<p>7:5&nbsp;<em>You hypocrite</em>- Usually on the Lord's lips with reference to the Pharisees whom the Lord clearly detested and whom the rank and file disciples whom He was addressing likewise despised. But the Lord is saying that their critical, condemnatory attitude to each other would make them no different to the Pharisees.</p>
<p><em>First</em>- The Greek&nbsp;<em>proton</em>&nbsp;suggests that the following clause is of ultimate, supreme importance; it's not simply a chronological statement that 'first do this, then do that'. If we condemn ourselves in our self-examination, we will not be condemned (1 Cor. 11:31). We are to most importantly [Gk.&nbsp;<em>proton</em>] &ldquo;cast out&rdquo; the beam from our own eye (Lk. 6:42)- and the Lord uses the same word about the &lsquo;casting forth&rsquo; of the rejected at the last day. We are to judge our own weaknesses as worthy of condemnation.</p>
<p><em>Remove the plank from your own eye and then shall you</em>- We are to condemn ourselves firstly, recognizing our major blindness, and then with the humility of spirit elicited by this, we will have crystal clear vision with which to assist others.</p>
<p><em>See clearly to remove the splinter in your brother's eye</em>- The Greek&nbsp;<em>dia-blepo</em>&nbsp;is related to the verb&nbsp;<em>blepo</em>&nbsp;in :3 (&quot;why do you&nbsp;<em>behold / see</em>&nbsp;the splinter...&quot;). The judgmental believer sees the splinter in his brother's eye and wants to condemn him for it, but the one who has repented of his judgmentalism and removed that plank from his spiritual vision will see through ('through' is really the sense of&nbsp;<em>dia</em>). The translation &quot;see clearly&quot; doesn't seem to me to have much to commend it. The one who has repented of the plank of his judgmentalism will see through casting out / condemning the splinter in his brother's eye. &quot;Then&quot; you will see through casting out the splinter from his eye-&nbsp;<em>tote</em>&nbsp;more comfortably carries the sense of 'right then'. The moment you repent of your condemnatory judgmentalism, you immediately see through condemning your brother's weakness. And so the Lord has powerfully enforced His principle which He began with at the start of this section- do not condemn. And through this profound parable of casting out splinters and planks, He has brought us to see through our brother's splinter. But the only way you can do that is to cast out / condemn your own condemnatory attitudes. It is often claimed that those who have committed what some would see as 'major' sins feel unable to judge others for their sins, and this is seen as a weakness. But actually, we are all major sinners. Those who have repented or matured into softer, non-condemnatory attitudes are mature, and not 'weak' as they are portrayed by their hard line brethren.</p>
<p>The Lord foresaw the problems we would have within our community of believers in Him; from the schisms of the first century to the struggles of latter day believers. This story is a classic- of the carpenter with a beam in his own eye who is so keen to extract the splinter from the eye of his fellow worker (note how he almost forces himself upon his brother to do this!). There is something grotesque, absurd, over the top in this story. In this story of the two carpenters there is something not only unreal, but almost cartoon-like. We read it and think 'The Lord's obviously exaggerating, nobody would really be so foolish'. But that's exactly how He knew we would think! Our attempts to sort out our brother really are that absurd! Christ is effectively saying: 'Now, I know you'll think I'm exaggerating- but I'm not' (Lk. 6:41,42). Often it seems the Lord intends us to think His parables through to their end, imagining the necessary details. A splinter will come out of the eye naturally, its presence will provoke tears which ultimately will wash it out. 'The grief of life will work on your brother to solve his problem, there are some spiritual weaknesses which time and the experience of life will heal; but I know you people will want to rush in and speed up the spiritual growth of your brother. But you can't do it!'. Christ even foresaw how we will stress the fact that our fellow believer is our &quot;brother&quot; as we try to do this; as if we'll try to be so righteous in the very moment when in God's eyes we do something grotesquely foolish. Doubtless the Lord's carpenter years were the time when He formulated this story of the two carpenters. Significantly they both had wood in their eye- as if a brother will tend to seek to correct another brother who has in essence the same weaknesses, but the &lsquo;helping&rsquo; brother considers that the other brother&rsquo;s is so much greater than his. Perhaps the Lord intends us to take it further, and pick up the implication that these two carpenters couldn't help each other; but there's another one who can...&nbsp;</p>
<p>In Luke, having spoken of the need to tolerate our brother, the Lord Jesus repeated His common theme: that there is no third road: &quot;Why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye...? For a good tree bringeth not forth corrupt fruit; neither doth a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit&quot; (Lk. 6:41-43). There's no third position. Either we love our brother, and bring forth good fruit; or we don't get down to it, and bring forth bad fruit. We can't sometimes bring forth good, sometimes bad. At heart, we are either loving or selfishly hateful. Anything less than following Yahweh with all our heart is seen as doing evil in His eyes (1 Kings 11:6).</p>
<p>If we can achieve true self-examination, perceiving what needs to be cast out of our lives and doing so, we have achieved something extremely valuable. We need to ask ourselves what real, practical influence the Gospel is having upon us; for life in Christ is about change, not mere acceptance (let alone inheritance) of a theological position which we loyally preserve to the end of our days as many misguided religious folk do. The value of true change is brought out powerfully when the Lord speaks of casting our pearls before pigs, to be trodden underfoot by them. He says this immediately after stating that we are to &ldquo;cast out&rdquo; the beams from our own eyes; but we are not to &ldquo;cast [out]&rdquo; our pearls before pigs (Mt. 7:5,6)- the Greek words for &ldquo;cast out&rdquo; in 7:5 (<em>ek-ballo</em>) and &ldquo;cast&rdquo; in 7:6 (<em>ballo</em>) are related. Clearly verse 6 belongs in the section about judging which begins in :1. The idea of being &ldquo;cast out&rdquo; is found earlier in the Sermon on the Mount, where the Lord warns of how saltless salt will be &ldquo;cast out&rdquo; and trodden underfoot (Mt. 5:13), the unforgiving will be &ldquo;cast out&rdquo; into prison (Mt. 5:25), those without fruit will be &ldquo;cast out&rdquo; into the fire (Mt. 7:29). To be cast out is to be rejected at the last day; and by condemning ourselves now in our self-examination, casting out the eye that offends (Mt. 5:29,30), we avoid having to be &ldquo;cast out&rdquo; at the last judgment. If we condemn ourselves now in our self-examination, we shall not need to be condemned at the last day (1 Cor. 11:31). But we are not to cast out our pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and attack us. In this context, I take this to mean that the offending eyes etc. which we cast out are not to be cast out to the world, lest they condemn us (which is how the Lord used the figure of trampling underfoot in Mt. 5:13). Thus the teaching about not casting pearls before pigs is seamlessly in context with the previous teaching about casting the beam out of our eye. Our repentances are to be before God and not necessarily the uncomprehending world. The pigs would&rsquo;ve confused true pearls with swine feed, and become angry once they realized those stones weren&rsquo;t food but stones. They just wouldn&rsquo;t have appreciated them. This isn&rsquo;t any justification for hypocrisy; it&rsquo;s simply stating that repentance is a private thing before God. But the point to note is that the offending eyes etc. which are cast out are likened by the Lord to &ldquo;pearls&rdquo;; they are of such priceless value. Thus we see the colossal importance of true change, of self-examination resulting in the transformation of human life in practice.</p>