after lesson, and yet every single time I read it, it makes me have to stop and consider what it says.
I'll bet you know this verse. It makes us turn all our fingers toward ourselves, and stops us from being so harsh in our judgment and expectations of others.
It humbles us if we will apply it to our lives, it convicts us of our own sin, it reminds us we have our own problems and shortcomings and sins, and it should steer us back to reality every time we read it.
There are lots of scriptures that may do what this verse does, but Jesus sort of used a sledge hammer with this one to drive His point home. Most people around us have heard enough Bible that even if they aren't a student of the Word, they have probably heard this verse. It should make us open our eyes to our own lives and cause us to have mercy and a desire to forgive. It ought to make us clean up our act, if it needs some cleaning, although some use it as a license to sin and then say, "you can't judge me!"
We can either read this verse, realizing sometimes we have a 2 x 4 sticking out of our own eye while we grab tweezers and try and get a piece of sawdust out of someone else's eye like Jesus intended, which should bring us to re-evaluate things and repent of our hypocrisy, OR we can read it and say we are free to live as we want, and nobody should judge our actions because they too have sin in their lives. Which way do you think Jesus intended it? I think vs-5 answers what Christ intended!
“3 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? 4 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? 5 You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye. (Matt 7:3-5)
