Short Answer
The Bible does not forbid all judgment—it forbids wrong judgment. Believers are called to make righteous, discerning judgments while avoiding hypocrisy, pride, and unfair condemnation. The key is how and where judgment is applied.
The Overview
At first glance, passages like “do not judge” (James 4) and instructions to judge (1 Corinthians 5) may seem contradictory. However, they address different kinds of judgment. The Bible consistently teaches that judgment itself is not wrong—what matters is whether it is done rightly, within the boundaries God has set.
Righteous judgment involves discernment—making decisions based on truth, not appearances or personal bias. Believers are expected to evaluate behavior, especially within the church, and address clear sin. For example, Scripture instructs Christians to confront and even discipline unrepentant sin among believers. This is not optional but part of maintaining spiritual integrity.
On the other hand, the Bible strongly warns against sinful judgment. This includes hypocrisy (judging others while ignoring your own sin), superficial judgment (based on appearance or preference), and prideful condemnation. Jesus’ teaching about the “log and speck” illustrates that judgment must begin with self-examination before addressing others.
Another important distinction is authority. Some forms of judgment belong only to God—such as ultimate condemnation or personal vengeance. Believers are not called to punish people but to make wise distinctions and pursue restoration. Even church discipline is not about revenge, but about correction, repentance, and ultimately bringing someone back into a right relationship with God.
Key Takeaways
- Judgment Is Not Forbidden—Wrong Judgment Is
The Bible commands righteous judgment. - Discernment Is Necessary
Believers must evaluate actions, especially within the church. - Avoid Hypocrisy and Pride
Judge yourself first before correcting others. - Know Your Limits
Vengeance and final judgment belong to God alone. - The Goal Is Restoration, Not Punishment
Biblical judgment aims to bring people back to God.
The Source — The Speaker Transcript
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Hi, Pastor Mike. Thanks for taking my call and we’re praying for you and your ministry. >> Thank you. >> My question has to do with um judging and I’m trying to figure out the nuances between 1 Corinthians 5 9-13 and James 4 11-12 where it says don’t judge and do judge. And there’s got to be a way to reconcile that. But I don’t see where that is. >> Yeah. Well, here’s the thing about judgment all the way back to Jesus’s words. The way you judge is the way
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you’re going to be judged. Which is a lot like the old adage of if you want to start de throwing swords around as he tells Peter, you know, you want to live by the sword, you want to kill everybody you don’t like, right? You’re going to die by the sword. And the idea of judgment in the Bible is always one of be very careful how you do it. Even as it says in scripture, you’re supposed to judge with righteous judgment. And judging with righteous judgment means that you’ve going to you’re going to
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expect that there’s going to be a lot of warnings in the Bible. And of course, there are. And because of that, a lot of people think, well, the warnings, that’s all they read. They don’t read the fact that we’re supposed to judge righteously. And because we are called to judge righteously, uh just like we’re going to go to the the fruit section of the of the supermarket and make judgments. Let me put it this way. If you take the word uh kro which is the word to judge in the New Testament and
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just take the New Testament alone and you look up every time the word is employed half the times judgment is used it’s used in a positive sense like you should judge you need to judge and and then the other half they’re going to be warnings and and the way that the warnings are worded like do not judge lest you be judged isn’t of course that you should never judge because there’s so many passages half of them that talk about judgment say you should judge but You should judge righteously. Shouldn’t
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judge based on appearances. You shouldn’t judge based on preferences. Even in the Old Testament, you shouldn’t judge giving the advantage to the person that seems in the world disadvantage. You’re not supposed to show partiality to the poor. You’re not supposed to part show partiality to those that seem to be downtrodden. You’ve got to have justice like our statues say on the courtyards all over uh the country of a of a blind lady with scales. who shouldn’t matter who’s in front of you, you ought to
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judge righteously. And so, there are certain things that we can’t judge because they’re God’s domain. Right? When it comes to someone who has wronged me, the Bible says you’ve got two courses, two recourses. And the the one recourse is going to the government. And the government is going to uh be able to exact according to Romans 13, judgment on behalf of those who are wronged. They’re they’re there with the sword to punish wrongdoers. and uh God uh but I can’t take my own judgment. I remember
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getting my stereo stolen when I was in high school out of my VW bug and I could go track the guy down and steal his stereo. I I couldn’t take revenge, but I could report it and I could have some kind of justice meat it out to them. But in terms of judging, right, I’m supposed to judge even as in First Corinthians it talks about the kinds of things that they’re tolerating in the church and even there there’s warnings, right? He says, “Who am I to judge those outside of the church? I got to judge those
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within the church.” Right? God judges those outside the church. It’s the same for personal vendettas. I can’t judge just because someone hurt my feelings. I I’m supposed to judge with a righteous judgment. Is this my jurisdiction? Which is a great word, jurist, right? Is it can I make this decision? Diction. Is it my right? Is it my is it within my um latitude? Does God give me this arena to judge? And and I think about the Bible saying we’re supposed to judge our own bodies, right? He he says as he talks
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about the Lord’s supper in first Corinthians, he said, “You wouldn’t have to be judged by God if you would judge yourself.” So there’s all kinds of arenas where I’m supposed to judge. And the judgment simply means kro means I’m making a decision. Matter of fact, this is helpful to know the Greek language in the New Testament because even the word oppo is the compound word that we translate to answer. I mean, that’s the word you learn right out in first year Greek because it’s common all over the
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Bible to to answer someone is to give them an opprino. And that is to give my judgment on what you’ve said. I’m giving you a response. And and every time we make responses, we’re making judgments in response to whatever was asked. And judgment as a concept is going on all the time. It’s it’s being discriminating. And we would say there there’s a good word. Do you want to be a discriminating person, Lorraine? and and you would say, “Well, it depends on what you’re talking about, right? I don’t
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want to discriminate by simply looking at someone and prejudging them based on what they wear or what they look like or their hairstyle. I don’t want to do that. That would not be right. The Bible says we’re not supposed to discriminate like that.” But if I said, “Do you want to be discriminating about what you let your kids watch or what you eat or or or where you send your kids to go play?” Yeah, of course. We have to discriminate. We discriminate all the time and we should. But you’ve got to
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know the boundaries of discrimination. I should make judgment, right? Only as the Bible would allow me to. And the Bible has a lot to say about be careful because once we start judging, we get really good at it. And we like throwing aspersions at people. But you know what? You got to be careful because we start being very pnicity about judging other people and very lax about judging ourselves. That’s what Romans 2 is all about. The Jews were great at at casting aspersions at the Gentiles, but they
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wouldn’t even judge themselves. at least in that passage as it related to things they were telling other people to do. So judgment is something that’s so easy to get out of control when we’re trying to judge everybody else. We don’t judge ourselves or we don’t judge things that we should judge. And that’s why the Bible’s always saying, “Don’t judge by mere appearances. Judge with righteous judgment.” These are the kinds of things that we need to read the Bible with with
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clear um eyes and with an open sense of everything the Bible says about a topic. Once we start proof texting, as our non-Christian friends always tell us, right? Don’t judge me because the Bible says, “Don’t judge.” Well, it does say, “Don’t judge lest you be judged.” But then it goes on to give the illustration, if you got a a a speck in your brother’s eye, but you got a log hanging out of your own eye, well, then that makes no sense. Then you’re a big hypocrite. Don’t judge. But then Jesus
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goes on in the illustration to say, once you get that log out of your own eye, then you can see clearly to take the speck out of your brothers. Well, that means I’m still going to judge, but [snorts] I got to judge with righteous judgment. I got to judge without any hypo hypocrisy. I’ve got to judge not just based on what someone looks like. I need to judge on righteous standards and even know when I’m not allowed to judge. I can’t judge uh if if I’m just offended, as I said, I’ve got to be able
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uh to know what my boundaries of judgment are. and judgment is not. >> So, does that apply to the 4 11 to 12 section where it says don’t judge or you’re judging the law? Because if I’m trying to restore somebody, then I’m not being hypocritical. I I don’t know. That’s what I’m trying to wrestle with. The rest of what you’re saying makes sense. I’m just how do I make sure that I’m avoiding judging the law? >> Right. When you’re judging the law, what
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James is concerned about is the kind of judgment. Even look earlier in the book, he talks about don’t give the guy with the ring the front seat in the church and tell the poor guy to sit in the back, right? You’re you’re you’re making distinctions that are not pleasing to God. So even when we start talking about what it means to judge in a righteous way, right? You’ve got to know that judgment, as I said, is so easy to have it get out of control. And James is obviously trying to get people to stop
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using the the kinds of discrimination that they were using on people that goes far beyond what God allows us to do. And in that sense, right, we’re breaking the law by trying to uh harshly judge people or cast dispersions or put them in a bucket or say you don’t belong here. That that’s just not that’s not righteous judgment. So I have to take all of what the Bible says about judgment. And of course, James’s audience, he’s the halfb brotherther of of Christ. They knew what Jesus taught.
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And Jesus taught very clearly that there’s a judgment that’s wrong. It’s hypocritical. It’s based on appearances. It’s it’s by slight provocation. It’s it’s straining out the gnat while swallowing the camel. There’s a kind of judgment that people have. I know people like this. They’re very pnicity. They’re very uh judgmental when we use that phrase. And that means they love to judge every little thing about everybody. And yet I could turn that around and this is what Jesus’s concern
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is. And I could judge you with that kind of scrutiny. And if I did, you couldn’t survive it either. And in that sense, think about this. We have to have a kind of realistic approach to people knowing that none of us are righteous, right? None of us are perfect. None of us can be held to a perfect standard because if we do, then we start getting into the realm of absolutes. And when when God says to the rich young ruler, right, the God man Jesus Christ, there’s none good but God alone, right? The point is
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that’s a statement that we know is an absolute statement. And to say let’s hold uh let’s hold you Lorraine or me Mike, let’s hold us to that absolute standard. It’s impossible, right? But yet look in the Bible how often people are called good. Job was called good. David was called good. Moses was called good, right? Jeremiah, we have people called good. John the Baptist. All these people are called good, but in a relative sense. What does that mean? Well, that means we recognize they’re
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all fallen. They all have feet of clay. So, the judgment that people like to to put on other people is, you know what? I’m going to hold you to every little fastidious detail of everything and and realize that at the same time, I don’t live up to that. And that’s the hypocrisy Jesus is usually getting at when he enlists the concerns that he has, the warnings about the kinds of judgment that people are judging. But we get out of that absolute kind of pnicity judgment. Well, then all of a sudden, oh
00:10:02
yeah, we got to judge all the time. You got a guy that’s sleeping with his his, you know, his father’s wife. Uh yeah, you should judge that in the church. What about the guy who fell asleep last Sunday in the third point of the long sermon? Well, you shouldn’t do that either. But, you know, I realize there’s a kind of judgment that’s appropriate and a kind of judgment that’s not. And and you see the difference there because that man’s not perfect and we’ve been tired and there are times that we can
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understand all that. And we’re going to say, “Yeah, hey, Fred, be good.” Especially if you’re the wife of Fred, you know, you should try to stay awake in church. But it’s not the kind of judgment of kicking him out because he’s not morally perfect. And so there has to be a distinction between the absolutes and the relativistic concerns. And I know people don’t Christians don’t like relativistic even that that word. But obviously Job is not perfect. And yet he’s said to be a blameless man in his
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generation. Noah was said to be a a blameless man in his generation. But we can read about Job wanting to die by chapter 4 and he’s hating life. And we can look at Noah getting drunk after the the the ark episode. Well, these guys weren’t perfect. David. David, a man after God’s. Yeah. Well, he’s also, you know, up at the top of his mansion looking down at a woman bathing and says, “Go get her. I want to have her.” These men are not perfect, right? None of them are. And yet, they are called
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good. Why? Relatively speaking. Well, if they were to try to judge, as even Nathan points out to David, someone who does something, but you’re not judging yourself, that’s a judgment you shouldn’t do. David had a log in his eye. And yet, as Nathan gives him the example about the man who takes his neighbor’s lamb, he’s trying to take the speck out of his brother’s eye. And that’s wrong. And that’s a judgment he shouldn’t have. He needs to confess his sin. And as a forgiven sinner, then he
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might be able to deal with somebody who’s stealing sheep from someone, but he just stole someone’s wife. So, the idea of judgment, right? We’ve got to think about, you can’t just look at the Bible simplistically, read one verse, as many people do, not saying you do, Lorraine, but people do, and they say, you know, “Oh, don’t judge. I I read a verse in Matthew and it says, “Don’t judge.” So, I’m not going to judge. Well, you should judge. You should judge
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and make distinctions, but not the kinds of judgment that a h that a hypocrite makes or the kind of judgment that expects absolute perfection and therefore uh speaks against the law because the law for us even is not condemning us because of grace. And and yet there ought to be some grace that we have even in dealing with people like Noah or David or Moses or or Jonah or whoever we’re looking at that is a good person but not the good person in perfection like God or the son of man. So this is a very nuanced discussion
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about judgment because how should we in a fallen world as forgiven sinners as people that stumble in many ways as James says in James chapter 3:2 how are we supposed to judge? Well, there is a judgment to have. Think about even James saying you if you show partiality to the rich, right? You’re you’re judging the law of God. Well, you’re making a judgment, James, right? And and you’re not Jesus, right? You’re the half brother of Jesus, but you’re not perfect. And you’re telling that church,
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you’re giving preferential treatment to the rich in your church. Well, he’s making a judgment. He’s seeing a situation. It’s not right. And now he’s telling them, right, you can’t do that. Well, who are you to tell us what to do, James? Well, he is telling us what to do, obviously, and I’m speaking in human terms now, even though he’s writing scripture and that’s the spirit’s work. But he as a as a leader could say, “Don’t do that.” I could say that if I
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saw ushers ushering people in nice cars up to the front row and telling people who took the bus to church to sit in the back, I could tell them, “Don’t do that.” I could judge them for that. And yet, what kind of judgment is that? Well, it’s a kind of judgment that’s appropriate, especially if I’m not giving preferential treatment. I’m not a hypocrite and I’m not just making some arbitrary judgment. Does Does that help with a nuanced topic? Because it is a nuanced topic, Lorraine. Does that give
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you any help in this discussion? >> I think Can I run back what I’m hearing from you? Okay. >> See what you think. >> Sure. >> Um it’s it’s for discernment to make distinction but not condemnation. Um, and then there’s some things to avoid and there’s some things to seek. You’re avoiding legalism and they’re discriminating for partiality and you’re avoiding vengeance, but you’re seeking salvation and restoration. >> Okay? And and here’s where I’m going to
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say someone’s going to throw a flag on that summation, Lorraine, because if we look at the kind of judgment that takes place in 1 Corinthians chapter 5, right, they would say, well, you are being judge and executioner. But I would say as long as you can respond to someone and say, “Yeah, they’re making a a judgment to kick the man out of the church,” which today would be, you know, people are appalled by that. But that’s exactly what should happen today, just like it happened in the church of
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Corenth. But you do know that they’re not taking him to the fiery furnace and throwing him into a furnace, right? They’re not killing him. The church is not given that kind of authority to do that. We’re not supposed to kill that man, right? we’re supposed to kick him out of the church because if you’re a so-called brother, but you don’t repent of this gross immorality, well, then you you shouldn’t be at church with us until you repent. So, as long as you understand that distinction, because I’m
00:15:24
basically agreeing with your summation, the condemnation, right, is is got to be what it really is, and that is I’m not the judge, jury, and executioner. [snorts] But I have to make a judgment and even say, go so far as it does in First Corinthians, you’re not welcome at church until you repent. Now, we have to do that. I’ve had to do that many times in my my pastoral ministry through the years, and and it upsets a lot of people. But no, we have the right to what I didn’t do is take them out back
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and tie them to a board and start punishing them for it. No, I just said you until you’re repentant, you’re not welcome at church and I can escort you off the property right now or have our security do it because you you can’t be here until you repent because you’re objectively in gross violation of God’s word. So, as long as you don’t let someone throw that back in your face and say, “Oh, but you are allowing that kind of judgment.” But you’re really not. You’re not being the one who’s taking
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vengeance. Even though today hurt feelings, people feel like you’re taking vengeance that they get their feelings hurt. And what if you’re the what if you’re the sister of the man that got kicked out of that church in Corinth in 1 Corinthians 5? You might think, “Ah, they took vengeance on my brother.” Well, they didn’t. They really didn’t. Vengeance means that there’s punishment. Well, it seems to be punitive that he’s kicked out of the church. Well, he is,
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but it’s not the kind of judgment that God is going to bring and which he hopes, you know, as it says in the text that he’ll be delivered on the day of salvation, right? That’s what he wants in in 1 Corinthians 5 for the man who’s involved in incest. But there h there has to be a kind of judgment that in our day, the touchyfey day we live in, people are going to think it is vengeful, right? But it’s not vengeful. Real vengeance is not what we’re allowed to do. So, I agree with your statement.
00:17:10
Just know where the comeback’s going to be. If you follow my logic here, Lorraine, they’re still going to say, “Well, if we follow biblical instructions, it still feels like you’re taking vengeance.” Right? Think further in that passage. By the time we get to the bottom of of 1 Corinthians chapter 5, if that guy is kicked out of the church, I can’t even meet him for a Starbucks and have have a croissant with him. I’m not allowed to do that. I’m not even supposed to have a meal with them.
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Now, someone’s going to say, “You’re being judgmental.” Well, you’re right. I’m being biblically judgmental because the church has kicked him out until he repents. He’s continuing on in his immorality and I can’t do it. So, but it’s not jud it’s not vengeance, right? That’s not vengeance. That’s not going to his house and lighting it on fire. That’s not taking his his hand and cutting it off. So, does that clarification even make sense to you,
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Lorraine? >> It does. It’s like it’s like Paul said, you’re you’re giving them over so that they might be restored. >> Correct. >> If the purpose is to restore them, then it’s not vengeance. >> It’s not vengeance. Right. But it feels in our day people are going to call it vengeance. If you judge biblically, people will call it vengeance. But it’s not, right? It it they’re turning it over. I mean, he says specifically in that passage to Satan, but ultimately to
00:18:26
God because God’s going to allow him to maybe be so punished by the enemy that he comes to repentance hopefully. And uh the point is though, it’s God’s domain to take vengeance. My domain to make distinctions, making sure those distinctions aren’t petty, right? They’re not straining out the gnat. Uh and they’re not hypocritical at the same time I’m swallowing the camel. So that as long as all of that is is governing this concept of judgment, well then I’m starting to get it. Does that make
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sense? >> Okay. >> Yes. Thank you very much. >> Okay. All right. Well, keep thinking on that. If you got more, we can we can go another round and and think a little deeper on it next time. Thanks for the call.
