"Jesus Christ is Not a Standard by which I Can Judge Others."

If you appreciate the work, consider becoming a paid subscriber!

My friend and mentor Stanley Hauerwas says:

“The church does not have a politics, the church is a politics.”

Nowhere is Stanley’s distinction more clear than in Christ’s Sermon on the Mount wherein Jesus speaks to the entire crowds who have gathered at the Mount of Beatitudes but he addresses only those who have drawn near to him as his disciples.

The Sermon on the Mount, in other words, is not a general ethic.

The Sermon on the Mount is, rather, a description of the particular community called to discipleship.

As the liturgical calendar approaches All Saints, the civic calendar lurches towards Election Day. In light of both, I’ve been revisiting some of the “political” writings from the communion of saints. We live in contested times and I certainly do not fault any of you for having convictions about matters that matter; I hold my own. Nevertheless, the only unique time— as Barth would say— is the time of Jesus Christ.

I offer these passages, therefore, in recognition of the one fact that all believers can share: Red or Blue, we are first and finally brothers and sisters by baptism.

(Check the main page for the other installments)

Here is a passage from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, martyred on direct orders of Adolf Hitler as World War II neared its end. It is always remarkable to read Bonhoeffer’s work, remembering that he was waist-deep in the dangers posed to him by fascism. Bonhoeffer never allowed for the exigency of the moment to obscure the command laid upon him by Christ. For example, here he nevertheless cautions believers against doing what many Christians in America do today with righteous abandon, judge their neighbors.

This is from his book which I am convinced is as little-read as it is famous, Discipleship:

“DO NOT JUDGE, so that you may not be judged.”

Disciples live completely out of the bond connecting them with Jesus Christ. Their righteousness depends only on that bond and never apart from it. Therefore, it can never become a standard which the disciples would own and might use in any way they please.

What makes them disciples is not a new standard for their lives, but Jesus Christ alone, the mediator and Son of God himself.

The disciples’ own righteousness is thus hidden from them in their communion with Jesus. They can no longer see, observe, and judge themselves; they only see Jesus and are seen, judged, and justified by grace by Jesus alone. No measuring standard for a righteous life stands between the disciples and other people; but once again, only Jesus Christ himself stands in their midst.

The disciples view other people only as those to whom Jesus comes.

They encounter other people only because they approach them together with Jesus.

Jesus goes ahead of them to other people, and the disciples follow him. Thus an encounter between a disciple and another person is never just a freely chosen encounter between two people, confronting each other’s views, standards, and judgments immediately. Disciples can encounter other people only as those to whom Jesus himself comes. Jesus’ struggle for the other person, his call, his love, his grace, his judgment are all that matters. Thus the disciples do not stand in a position from which the other person is attacked.

Instead—

In the truthfulness of Jesus’ love they approach the other person with an unconditional offer of community.

When we judge, we encounter other people from the distance of observation and reflection. But love does not allot time and space to do that. For those who love, other people can never become an object for spectators to observe. Instead, they are always a living claim on my love and my service.

But doesn’t the evil in other people necessarily force me to pass judgment on them, just for their own sake and because of our love for them?

We recognize how sharply the boundary is drawn.

Love for a sinner, if misunderstood, is frightfully close to love for the sin. But Christ’s love for the sinner is itself the condemnation of sin; it is the sharpest expression of hatred against sin. It is that unconditional love, in which Jesus’ disciples should live in following him, that achieves what their own disunited love, offered according to their own discretion and conditions, could never achieve, namely, the radical condemnation of evil.

If the disciples judge, then they are erecting standards to measure good and evil. But Jesus Christ is not a standard by which I can measure others. It is he who judges me and reveals what according to my own judgment is good to be thoroughly evil. This prohibits me from applying a standard to others which is not valid for me.

When I judge, deciding what is good or evil, I affirm the evil in other persons, because they, too, judge according to good and evil. But they do not know that what they consider good is evil. Instead, they justify themselves in it. If I judge their evil, that will affirm their good, which is never the goodness of Jesus Christ. They are withdrawn from Christ’s judgment and subjected to human judgment. But I myself invoke God’s judgment on myself, because I am no longer living out of the grace of Jesus Christ, but out of a knowledge of good and evil. I become subject to that judgment which I think valid. For all persons, God is a person’s God in the way the person believes God to be. Judging others makes us blind, but love gives us sight.

When I judge, I am blind to my own evil and to the grace granted the other person.

All judging presupposes the most dangerous self-deception, namely, that the word of God applies differently to me than it does to my neighbor.

I claim an exceptional right in that I say: forgiveness applies to me, but condemnation applies to the other person. Judgment as arrogation of false justice about one’s neighbor is totally forbidden to the disciples. They did not receive special rights for themselves from Jesus, which they ought to claim before others. All they receive is communion with him.

Leave a comment

Share

Give a gift subscription

Get more from Jason Micheli in the Substack appAvailable for iOS and AndroidGet the app