<p>4:3 <i>But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you, or any man's judgment. I do not judge even myself</i>- Our being servants <i>under</i> the Lord Jesus, accountable to <i>Him</i>, means that we are not 'under' any human judgment; see on :1 <i>Servants of Christ</i>. This means that quite literally any human judgment of us, whether by our critics in the church or even by our own self in our personal self-assessment, is utterly irrelevant. And yet so many beat themselves up all their lives over the fact that he said that, she thinks that about me, they judged me like this or that. If we are solely and completely under the Lord's judgment, then their view and our own view of ourselves, whether too harsh or too generous is irrelevant.</p><p>For Paul, the fact that he had only <i>one </i>judge meant that he could genuinely feel that it mattered very little to him how others judged him. The idea of worrying only about God's judgment of us rather than man's lies behind Prov. 29:26: &quot;Many seek the ruler's favourable judgment; but a man's judgment i.e. the ultimate judgment, the only one worth having comes from the Lord&quot;. But this takes quite some faith to believe- for in this age of constant communication between people about other people, we all tend to get worried by others' judgments and opinions of us. But ultimately there is only <i>one</i> judge- God, and not the guys at work, your kid sister, your older brother, the woman in apartment 35. The idea of the court of Heaven is a great comfort to us in the pain of being misjudged by men. It's a case of seeing what isn't visible to the human eye.</p><p>Paul&rsquo;s thought here is building on what he had earlier reasoned in 1 Cor. 2:15, that the spiritual man &ldquo;himself is judged of no man&rdquo;. There was only One judge, and the believer is now not condemned if he is in Christ (Rom. 8:1). He that truly believes in Christ is not condemned, but has passed from death to life (Jn. 3:18; 5:24). So however men may claim to judge and condemn us, the ultimate truth is that no man <i>can </i>judge / condemn us, and we who are spiritual should live life like that, not fearing the pathetic judgments of men, knowing that effectively we are <i>not</i> being judged by them. How radically different is Paul&rsquo;s attitude to so many of us. The fear of criticism and human judgment leads us to respond as animals do to fear- the instinct of self-defence and self-preservation is aroused. We defend ourselves as we would against hunger or impending death. Yet here the radical implications of grace burst through. <i>We</i> are not our best defence. We have an advocate who is also the judge, the almighty Lord Jesus; we have a preserver and saviour, the same omnipotent Lord, so that we need not and must not trust in ourselves. By not trusting in this grace of salvation, we end up desperately trusting ourselves for justification and preservation and salvation, becoming ever more guilty at our abysmal and pathetic failures to save and defend ourselves.</p><p>The message of imputed righteousness was powerfully challenging. For the whole message of Romans is that our only acceptability is through <i>God</i> counting us righteous although we are not... and it is <i>His</i> judgment which matters, not that of the million watching eyes of society around us. 1 Cor. 4:3-5 teach that the judgment of others is a &quot;very small thing&quot;, an irrelevancy, compared with Christ's judgment of us. The fact that we have only one judge means that whatever others think or judge of us is irrelevant. That may be easy enough to accept as a theory, but the reality for those living in collective societies was far-reaching. Appreciating the ultimate importance of our standing before <i>God </i>means that we have a conscience towards <i>Him</i>, and a rightful sense of shame before Him for our sins.</p>