“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and THEN you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.” -Matthew 7:3-5 📜
An often overlooked truth about this verse is that we need to deal with our own mess in order to effectively assist others with their mess. Which is revealing in the sense, because so many believers are not helping anyone. Is it because there is an inherent fear of exposing how unclean we really are in the process? That our holiness is but a whitewash. We can’t give what we don’t have after all. So it’s no wonder we turned seek and save the lost into seek and criticize the lost. There is nothing sacred about that approach, it is human nature. It is a product of the sinful nature of the flesh. Even the secular world does that.