|
To judge or not to judge: The rights and wrongs of biblical discernment
by G.
Richard Fisher
It seems clear, since Jesus Himself said, "Judge not," (Matthew 7:1),
that we cannot "judge." At first glance it appears that Jesus not only forbids
judging others, but that He catches Himself in a glaring
contradiction.
Verse 1 seems obvious, "Judge not," yet in verses 6, 15-16, we are to
judge "swine," "dogs," and the "fruit" of false apostles. How do we reconcile
this apparent contradiction?
Do we judge or not?
Churches have split along lines of those who wish to make judgments and
those who say we cannot. One side accuses the other of being legalistic and
loveless while the other side is called liberal and spineless.
Rooting out the truth on this subject is essential and a thorough search
will reveal that there are different kinds of judgment taught in Scripture. One
form we are commanded to do; the other we are forbidden to do. Both sides could
be right and wrong depending on what they are talking about. One could
not read Matthew 18:16-18 seriously and conclude that we never judge anything.
In 1 Corinthians 5 Paul takes the people of God to task for not judging the
right things the right way.
One of the biggest issues in the Church is how we arrive at truth. We
have churches that think frenzied laughter is a way to worship God, while other
churches conduct services that sound like a barnyard. Our land is dotted with
Word-Faith proponents that see God as the great vending machine in the sky. All
of the groups in this confusing mix say they are preaching the truth and being
led by the Spirit.
It is also obvious that some arrive at truth in the same fashion as the
poem, "Why Are Fire Engines Red?"
They
have four wheels and eight men
four plus eight is twelve
twelve inches
make a ruler
a ruler is Queen Elizabeth
Queen Elizabeth sails the seven
seas
the seven seas have fish
the fish have fins
The Finns hate the
Russians
the Russians are red
Fire engines are always rushin'
So
they're red.
Some groups handle the Bible in much the same way.
Let's consider four major points to help us unravel the question: When to
judge and when not to judge?
The lack of discernment
Discernment is largely missing from the Church, partly for the following
reasons:
A. We have become man-centered and experience-driven. Some think
Christianity has to emulate Disney World to capture and hold larger audiences.
Entertainment becomes more man-centered than God-centered. Postmodernism and
the death of reason permeate not only secular culture but many of our
churches.
B. We have lost the knowledge of proper hermeneutics. Televangelists
make up their own subjective meanings of Scripture as they go along saying
only that they have "revelation knowledge" or "God told them." In that way
they hope to put themselves beyond scrutiny or evaluation.
C. The Church largely accepts the philosophy that truth is relative.
Books are published today that try to stem the tide and argue for moral
absolutes. Fifty years ago that would not have been necessary.
Jay Adams in almost prophetic fashion sounded an alarm 10 years ago that
few listened to. In his book, A Call to Discernment, he noted the
departure from antithetical thinking. For thousands of years, both with the
Hebrew prophets and the Christian Church people believed that there was right
and wrong, black and white.
Adams observes:
"According to continuum thinking, the mode of thinking taught outside the
church (and largely within), every idea is a shade of gray. There is no right
and wrong or true and false, but only shades of right and wrong or true and
false spread along a continuum. The poles of this continuum are extended so far
out toward the wings that for all practical purposes they are unattainable and
therefore worthless. Nothing, then, is wholly right or wrong. All is relative;
most of it is subjective."
Continuing he says:
"That is one reason why biblical preaching, with its sharp antithesis,
rubs many people the wrong way: It is hard for modern minds to accept. For a
long time now educational institutions, newspapers, magazines, radio, TV, etc.
have inculcated continuum thinking. Antithetical thinking is dismissed as
fanatical or worse. Consequently, when Christians (all of whom have been
affected by this environment) hear antithetical views expressed, they sound
discordant. And indeed they are! Because anything goes, discernment is not
placed at a premium" (pg. 30).
Adams points out that the clean-unclean distinctions in the Old Testament
were given by God to create a totally antithetical view of
life.
The
Daily Bread
devotional for Nov. 13, 1995, notes that false teachers worm their way in by
zeroing in on our emotions:
"A false teacher knows what appeals to our desires (2 Pet. 2). He doesn't
wear a lapel pin to warn of his lies, but he comes disguised as a representative
of the truth. He claims he will enrich lives, but those who follow him learn at
a high cost that they have been deceived."
The lack of discernment in the Church today is costing dearly. The Church
is like a tree with every kind of bird (clean, unclean, wild, mild) nesting in
it.
The liberty of discernment
Judge — don't judge — what do we do? Matthew 7:15 is clear that we can
judge the message and fruit of false apostles. However, Jesus is saying in
Matthew 7:1 that we should be careful in nitpicking and judging people's motives
or eternal destiny. Ultimately only God is the judge of those things. We can,
after all, be too hard on people in minor matters.
The mystery clears up when we realize that the word "judge" can be used
in different ways in different contexts. Understanding the context is the key to
interpreting what kind of judging we are speaking
about.
Ralph Walter in his small book, Tortured Texts, notes the
differences:
"Consider first the Greek word Krino, translated judge in
our text. If you look at a concordance of the King James Version, you will find
the word has been translated: conclude, condemn, damn, decree, determine,
esteem, ordain, think and then judge 87 times. Other Greek scholars
say that Krino means to call in question, conclude, decree, esteem,
determine, think and sentence. From all of this I think it would be safe to
say that the word our Lord used means to condemn or to pass judgment upon
someone maliciously; while the context shows that we have the responsibility to
properly evaluate a thing or an act" (pp. 28-30).
An illustration might be a house in poor maintenance. We can see the
paint peeling and the broken windows but would we condemn the owner as lazy?
Suppose that the owner was an invalid or just too poor to have it fixed? We must
be careful about judging without facts or beyond the obvious. Such judgments are
condemnations and these are what Jesus condemned in Matthew 7:1. The Pharisees
were notorious for judging based on silly rules and traditions and not the
Scriptures.
Peter, Paul and John did a lot of judging the right way. Every second
epistle is a judgment on apostasy. In 2 Timothy 4:10, Paul judges and warns
about a man named Demas. In the same epistle (2:17) he warns of the heresies of
two others by name. Paul did a lot of judging and evaluating when it came to
false teachers. We are mandated to judge false doctrine.
Jesus in John 7:24 says: "Do not judge according to appearance, but judge
righteous judgment." Jesus is saying "judge without maliciousness and by all
means have the facts." To find a balance between legalism and mysticism we must
judge righteous judgment.
First Corinthians 6:3-5 demands that we judge certain matters. We can
judge the overt and gross sins mentioned later in verse 9. However our judgment
must always be tempered with a desire to restore, not punish. The goal is
restoration.
On a larger note, we can judge qualifications for ministry. We are given
in 1 Timothy 3:1-7 a number of qualifications for eldership. Qualifications are
external and we can judge certain externals. Is an elder hospitable, a good
teacher, the husband of one wife and so on? Negatively, is he argumentative, or
does he have a bad reputation or is he easily angered? These things are easy to
see and evaluate.
We can judge qualifications, however we cannot judge qualities. Qualities
are internal motivations known only by God Himself.
In John 21:16-17, Jesus said, "Peter, feed my sheep." The feeding of
sheep has to do with external qualifications. We can evaluate a man's sermons,
appraise if he has studied and researched. Lack of preparation will become
obvious in time. Poor doctrine or overtly false doctrine is
obvious.
But Jesus also said in John 21:15-17, "Peter, do you love me?" This has
to do with qualities and internal motivation. Does a man feed the sheep for
power? For prestige? For money? Only God knows the motivation. Or is he doing it
out of love for Christ? Again, only God knows. If the person is living an
ostentatious and lavish lifestyle, those externals all say something and may be
an obvious outworking of the inner motivation.
The book of Titus deals with external qualifications for ministry while 1
Timothy 4:16 tells the pastor to judge himself, to take heed to himself, that
is, be aware of his inner motivation, his inner
qualities.
It does help us to see and understand the difference between the unseen
inner qualities and motivations and the external qualifications which can be
judged.
Krino, as pointed out by Campbell Morgan, changes according to the context.
Sometimes you judge, sometimes you do not. We must not be censorious but we
cannot give up our right to a careful discrimination when that is required. As
Morgan puts it: "The first five verses forbid censoriousness; and the sixth
verse insists upon a careful discrimination" (The Gospel According to
Matthew, pg. 71).
So it is always right to judge false teachers and false teaching using
the Word of God as the standard. Nitpicking is one thing. Removing rotten fruit
is another. We must be discerning in our discernment and always proceed on the
basis of truth and facts leaving the unknown areas of motivation to God.
The labor of discernment
It seems that people have forgotten the word "discernment" and forgotten
that encouragements to do the same are found in the Bible (see Young's
Analytical Concordance to The Bible, pg. 257). There are two main Greek
words translated as "discernment." One is anakrino, meaning to examine or
judge closely; the other diakrino, to separate out, to investigate, to
examine.
This is work. We must put in the work of discernment. We must study to
show ourselves approved workmen (2 Timothy 3:16).
D.A. Carson rightly observes:
"We will not go far astray if we approach the Bible with a humble mind
and then resolve to focus on central truths. Gradually we will build up our
exegetical skills by evenhanded study and a reverent prayerful determination to
become like the workman 'who correctly handles the word of truth'"
(Exegetical Fallacies, pg. 144).
We must know the rules. We must dust off the hermeneutics textbooks. We
must insist on one of the basic rules and that is the rule of context.
The following quotes from Edwin Hartill's Principles of Biblical
Hermeneutics show us the extreme importance of the context
rule:
"Torrey — 'Too much importance cannot be laid upon a close study of the
context.'"
"Todd — 'Consideration of the context in examining any verse or passage
is of utmost importance. Failure to do this is one of the causes of
misinterpretation of scripture.'"
"Moyer — 'Too many preachers prepare a message and then hunt a text to
fit it. That is not a text, it is a pretext.'"
"Lockhart — 'The context is the key to the meaning.'" (pg.
80).
Hartill himself says:
"The Bible can be made to prove anything, but NOT when studied in the
light of the context" (ibid., pg. 79).
In his classic, Biblical Hermeneutics, M.S. Terry
insists:
"Many a passage of Scripture will not be understood at all without the
help afforded by the context; for many a sentence derives all its point and
force from the connexion [sic] in which it stands" (pg. 219).
Benny Hinn can stand up in front of a national audience via television
and tell them that the Egyptians were not drowned in the Red Sea but rather were
crushed by falling ice (Praise The Lord Show 7/14/94). Flying by the seat
of his pants he ignores the context of Exodus 14 that talks of the waters coming
back over the Egyptians (verse 26) and the waters covering the chariots (verse
28). His followers "ooh" and "aah" over this "new
truth."
By ripping verses out of context, the Word-Faith teachers have created a
"Daddy Warbucks" God who is false. All cults trick their followers by wresting
verses from their context. In doing so, they twist the Scriptures to their own
destruction (2 Peter 3:16).
Another rule is Contextual Proximity, which broadens the context rule.
Thomas Schmidt writes:
"The further distant from the immediate context we travel in search of
meaning, the more variables enter in and the more complicated the process
becomes. For example, an Old Testament book might illuminate Paul's meaning,
even though it is written in another language and hundreds of years earlier,
because we can be confident that Paul knew it and considered it authoritative.
On the other hand, a moral philosopher writing in Greek near the time of Paul
might use similar words in entirely different ways" (Straight and Narrow,
pg. 70).
It is also important that we try to understand the biblical world.
Background studies in Edershiems' works are helpful in this. How were the words
being used and understood by the people in their world and in their culture?
In Dr. Edwin W. Rice's book, Orientalisms in Bible Lands he lays
out the disparities in Eastern and Western mind sets:
"For Western people reverse, upset, and completely turn around the
customs and habits of Oriental nations. How different must be the thought and
expression of the East, growing necessarily out of these opposite ways of life
and manners. ... No study of the Bible, therefore, can be satisfactory that does
not include some knowledge of life and thought in the East" (pp. 11-12).
A good exegesis will interpret the text and draw out the meaning. Knowing
the rules aids us in being good exegetes.
Those that handle the Word of God need to know something about metaphors
and similes. They need to be acquainted with Hebrew poetry and parallelisms.
Good hermeneutics may be hard work but is an absolute must for anyone who wants
to handle the Scriptures with integrity.
Living in discernment
Paul spoke of having transformed minds (Romans 12:1). We can best read
and understand Scripture when our minds are in the right place and we are in
tune with the Savior. Living in discernment is more than just knowing the rules
as important as that is. However without the last two considerations we can
become, arrogant, and harsh, with a know-it-all attitude. Peter tells us (1
Peter 3:15) that we are to defend our faith with meekness and fear. This
indicates a humble attitude in reliance on God. Earlier in that same verse Peter
says, "Sanctify the Lord God in your hearts." Two things make that
possible:
A. Love the Savior. Walk with Christ, commune often with Christ, obey
Him, keep your eyes on Him (Hebrews 12:1-2). Fellowship with the author of the
Book is vital.
B. Live with the end in view. Holding eternity as a present reality gives
us God's perspective of life and the Scriptures.
Proper discernment is our privilege and right. The work is worth the
effort and the reward will be not only the favor and blessing of God but our
ability to truly enrich the lives of others.
© 1996 - PFO. All rights reserved by
Personal Freedom Outreach. This article may not be stored on BBS or Internet
sites without permission. Reproduction is prohibited, except for portions
intended for personal use and non-commercial purposes. For reproduction
permission contact: Personal Freedom Outreach, P.O. Box 26062, Saint Louis,
Missouri 63136.
 
|
