Day 18. A Self-Righteous Spirit
Back to Daily Bible Readings in the Life of Christ
"How can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when all the time there is a plank in your own eye?" Matthew 7:4
But is it not a kindness to a friend to take the speck out of his eye? If we met a neighbour with a speck in his eye, would it not be a brotherly thing to stop and take it out for him? Then why is it not just as true a kindness to want to cure another's fault — even though we have the same fault ourselves? If we did it in the right spirit — it would be. We are bound to seek the welfare of our friends in every possible way, and therefore, if we discover in them things which mar their beauty — we should seek the removal of those things.
But the trouble is, that we are not apt to look at our neighbour's faults in this loving and sympathetic way. To begin with, we do not know, or at least we do not confess — that we ourselves have planks in our own eyes; we are not even aware that there are specks in our own eyes! It is the self-righteous spirit that our Lord is here condemning. A man holds up his hands in horror at the blemish he has found in his neighbour's character; and his neighbour, looking up, sees in him an immensely magnified copy of the blemish! Will the neighbour be greatly benefited by the rebuke?
Suppose a bad-tempered man lectures us on the sin of giving way to bad temper; or a dishonest man on some apparent lack of honesty; or a liar on the wickedness of falsehood; or a bad-mannered man on some discourtesy of ours; or a hypocrite on insincerity — what good will such lectures do, even admitting that we are conscious of the faults? We are onlyirritated by the unfitness of such rebukes — from those in whom the faults are ten times greater than in us! We wonder how people can have the face to talk about the specks in our eyes — when huge planks project from their own eyes. Truly this is not the way to tell others of their faults.
Back to Daily Bible Readings in the Life of Christ