Judge Not and You Will Not Be Judged

Sermon for The Fourth Sunday after Trinity

June 28th, 2026

“Judge not and you will not be judged.”

There may not be a more misquoted verse in all of Scripture. “Who are you to tell me what’s right and wrong?” “Love is love; my body, my truth.” “Judge not lest you be judged.” The mind is twisted and dark; the world is wandering about following the teacher and ruler of this world, satan. He wants to weaken the church and silence the Christian who speaks God’s truth.

If you’ve ever been bold enough to speak out against sins that devalue the human body and life. The sin of homosexuality and transgenderism that place the inner feelings and sense of self above God’s good and beautiful design for His creation. Or the sin of abortion, the murdering of the innocent unborn child. If you’ve ever spoken out against the “My body, my choice” lie, you know how quickly the unbelieving world will condemn you for speaking the truth.

When Jesus said, “Judge not and you will not be judged” He was not telling us to ignore sin or not to judge and condemn teaching that perverts and twists God’s Word. As Christians we are called to do this. God’s Word is objective truth. It defines what is good and right and true. And it condemns what is evil and wrong and against God’s will. Paul writes that the spiritual person judges all things. Filled with the Holy Spirit we’ve been given the mind of Christ to judge things rightly according to God’s Word.

Paul writes about sins that devalue the human body and God’s created order stating that such sins will keep one out of the kingdom of God if one willingly continues in the sin. He writes: “Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality … nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God (1 Cor 6:9-10).”

We are not called to ignore sin but to speak as God has spoken in His Word. As Christians we are called judge right and wrong in the light of God’s Word. There is hope for those caught in such sin and unbelief. After condemning specific sin Paul writes: “And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God (1 Cor 9:11).”

All Scripture is profitable for teaching, for reproof and correction. Pastors and all Christians must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught in order to give instruction in sound doctrine and to rebuke those who contradict it. We confess God’s Word in its truth and purity and then trust God to work with His Word and Spirit to bring the dead to life. To create faith. To turn from sin and wash clean the repentant sinner in the blood of Jesus.

Right after our reading today in Luke, Jesus teaches about a tree and its fruit, saying each tree is known by its fruit, because no good tree bears bad fruit, and no bad tree bears good fruit. Each tree is known by its fruit. Discern the fruits; accept the good fruit and reject the bad fruit. Speak the truth in love. Let God work with His Word and Spirit.

The world and satan wants us to push God’s Word aside and reject what we’ve been taught. From the very beginning this is what satan’s been doing. God said, don’t eat of the tree, but satan said, “Did God actually say…?” Satan wants you to doubt God’s word and to cower in the face of opposition from the world and our perverted culture.

The world and our culture is blind to the evil and corruption that fills it. The world and our culture calls good evil and evil good. We see it all around us, it’s the blind leading the blind. And the Bible is clear we must call sin a sin and speak against false teaching and the evil that surrounds us; but there is a right way and a wrong way to go about it.

Jesus spoke a parable after His Judge not and you will not be judged statement. He said, “Can a blind man lead a blind man? Will they not both fall into a pit?” And “Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?”

Before we can rightly judge and speak against sin and evil and false doctrine, we must have our eyes opened to see ourselves rightly in the light of God’s word. When His light shines it exposes what’s hidden deep inside, and it’s horrible what lurks deep inside each one of us. Sexual perversion and lust, addiction, the idolatry of self. Pride, and hatred that manifests itself in words and deeds against our neighbor. Murderous and adulterous thoughts; envy and greed.The things we hate in others we find within ourselves, and we must face that reality first. That reality shows us that each one of us has a log in our own eye that must first be dealt with before we can see clearly to help our brothers and sisters with the speck in their own eyes.When the light of God’s Word shines on our situation, and we see ourselves for who we really are, we find that our situation is beyond what we are able to fix ourselves. We then realize we are in no position to judge others by our own standards, because we’ve fallen way short of God’s standard, which is perfection. The judgement we use toward sin and failure in the world we must use on ourselves first, and that judgment is God’s judgment.

We let God be the judge because the Heavenly Father who demands perfection and judges all things does so perfectly through His Son. And when Jesus is the judge, we are taken from death to life. Under the righteous judgment of Jesus we are first humbled, our sins are brought into the light and exposed, and it hurts, and it should. The sinful flesh and all of its sin must be put to death. And then we cry out for mercy and God hears our cry, and He shows us His love in the bloody Cross of Jesus. It’s there in Jesus where His mercy is greater than we could ever imagine. God’s Word which opens our eyes to our sin also shows us the way to perfection; it’s through the sacrifice of Jesus where the perfection God demands God provides.And from that Cross God’s mercy flows in the blood of Jesus that covers us and cleanses us from all of our sin. It’s in the perfect sacrifice of Jesus where God’s grace and mercy is given in good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over. It overflows, there’s more than we can handle, it can’t be contained. It absorbs all of our sin and imperfection. The blood of Jesus is life, and it never ceases to flow from the veins of God as it removes the stain of our sin as it brings the life of Jesus into our brokenness. The lost are found, the dead are raised to life.

Be merciful, as your Heavenly Father is merciful. That is the heart and comfort of our Gospel reading today. Abundant mercy. Overflowing mercy. Our sins are judged forgiven, nailed to the Cross in Jesus and cast into the sea. We now see clearly in this world. Our true teacher, Jesus, fills us with His Spirit, and leads us to love as we’ve been loved, and to forgive as we’ve been forgiven.

So when you hear, “Judge not and you will not be judged” and “be merciful as your Heavenly Father is merciful”, it doesn’t mean disregard the sins of those around you or accept people for who they are if they are willingly living contrary to God’s will. It means remember God found you when you were dead in your trespasses and sins, but He didn’t walk past you and leave you to die in your sin. He picked you up and breathed new life into you. The dead came back to life.We desire the same thing for anyone caught in sin and blind to the sin and death that surrounds them. With our eyes open to our sin, hearts repentant, and sins forgiven in Jesus, we go to those people in humility and love and speak God’s word in its truth and purity, trusting that God will work as He sees fit to turn them from their sin and lead them to find hope and comfort in God’s abundant grace and mercy in Jesus.Seeing someone lost, blind, and dying in their sin and saying nothing is not mercy. It’s not love. Imagine seeing an unconscious person lying in a ditch that’s filling with water and not stopping, knowing in a few minutes the person will be submerged under water and drown, but you just keep going. That’s not mercy; that’s not love.

Or a young child running towards a busy highway, and you are close enough to call out and warn them, but you don’t. You just stand there and watch the horrific scene play out, knowing they are going to make it to the highway and be killed. You do nothing, you say nothing, you just watch. That’s not mercy. That’s not love.We can’t save people. That’s God’s work with His Word and Spirit. But we can speak the full truth of God’s word with humility and love to those people in our lives who are lying in a ditch and drowning in their sin or those running blindly away from God and into certain eternal death. Speak God’s truth and let Him work. That’s judging rightly in the light of God’s Word. It’s merciful and it’s loving.Then pray and trust that God will work in His time and in His way to turn the wayward back to Him. To find the coin that was lost, to bring the wandering sheep back into the fold.

To restore the prodigal son back into the family with feasting and celebration. Cleansing them all with the blood of Jesus.Today we come into the presence of Jesus and have the log once again removed from our eye so we can see clearly to speak in love to a lost and dying world about sin, and about Jesus and about the only hope we have in a lost and dying world. And to speak to those we love and care about who’ve wandered from the church, praying that God would work to bring them back home that they might join us once again in the Church, the body of Christ. Thanks be to Jesus. In Jesus name. Amen.