The couple who became famous from HGTV’s popular Fixer Upper show, Chip and Joanna Gaines, made headlines recently because they are professing Christians, and yet they platformed two men in a gay “marriage” on their new show. Reportedly, in response to the outcry from Christians, the couple claimed, “Doesn’t the Bible say ‘judge not’; who are you to tell people what they can, and cannot do?” Well, the Bible tells us what we can and can’t do as Christians!
There are few verses in Scripture that are mishandled as much as Matthew 7:1, “Judge not, that you be not judged.” Whenever someone quotes that verse, as apparently the Gaineses did, to justify embracing or turning a blind eye to sin, they are completely ignoring the context.
Here’s a larger part of the passage, “Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. 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? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye. Do not give dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you” (Matthew 7:1–6).
Clearly, within context, Jesus is not saying never to make judgments—that’s impossible anyway. The Gaineses couldn’t even do it. In saying, “Who are you to tell people what they can, and cannot do?” they are judging the person they are claiming is being judgmental!
Rather, Jesus is telling his followers not to make judgments in a hypocritical, condemning manner that ignores a glaring sin in one’s own life while obsessing over the smaller sin in another person’s life. We’re to soberly consider ourselves first and deal with our own sin, and then we can see clearly to help our brother with his sin.
We can and should make moral judgments . . . but we can only do so consistently when we start with the authority of God’s Word. When we start with Scripture—judging with a righteous judgment as God commands in John 7:24—we are using an objective standard that God, our Creator, has given us. Our judgments aren’t based on our own opinion, our feelings, or our culture. Rather, they are based in God’s revealed Word. Only then can we know that our judgment is “righteous.”
This kind of misinterpretation of Scripture because of a lack of belief in the authority of Scripture (often coupled with biblical illiteracy!) is sadly very common, not just among professing Christian celebrities, but within churches, Christian colleges and universities, and even seminaries. It’s tragic, and we see the fruit as more and more Christians abandon the truth of God’s Word for the wisdom of our age. As I’ve always said, once you abandon the truth and authority of God’s Word beginning in Genesis, more compromise follows. And that’s exactly what we see in so many of these stories of compromising Christians.
