Condemn Not

¹“Judge not, and ye shall not be judged: condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned: Forgive, and ye shall be forgiven:” (Luke 6:37). I think when we read this verse we often think of it in kind of an eye for an eye type of way. Don’t judge or condemn others and God won’t judge or condemn you. Forgive others and God will forgive you. But what if it’s simpler than that? When an angry crowd dragged a woman before Jesus and demanded that He enforce the law of Moses and condemn her to be stoned, after Jesus dismissed the crowd, He asked the woman, “where are thine accusers? Hath no man condemned thee? She said, no man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.” (John 8:10-11). It is likely that Jesus’s injunction to the woman to go and sin no more referred to the sins for which she had been brought before Him. But Christ may very well have been referring to the sin of the woman judging and condemning herself. We are so very often far harsher judges and condemners of ourselves than we would ever dream of being towards anyone else. If we insert ourselves into the verse at the top, it almost becomes a tautology. “Judge not yourself, and ye shall not be judged: condemn not yourself and ye shall not be condemned: Forgive yourself, and ye shall be forgiven.” Put that way, it seems glaringly obvious. Self-flagellation is a tool of the devil. Beating ourselves up over our sins is not Godly sorrow. It does not lead to repentance. When we judge and condemn ourselves and beat ourselves up, we are doing Satan’s dirty work for Him. God will forgive whom He will forgive, but to us it is required that we forgive all men and women, including and perhaps especially ourselves. It is true that as we seek to repent and draw closer to God, we will become more sensitive to how our poor choices have wounded us and wounded our Heavenly Father. This will be painful at first, but only painful in the way that someone who has been in pitch blackness for a long time will experience pain when they are exposed once more to the light. It takes time for the eyes to adjust. Poking ourselves in the eye will not speed that process up, and the pain that comes from such pokes does nothing good for us. That is the same thing that happens when we condemn ourselves. We are not in a position to judge ourselves objectively. We do not have the authority to condemn ourselves. All we can do is forgive ourselves and go forward and sin no more.