<p>6:37 <i>Judge not, and you shall not be judged; condemn not, and you shall not be condemned. Forgive, and you shall be forgiven</i>- This confirms the suggestion so far made in commentary on this chapter; that the lending and giving in view is particularly that of forgiveness, unconditionally granted. For Paul, &quot;judge not...&quot; echoed in his mind throughout the years; thus it is at the basis of Rom. 2:1; the whole of Rom. 14, and 1 Cor. 4:3,5. The Lord's teaching about judging does not in fact say that the act of condemning our brother is in itself a sin- it's simply that we must cast out the beam from our own eye first, and then we can judge our brother by pointing out to him the splinter in his eye. But the Lord tells us not to judge because He foresaw that we would never completely throw out the beam from our own eye. His command not to judge /&nbsp;condemn at all was therefore in this sense a concession to our inevitable weakness (:41). The commentary of James on this is interesting: &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t speak against one another, brothers. He who speaks against a brother and judges his brother, speaks against the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law, but a judge&quot; (James 4:11). In what sense is to judge / condemn our brother to judge the law? And which law? Maybe James considered Lk. 6:37 and Mt. 7:1 to be so fundamental a part of &quot;the law of Christ&quot; that he refers to it as &quot;the law&quot;. See on Mt. 7:24. The Lord had taught clearly that under His law, to condemn meant being condemned. Yet there were those in James' readership, as there are today, who think they can go ahead and condemn others. Seeing the Lord's law is so clear, James is saying that effectively they are condemning the law of Jesus, placing themselves as judges over His law by deciding that they can break it at will.</p><p>We observe that not forgiving is parallel here to condemning and judging. We are setting ourselves up as judge of others if we refuse to forgive. Forgiveness is not the same as trust, but it is clearly required- otherwise we are condemning. If we assume that all our brethren shall be saved and seeing we can't prejudge the judgment, we have to assume this, as Paul did about Corinth, then we assume that whatever sins they have committed against us will be forgiven. Therefore we must forgive them, acting in harmony with the Lord's position to them. In this lies the connection between not forgiving and condemning. If we refuse to condemn them, then we must forgive them. And the nature of the logic demands that we are to grant that forgiveness to any whom the Lord will not condemn, and so the forgiveness in view is to be granted without any angst about whether or not the person has repented. That is not for us to judge; it is for us to forgive. The logic of the whole argument requires this. There are passages which picture a person sinning against us and saying they repent and then being forgiven; but their purpose is to teach that we are to forgive when they do that, even if their repentance appears insincere; but we are not thereby taught not to forgive unless they repent. We are being presented in those passages with a theoretical situation, and told to forgive even if repentance seems sincere. But the logic here in Lk. 6:37 is to forgive in any case; for all &quot;in Christ&quot; are not condemned and therefore forgiven.</p><p>Because of the principle that we shall be condemned if we condemn, we need to remember that we will receive according to the measure we use to people in this life. Again, a direct connection is made between our judgment experience before Jesus at the last day, and our attitude to others now.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>