Jason Hensley On Giving Grace: Removing A Judgmental Attitude From Our Lives
A lot of my books have been expositional or historical, but “Giving Grace” is very application-oriented and it originated from my own life, my own experiences. Specifically, last summer I found that I was angry a lot. You know how it goes: you get mad, then you feel bad, and you apologize. And I said to my wife the next day, “I recognize, I shouldn’t have got so upset over something that was silly, so I am committed today to just not get mad at all” but that only lasted two hours! I realized, “wow, this is not okay, that I'm getting frustrated so often.” I started looking in the Bible for answers, but what exactly was I looking for? Should I be looking at love, at patience, at anger? But I ended up stumbling on the concept of judgment, which turned out to be very helpful.
Psalms are sometimes referred to as “imprecatory psalms” when a curse is called on someone. There's quite a few of them. Psalm 58 is a well-known one, where David prays that his enemies will melt like snails. They're really intense psalms. The psalmist says things like “let this terrible thing happen to my enemy.” The power of the Holy Spirit makes it so David could curse in these imprecatory psalms. Jesus could look into the hearts and utter judgments, but we just can't do that. Recognizing that we don't have these holy spirit abilities prevents us from judging, but still, we try and so often we’re wrong.
When Jesus says “judge not that you be not judged” he's specifically talking about character judgments. I look at this idea of judging and it's specifically in relation to condemning your brother in a character judgment. We definitely judge actions. We need to tell somebody that doing something is wrong, but a lot of times we go from judging the action to attributing motives to people that they might not actually have. It ends up becoming a miscommunication, both people get frustrated, and it escalates.
Jesus teaches that “if the blind lead the blind, both will fall into the ditch.” The context of Matthew 15:14 indicates the parable is addressing the hypocrisy of the pharisees, but the corrective measure is found in Luke’s account: “first take the beam out of your eye.” A lot of times in scripture (not all the time), wood is connected to idols. It made me wonder, is Jesus saying the Pharisees had been blinded by idolatry? No, that doesn't make sense, because they didn't worship idols. But I started to realize Jesus is talking about judgment. In Romans 14:4, Paul says, “who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls.” I'm not the master, so I can't make that judgment without putting myself in a place that's not actually mine. Jesus tells the story of an exaggeratedly large stick in the pharisees’ eye to show just how serious judgment and legalism is, and that we often don't even realize it is there.
People who are familiar with Jude or 2 Peter 2 might assume “well, these chapters are talking about liberal people who want to live in lasciviousness.” At the same time Jesus is talking about not judging in Matthew 7, and just a few verses below that says, “don't cast that which is holy to the dogs or your pearls before swine,” which connects back to 2 Peter 2:22 with both dogs and swine. Suddenly it struck me that this is talking about the same group of people. The issue is with people who live legalistically. They are Pharisees and they're idolaters and God condemns them. I could imagine people reading the book and thinking, “well there you go. Take that conservatives!” You almost expect condemnation of people that lay claim to their traditions, but then you find the exact opposite: the people that cling to their traditions struggle with the same problem as the people who don't. A lot of times within our community, the term “legalist” or “Pharisee” is thrown around specifically at those who are considered more conservative, but actually both groups struggle with legalism. Often we find ourselves judging based off of these labels (“liberal” and “conservative”) without realizing it. I wanted to address this because it seems like accusations are often being flung back and forth based on these judgments.
Matthew 7 is really focused on judging. Jesus talks about the straight path, and we might envision walking on a path between these two groups. When we identify with either group, it means we've gotten off the path, and that's not good. Jesus says, I'm defining my disciples as those who are on the path and those who are on the path don't judge. It really is a judgment on ourselves if we've decided to get off the path. We look at people and say, “well, they're this kind of person” or “they always do this,” and then we get angry. But when you've gotten rid of judgment, you're less angry about things. It's such a different way of looking at life. Instead of getting angry, you're looking for solutions and trying to be helpful. It’s very important for discipleship.
To listen to the full interview with Jason and Levi please check out A Little Faith podcasts.
You can find the book on Amazon