A Church That Doesn’t JudgeSýnishorn

In these last two days we’d like to take a thorough look at what it means when we apply the principle of not judging in the church. The principle of not judging comes from the understanding that we all have sinned and need Jesus. Romans 3 is quite clear about that, you know. “None are righteous, not even one”. And more of such texts. There is no reason to exalt yourself above others or above the congregation. No one is more or less sinful. We often think, don’t we, that there are little and big sins? We also see an interesting psychological principle appear (Yeah, I know, sorry. I have a background in psychology.): we judge ourselves by our intentions, and others by their behaviour.

In verse 22 we see that there is no difference. We have all sinned and all miss out on the glory of God. And all of us are made righteous by salvation in Jesus Christ. Differentiation just so happens to be the basis of judgements. When we judge, we differentiate. We place ourselves above or below another by virtue of a list of traits. We see ourselves as better or worse than others on the basis of our own measure.

The Bible makes quick work of that: there is no difference between slave and master, man and woman, or Jew and Greek (Galatians 3:28). At the time, that was a truly revolutionary message! And perhaps it still is. If you were to place it in the present, it would look something like: ‘The manager is no more than the employee, the pastor no more than the member, the man no more than the woman, and the European no more than the African.’

Even when we outline these words, and many people do, we see that equity is not often put into practice. That is due to our continual need to judge and rank -- our need to know where we are compared to the rest. Equity is the understanding that every human is a unique, beloved child of God and that with Him there is no differentiation. In fact, He loves to heal the broken and have them testify, “He chose the foolish of the world to shame the wise.” (1 Corinthians 1:27)

If we want to apply this within our church, we need a good way of seeing and handling processes. If you’re aware of everyone’s individuality and how God wants to use that, you’ll have less strictly defined tasks and jobs, and far more emphasis on finding tasks to match the gifts and talents of the people within the church. When you apply equity, every voice in the congregation becomes important and no one is too small or too inexperienced (by our measure) to chip in. If you value equity, you will also have an eye for the needs of the leaders because you know that they sometimes need comfort and an ear just like everyone else.