Post by Char on Oct 26, 2008 13:29:41 GMT -6
OUR JUDGMENT OF OTHERS....JUDGE OF EVIL THOUGHT.
Ours is a critical age, and we, most of us, what learned how to criticize. It has been raised to a science. We can distinguish the false from the true, the impostor from the honest man.
Because we cannot judge right. We can put the motive to everything that is done. We can estimate character, we can measure the degrees of virtue and of vice; nay, so clever have we grown in this accomplishment, that we discover things that never existed, see unkindness where none was meant, deceit and hypocrisy in the honest and the true, selfishness in some act of generosity which we cannot other wise account for.
Judge not.....because we cannot judge right..even when there is no beam in our own eye to obscure our vision, and no want of charity to bias our judgment, we cannot truly judge of the motives which are at work in another. The French have a motto, that "to know everything is to forgive everything," and if this is not literally true, at least it embodies a truth, which we are slow enough to admit, that we often judge by the outside fact and give no credit for the hidden motive.
"Men who see into their neighbours, " Says and acute observer of human nature, "Are very apt to be contemptuous; but men who see through them find something lying behind every human soul which they cannot judge and dare not sneer at."
It is the very worst policy possible, the man who judges harshly will be harshly judged. But he who has always a good word to say of another will find critics and many friends.
If you are honest with yourself, you dare not judge. To judge, you most yourself be at least free from the sin which you profess to judge. (Matt. 7:5; John 8:7). It is God’s prerogative (Rom. 14:4). What if the master should judge us as we are so ready to judge our fellow man? What if God should take us at our word, and forgive us as we forgive those who trespass against us?
IV. THE RICH AND THE POOR....HATH NOT GOD CHOSEN THE POOR.
Let us not misunderstand St. James. He does not say or imply that the poor man is promised salvation on account of his poverty, or that his poverty is in any way meritorious. That is not the case, any more than that the wealth of the rich is a sin.
But so far as God has declared any preference, it is for the poor rather than for the rich. The poor man has fewer temptations, and he is more likely to live according to God’s will, and to win the blessings that are in store for those who love Him.
It’s dependence upon God for the means of life is perpetually brought home to him, and he is spared the peril of trusting in riches, which is so terrible a snare to the wealthy.
He has greater opportunities of the virtues which make a man Christ like, and fewer occasions of falling into those sins which separate him most fatally from Christ.
But opportunities are not virtues, and poverty is not salvation.
Nevertheless, to a Christian a poor man is an object of reverence rather than of contempt. But the error of the worldly Christians who St. James is here rebuking does not end with dishonoring the poor whom God has honoured; they also pay special respect to the rich. Have the rich, as a class, shown that they deserve anything of the kind? Very much the reverse, as experience is constantly proving. DO NOT THE RICH OPPRESS YOU? St. James is thinking of the rich Sadducees, who at this period were among the worst oppressors of the poorer Jews, and of course were specially bitter against those who has become adherents of THE WAY, and who seemed to them to be renegades from the faith of their forefathers. It was precisely to this kind of oppression that St. Paul devoted himself with fanatical seal previous to his conversion. (Acts 9:1-2; I Tim.1:13; I Cor. 15:9; Phil. 3:6)
Ours is a critical age, and we, most of us, what learned how to criticize. It has been raised to a science. We can distinguish the false from the true, the impostor from the honest man.
Because we cannot judge right. We can put the motive to everything that is done. We can estimate character, we can measure the degrees of virtue and of vice; nay, so clever have we grown in this accomplishment, that we discover things that never existed, see unkindness where none was meant, deceit and hypocrisy in the honest and the true, selfishness in some act of generosity which we cannot other wise account for.
Judge not.....because we cannot judge right..even when there is no beam in our own eye to obscure our vision, and no want of charity to bias our judgment, we cannot truly judge of the motives which are at work in another. The French have a motto, that "to know everything is to forgive everything," and if this is not literally true, at least it embodies a truth, which we are slow enough to admit, that we often judge by the outside fact and give no credit for the hidden motive.
"Men who see into their neighbours, " Says and acute observer of human nature, "Are very apt to be contemptuous; but men who see through them find something lying behind every human soul which they cannot judge and dare not sneer at."
It is the very worst policy possible, the man who judges harshly will be harshly judged. But he who has always a good word to say of another will find critics and many friends.
If you are honest with yourself, you dare not judge. To judge, you most yourself be at least free from the sin which you profess to judge. (Matt. 7:5; John 8:7). It is God’s prerogative (Rom. 14:4). What if the master should judge us as we are so ready to judge our fellow man? What if God should take us at our word, and forgive us as we forgive those who trespass against us?
IV. THE RICH AND THE POOR....HATH NOT GOD CHOSEN THE POOR.
Let us not misunderstand St. James. He does not say or imply that the poor man is promised salvation on account of his poverty, or that his poverty is in any way meritorious. That is not the case, any more than that the wealth of the rich is a sin.
But so far as God has declared any preference, it is for the poor rather than for the rich. The poor man has fewer temptations, and he is more likely to live according to God’s will, and to win the blessings that are in store for those who love Him.
It’s dependence upon God for the means of life is perpetually brought home to him, and he is spared the peril of trusting in riches, which is so terrible a snare to the wealthy.
He has greater opportunities of the virtues which make a man Christ like, and fewer occasions of falling into those sins which separate him most fatally from Christ.
But opportunities are not virtues, and poverty is not salvation.
Nevertheless, to a Christian a poor man is an object of reverence rather than of contempt. But the error of the worldly Christians who St. James is here rebuking does not end with dishonoring the poor whom God has honoured; they also pay special respect to the rich. Have the rich, as a class, shown that they deserve anything of the kind? Very much the reverse, as experience is constantly proving. DO NOT THE RICH OPPRESS YOU? St. James is thinking of the rich Sadducees, who at this period were among the worst oppressors of the poorer Jews, and of course were specially bitter against those who has become adherents of THE WAY, and who seemed to them to be renegades from the faith of their forefathers. It was precisely to this kind of oppression that St. Paul devoted himself with fanatical seal previous to his conversion. (Acts 9:1-2; I Tim.1:13; I Cor. 15:9; Phil. 3:6)
