John 7:24 Judge
Food for Thought
An all-creatures.org Guide to Kingdom Living. True Christian living requires us to live according to Kingdom standards which bring Heaven to earth

John 7:24 New King James Version

24. Do not judge according to appearance, but judge with righteous judgment.”

As human beings who rely on our sight to navigate the world, we use our physical eyes and ears to judge or form an opinion of what we are witnessing.  But in doing this regularly and with every situation, we run into the error of judging incorrectly. There is an old saying. “There’s more than meets the eye”.  What this means is that there is something we are not detecting in what we are seeing and something we don’t know, may lie beneath.

Sometimes what people are acting out is not what is really going on internally.

Look at the Pharisees; they were very religious and appeared righteous and above reproach and yet Jesus rebuked them, discerning that their acts were self righteous and did not have God’s righteousness.

They presented themselves as good people with exemplary motives and a desire for holiness, but that was not the truth.

Jesus confronted their self seeking and deceptive hidden agendas.

Matthew 12:34  (NKJV)  

34. Brood of vipers! How can you, being evil, speak good things? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.

We look at people or situations with our physical sight then make a flawed judgment according to what we see.  Our judgment is our opinion and not necessarily an accurate representation of the full understanding of something.  But God’s judgement is always right and in order to have righteous judgement it must come out of a righteous heart.  When we become Christians we are automatically positioned in the righteousness of God. He gives us this as a gift. We can’t earn it.  But in order to speak out of that heart, we have to operate in it. Most of us still have things in the way that keeps our heart from fully opening so that God’s fullness emerges.

As Spirit filled believers, we must operate in discernment.  I looked up discernment and this is what it says. (dis·cern·ment - the ability to judge well. (in Christian contexts) perception in the absence of judgment with a view to obtaining spiritual direction and understanding.   

In the context of discernment, judgement is not wrapped up in emotion or a personal agenda.  It is an objective and self removed view of the matter.

When Jesus confronted the Pharisees, it was about showing them their evil ways so that they would change and run back to God, but they refused and chose to side with Satan.

Challenge:  Our judgements must be a fair assessment of what is going on. We must remember that we will not always have the full picture.  The only way to have a true judgment on something or about someone is when it is God’s judgment through us.

God bless

Marni

Go on to: John 8:7 - He that is Without Sin
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The purpose of this series is to encourage people to live as loving, compassionate, and peacemaking children of God: Jesus tells us to pray, "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." (Matthew 6:10) God tells us through Micah (6:8), "He has told you, O man, what is good; And what does the Lord require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God." And we know from Revelation 21:4 that there will be no more mourning, or crying, or pain, or death. Thus, Christian living requires us to set the standards of these conditions here on earth for our fellow human beings, and for the other animals, as a witness to the rest of the world. To do otherwise is not Christian.