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30 November 2011
Ten years ago as I was writing a new curriculum on holiness and I was thinking about how many revivals throughout church history have ended up in legalism. They started out as genuine moves of God but ended up as a list of rules to follow. I didn’t want this new curriculum to become a teaching on legalism.
I asked the Lord, “What is the difference between holiness and legalism?” This is how he responded:
“Holiness is judging your self and legalism is judging others.”
Jesus tells us, “Do not judge others and you will not be judged”
Paul tells us, “For if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged.”
The bottom line is the Lord wants us to judge ourselves but not other people. If you stop and think about it you are the only person that can correctly judge you. The reason for this is that we are all at different places of spiritual growth.
I grew up in a very dysfunctional home. My Dad was a single parent who raised four boys by himself. I didn’t have a lot of supervision, so I got into trouble in high school. I had a lot of bad habits. I was a teenage alcoholic. I got high on the way to school with some frequency. I smoked a pack of cigarettes a day.
I was born again on September 12, 1976, and my life started to turn around. The first thing I did was to quit drinking. I was still getting high and smoking cigarettes, but I was headed in the right direction. I used to sneak outside between Sunday School and the worship service for a smoke break.
I’m sure there were people in the church that looked at me in a judgmental way. “What does that punk kid think he’s doing smoking on the church property?” But my Heavenly Father was not looking at me that way. He was just glad that I was at church. I still had some bad habits, but I was making positive changes.
Most of us have many bad habits that we need to deal with. I find that God deals with me about one thing at a time. This is why it is foolish for me to try and judge other people by things that are in my heart. When I get to Heaven, God is going to judge me by things He put in my heart, not what He put it your heart.
If you judge others it can cause damage to you and to them.
If judge yourself, you draw closer to the Lord and you help yourself.
