Luke 6:41-42 And why behold you the mote that is in your brother's eye, but perceive not the beam that is in your own eye?… If it was out of place to set up as the censurer of your brother's mote when your own faults were to his as a plank to a splinter, it is surely still more out of place to set yourself up for his correcter. The comparison sounds extravagant; since, though minute fragments from a twig may get into the eye and need to be taken out, to speak of a great beam of timber in the same connection is absurd. The extravagance of the phrase, however, did not hinder its being a usual and accepted one in oriental speech; and as such our Lord borrowed it to point His moral. What that moral is, is plain enough. In the first place, it is in a preposterous degree unbecoming to be so quick to see, much more to propose to mend, small faults in another when one's own are so very great. It is, as we say, like "Satan reproving sin." Besides, it is not only a grotesque betrayal of self-ignorance, but a presumptuous over-estimate of one's own ability. To mend a brother's fault, one has need of a most clear and undistorted spiritual vision, an eye of the soul quite single and limpid, No task asks cleaner motives, a truer insight, or more of that perfect fairness which can only spring from love, than this task of a reformer of manners. But there is more to be said than this. The interference of such blind guides and ignorant teachers is worse than a blunder. It is an hypocrisy. You profess to be so deeply concerned for the faults of your neigh-hour, that you would fain do him a service by ridding him of them: you are ardent in the interest of his reformation, a self-constituted preacher of righteousness. That looks well. But if it were really concern for the correction of evil and the cure of souls which inspired this officious zeal of yours, would it not show itself first of all in the reformation of yourself? A very little honest desire to have God's kingdom come and His will done would suffice to reveal to yourself how much more shameful and painful your own moral disorders are than any. you propose to remedy; and in the hard task of casting out your own huge sins of heart, you would find work enough to keep your hands full. The tu quoque rejoinder, "Physician, heal thyself," is in its place here. "First cast out the beam." This very officiousness in well-doing, this arrogant setting up as a correcter of morals, this immodest and loveless meddling with your neighbours — what is it but a sign how pride has made you stone-blind, and a proof that it is not the sympathy of a penitent which inspires you, but the conceit of a fault-finder? (J. O. Dykes, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but perceivest not the beam that is in thine own eye? |
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