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‘Therefore judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come.’
1Co_4:5
I. There is a grave danger in the exercise of this faculty, a danger lest we should abuse this power, to set ourselves up as teachers, as if the right of delivering judgment had been committed to us. There is a danger lest we should judge harshly and uncharitably, to the hurt and detriment of others; from imperfect knowledge presuming to condemn the actions and motives of our neighbours: and it is against this sort of abuse that St. Paul warns us. It is not without a cause that this warning is given, for we know what an amount of harm it does in our days; how strongly people resent it, what an amount of unhappiness it causes, how wide of the marks our judgments often are! Very often those who are the most severe judges of their fellow-men are blind to their own faults, ignorant of the fact that what they condemn in others is the very thing of which they are themselves most guilty. They show an astonishing lack of self-knowledge, which would have enabled them to show greater charity and generosity. Those who have the deepest knowledge of themselves are the most humble and pitiful and merciful in their judgment?
II. The best self-knowledge does not enable us to fulfil the functions of the perfect judge.—Our knowledge is only partial and limited when we regard others and their circumstances. Judgment is God’s prerogative—not man’s. ‘Judgment is Mine, I will repay, saith the Lord.’ ‘The Father hath committed all judgment to the Son.’ ‘Therefore judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come.’ It is worth while to notice that those who deal harshly must expect to be dealt harshly with themselves, while the merciful shall be dealt leniently with. Let us be patient with the faults and failings of those round about us; let us remember that we are shielded perhaps by the nature of our work and calling from many temptations which prove too strong for our fellow-men. Let us be not so ready to find fault as some are, and more ready to give praise; and if we have to give blame in the course of our duty, let us do it as kindly as we can, considering ourselves, our many weaknesses, our faults and sins.
III. God hath appointed a day when He will judge the world.—Nothing escapes God’s notice. A day of justice and judgment is drawing near. We forget in our impatience that with God one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slack, as St. Paul reminds us, concerning His promise. It is a needed warning, a reminder that we must have patience. After all, God’s inexhaustible patience and self-restraint are the very strongest proof of His majesty and power, for where there is boundless might, it is there you will find immovable calm and the infinite patience of conscious strength. God’s plans are worked out in some such way as this, with infinite patience, with dignity, and with power.
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Rev. W. A. Norman.
Illustration‘Does this seem to any of us a small matter, this matter of passing judgment upon others? It is not a small matter. There were few things about which Christ Himself spoke so gravely. He said, “Judge not.” He said that those who presume to take upon themselves the responsibility of judgment would themselves be judged most severely. Well would it be for us if we could be cured of a fault which very specially besets the religious mind. There is probably nothing of which we shall hereafter be so thoroughly ashamed as of the premature verdicts that we have allowed ourselves to pass upon others. Would we could abandon the habit! Our own lives would be brightened and the whole atmosphere around us would sweetened. The difference would quickly be felt in the Church, and by the world.’
‘Until the Lord come.’
1Co_4:5
Out of many such beneficial effects I can only attempt to indicate two.
I. We may be certain that the thought of the Coming is meant to act as an incentive.—And I think it is not hard to see how it may become an incentive of a very intelligible and most practical kind. We all of us, I imagine, know the value of setting our minds upon an intermediate goal—upon a something, that is, which has to be reached on the way to the end which we are hoping we may eventually attain. It is not the end, but it is an end. It is one of the many evidences of the Divine care that this method of the intermediate goal has been adopted in the course of man’s spiritual progress. Landmarks have been placed, points to be aimed at, from which, when they have been reached, a fresh start might be made. One of the ablest of Continental theologians has said that the world’s history has been divided into stages answering to the announcements—He is coming, He has come, He is coming again! During long centuries men were required to look no farther than the first coming of Christ; the best hopes of the truest souls were fixed upon that. If only from afar they might see that day, it was enough; they rejoiced and were glad. At last He came, and this goal had been attained. For a while there was a pause, that faithful seekers who had waited and toiled might be allowed to realise the fulfilment of their desire. And then the goal was moved, and set farther on. The Second Coming is for us now what the First had been. It is not the end. It will but introduce a fresh stage—a more marvellous stage of which we can form only the most indistinct ideas. ‘Then cometh the end.’ Happily we need not greatly concern ourselves with all that is to happen in that further future. It is enough that we live and work for the nearer goal. When we reach it we shall find ourselves on a high-standing ground. Then the view will open, and we shall see much more that is beyond. That will be the great examination, when we and our work are to be judged. And then our new tasks will be given as we are fitted for them. ‘Yet a little while, and He that will come shall come.’ ‘Surely, I am coming fast!’ Another turn of the road may take us to the top; the surprise visit of the Great Examiner may be nearer than we think. When we feel tired and care-laden, when the way is steep and the lesson harder than usual, what a difference it might make to remind ourselves that it will not go on so for ever. After all, it is only ‘until the Lord come.’ How much simpler and stronger life would be, how much freer from the sense of bondage to circumstances, how much holier and brighter, if we took that for our watchword for every year and all the year!
II. The thought of our Lord’s coming will not only rouse and strengthen us to do things; it will also keep us from doing things, unnecessary things, and from one thing more especially. Possibly few of us would guess what that one thing is. Let us listen to the Apostle as he describes it. Having spoken of the duty of faithfulness in the discharge of appointed duty, St. Paul goes on to say: ‘But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged of you … and then shall every man have praise of God.’ You see what he means. The thought of the Lord’s coming is to serve not only as an incentive to action, it is to be also a restraint upon criticism. That is certainly a matter about which we have most of us great need to think seriously. It is extraordinary how much time and energy even good people spend in criticising one another, in speculating as to their respective merits and attainments, in trying to determine how this one and that one stands in God’s sight. The tendency is evidently a strong one in our human nature. And regenerate human nature is not free from it. These Christians at Corinth, to whom St. Paul was writing, had been employing a great deal of time and thought in discriminating and adjudicating between the supposed claims and merits of those who had been given them as their teachers. The result was not merely time wasted, but temper lost and unity shattered, the Church enfeebled and its influence almost destroyed. If St. Paul could read the correspondence columns of our newspapers, and could listen to the conversation that passes when religious people meet to-day, would he think that we needed his warning and his remedy less than did those whom he was addressing in his Epistle? And what was His remedy? Simply this—leave it! It is really no business of yours. You had better have done with everything of the kind. We believe that One is coming to be our Judge. Leave it till then, ‘until the Lord come.’
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Rev. Dr. A. W. Robinson.
Illustration‘We know how it is with schoolboys or undergraduates. Speak to them of ultimate success to be achieved in life and they will listen respectfully, but your words are too vague, and they have little effect. But say, “Work as hard as you can for this examination or that prize,” and the case is changed at once. That is a thing upon which it is possible to fix the mind and concentrate effort. So, again, we know how the traveller on the road, or up the mountain, cheers himself along by dividing his labour. He knows that he has a good deal of ground to cover, but he says to himself: “At all events I can get to such and such a point; it will be time enough, when I get there, to think about what is beyond.” So he sets himself to reach that midway point, and bends all his strength to arrive at it. He might have despaired if it had not been that he had that mark within measurable distance to aim at.’