Who Am I to Judge?

Gospel Reflection for February 23, 2025 - Luke 6:27-38

But I say to you that hear: Love your enemies, do good to them that hate you.

Bless them that curse you, and pray for them that calumniate you.

And to him that striketh thee on the one cheek, offer also the other. And him that taketh away from thee thy cloak, forbid not to take thy coat also.

Give to every one that asketh thee, and of him that taketh away thy goods, ask them not again.

And as you would that men should do to you, do you also to them in like manner.

And if you love them that love you, what thanks are to you? for sinners also love those that love them.

And if you do good to them who do good to you, what thanks are to you? for sinners also do this.

And if you lend to them of whom you hope to receive, what thanks are to you? for sinners also lend to sinners, for to receive as much.

But love ye your enemies: do good, and lend, hoping for nothing thereby: and your reward shall be great, and you shall be the sons of the Highest; for he is kind to the unthankful, and to the evil.

Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful.

Judge not, and you shall not be judged. Condemn not, and you shall not be condemned. Forgive, and you shall be forgiven.

Give, and it shall be given to you: good measure and pressed down and shaken together and running over shall they give into your bosom. For with the same measure that you shall mete withal, it shall be measured to you again. (Luke 6:27-38 DRA)

As Our Lord is fond of doing in His teaching ministry, in this Gospel passage He upends our ordinary human expectations, what seems to be common sense to the world. Instead, He asks us to surpass the minimalism of our sinfulness which compels us to do only the least that is required of us to get by, merely avoiding explicit evils while doing little positive good unless it is of some material benefit to us. This is why He amends the Golden Rule which, as C.S. Lewis pointed out, can be found in the noblest thought of every culture: rather than “do not do to others what you would not have them do to you,” which is the way the Rule is most often understood, He said, “as you would that men should do to you, do you also to them in like manner.” This subtle change incorporates the common form, which focuses on justice, but elevates it to the lofty heights of mercy, where goodness is given freely and without expectation of recompense or gratitude, where the good is loved for its own sake and given as a gift of oneself for the good of another.

This is the “justice” which Our Lord said should “abound more than that of the scribes and Pharisees”, (Mt 5:20) one which does not contradict justice but goes beyond it to mercy. Using the methods of rabbinic teaching, He employs hyperbole to emphasize His point – not that His commands are not to be taken literally, but that they are more than simple precepts for imitation. More profoundly, He is teaching us how to love as God loves, to love all people whether they deserve it or not. Again, God never violates His justice: He judges and condemns what is sinful even while withholding reprobation from the sinner until his judgment in the afterlife, and He gives to all creatures what is due to them, according to the natures He bestowed and not out of any debt on His part.

As with Christ’s teaching on the “beam” in our eye and the “mote” in our brother’s later in this Sermon on the Plain, (Lk 6:41-42) many will attempt use this passage to ask, “who am I to judge?” and then leave their brethren in sin while muddling the truth of God’s natural and divine law. Christ is not calling for relativism and indifferentism, for permissiveness of sin which condemns our brothers even without our explicit judgment by allowing them to continue in their rejection of God, but for mercy. This is why He said, “cast out first the beam in thy own eye, and then shalt thou see to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.” Elsewhere He commanded, “Judge not according to the appearance, but judge just judgment.” (Jn 7:24) And St. Paul likewise wrote, “For what have I to do to judge them that are without? Do not you judge them that are within? For them that are without, God will judge. Put away the evil one from among yourselves.” (1 Cor 5:12-13)

We shouldn’t simply confess our own sins and then, out of a false humility, leave our brother in sin – rather, mercy, as St. Thomas Aquinas taught, is the correction of defect through love, and so by allowing the mercy of God to correct our own defects, we are then enabled to correct the defects of others. We are not called to “bless” sin or to excuse it out of a psychologism which reduces free will to emotional drives and inevitable ignorance but, out of mercy, to help everyone grow closer to Christ as we strive to do the same ourselves through God’s grace. Christ is not only teaching against prideful hypocrisy but exhorting us to go beyond worldly standards of reciprocity and self-interest into the pure gratuitous love which motivated God to create the universe out of nothing and to become incarnate for our undeserved salvation. St. John Chrysostom thus taught,

You will not easily find any one, whether a father of a family or an inhabitant of the cloister, free from this error. But these are the wiles of the tempter. For he who severely sifts the fault of others, will never obtain acquittal for his own. Hence it follows, And ye shall not be judged. For as the merciful and meek man dispels the rage of sinners, so the harsh and cruel adds to his own crimes. (Catena Aurea)

But what is the ultimate purpose of the mercy to which Christ calls us today? The answer can be found in the Epistle from St. Paul. The theological virtue of faith is not just an elevated form of ordinary belief or trust, nor is charity just a special degree of beneficence or altruism. Through sanctifying grace received at Baptism, perfected in the Eucharist and restored in Confession, we are born again into Christ with a participation of the divine nature and infused with the virtues of faith, hope and charity which enable us to know as God knows (even if “through a glass in a dark manner” [1 Cor 13:12] in this life) and to love as God loves. Grace enables us to be present to Him who is already present in us even when we are still dead in our sin, to know and love Him who already knows and loves us from eternity. In this way, the image of God which we receive from Adam, in itself only an analogical image, is raised to a true image of the essence of God in the soul through conformity to Christ. We thus become “spiritual,” not merely earthly, or even just immaterial in our intellectual nature, but divinized in the sanctification of the soul. As the Catechism makes clear,

There has to be a vital participation, coming from the depths of the heart, in the holiness and the mercy and the love of our God. Only the Spirit by whom we live can make ‘ours’ the same mind that was in Christ Jesus. (2842)

This is why the saints seem so extraordinary to us and even to non-Christians: their love for those who are unloved by the world, whether because of their sinfulness or their abject condition of life, even for those who directly seek to harm them as with the holy martyrs, is unfathomable to a world accustomed to animalistic pragmatism, legal justice and hedonism as its highest moral standards. The saints are true images of God on Earth, icons of Christ working to consecrate the world to Him. Through the Sacraments and teachings of the Church, we can also become saints, if we are willing to cooperate with God’s grace and love even those who do not deserve our love. So Jesus told St. Catherine of Siena,

I require that you should love Me with the same love with which I love you. This indeed you cannot do, because I loved you without being loved. All the love which you have for Me you owe to Me, so that it is not of grace that you love Me, but because you ought to do so. While I love you of grace, and not because I owe you My love. Therefore to Me, in person, you cannot repay the love which I require of you, and I have placed you in the midst of your fellows, that you may do to them that which you cannot do to Me, that is to say, that you may love your neighbor of free grace, without expecting any return from him, and what you do to him, I count as done to Me.