Let Us Not Therefore Judge One Another Any More

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · May 28, 1914

“Let Us Not Therefore Judge One Another Any More”

THIS is the conclusion which the apostle Paul reaches from the argument which he makes in the fourteenth chapter of Romans regarding the question of brethren judging one another. He teaches that the strong should bear the infirmities of the weak; that no one should judge or set at naught his brother, but that all should realize that the whole human family shall stand before the judgment seat of Christ; that instead of our giving account each to his fellows, at last “every one of us shall give account of himself to God.” In view of these things, he urges, “Let us not therefore judge one another any more.”

This was seasonable advice for the church at Rome, where controversies over trivial questions threatened to separate the believers. It is quite as seasonable for the church of God today, because we see at the present time the same tendency to pass judgment upon others. In this is shown the weakness of poor human nature. We erect our narrow standards, and then seek to gauge our fellows by them.

Suppose from the believers in this message there could be eliminated all spirit of unkind criticism, what a revolution would be witnessed in our ranks! What unity of purpose and of spirit would possess the believers! It is possible to effect a transformation of this kind. It was for this unity that Christ prayed, for which he still ministers his blood in the sanctuary above.

Let us pray God to take out of our hearts all spirit of superiority, of unkind criticism. Let us speak good of our fellows rather than ill. The cultivation of this spirit in the days to come will go a long way toward bringing about that unity in the church of God which must precede the outpouring of the Spirit.

It was only as the disciples of the early church put away their differences and pressed together in heart and spirit that the experience of Pentecost was made possible. We shall come to the Pentecost in our experience only by the elimination of sin from our lives in the same way.