What is Your Standard?
“But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged of you, or of man’s judgment: yea, I judge not mine own self. For I know nothing by myself; yet am I not hereby justified: but he that judgeth me is the Lord.” 1 Corinthians 4:3-4
What is possibly the most quoted verse in the Bible by non-christians? In my opinion it has to be Matthew 7:1 which says, “Judge not that ye be not judged.”
Why is this? Because it is misinterpreted. It is misused. We as people tend to make things out to be what we want in order to justify ourselves. We are quick to point our fingers at each other and judging each other. We constantly compare ourselves to another person to justify our goodness.
Jesus is not telling us that we will not be judged if we don’t judge others. He is saying that we should be careful in how we judge others because we will in turn be judged the same way. We often leave off verse 2 of chapter 7 which says, “For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.”
Back to 1 Corinthians. What is Paul saying? Paul is looking at it from the other side. Jesus was talking to the person doing the judging in Matthew. Paul is talking to ones being judged in 1 Corinthians. He is saying that we should not worry about how others judge us. We should be concerned with how God judges us. We shouldn’t even trust how we judge ourselves. Paul says, “What do I know? Nothing.”
Look it like this. If I take a test in calculus, do I want someone who has never seen a calculus book grading the test? Nope. Especially if my test grade determines if I pass the class or not. Why? Because they are ignorant in calculus. Ignorant grading ignorant. Blind leading blind. What do they know about calculus? Nothing. So it doesn’t make any sense for me to trust them to “judge” my test.
Then on top of everything I just mentioned, the test grader has no authority to grade me. No matter what they say, the person is not a teacher. The school will pay no attention to what the person says. Why would I care what they say about my test? But this is how we live our lives daily. We point our fingers at each other to make ourselves feel great. We then turn around and worry what the public thinks of us rather than what God thinks of us.
We ignore the very one that holds our eternal future in His hands. We think He doesn’t matter. We ignore Him. The only One who can save us from hell, we want to ignore. But yet the ones that are temporary, we obsess over. Our thought process is backwards.
Paul is reminding us that no matter what others say about us or judge us, it doesn’t matter. God matters. He is our standard.