Stop for a second and think about all the things God has forgiven you for. Not the big sins you remember confessing — the small ones. The petty anger. The lies told for convenience. The times you chose yourself over someone else. The years you weren’t following him at all.
Now think about how patient he’s been while you kept making those same mistakes over and over.
Here’s what most of us miss: We notice God’s patience with other people’s sins constantly. We see someone mess up and think, Well, God will forgive them eventually. But we almost never stop to notice how patient he is with our own sins. We keep doing the same things, and he keeps forgiving us.
That gap — between how patient God is with us and how judgmental we are with others — that’s where everything breaks.
The judge inside you
Most of us are harshest with the people closest to us. You can be kind to a coworker all day. Patient with a stranger. Gracious to someone at church. Then you come home and blow up at your family over nothing. Why? Because they’re safe. They have to forgive you (or at least, you hope they do). So you let your guard down — and your judgment comes out.
But here’s the thing: God’s judgment of you won’t be based on how you treated the person who annoyed you at work. It’ll be based on how your spouse says you treated them. How your kids say you behaved toward them. How the people you share a home with remember you.
If you really believed that, would you do things differently?
When we hold onto judgment, we’re acting like we deserve more grace than we actually give. We forget that we’ve been forgiven for way more than we’re being asked to forgive in anyone else.
What real forgiveness looks like
Forgiveness isn’t about mustering up a feeling. You don’t have to feel forgiving to show forgiveness. Love works the same way. You don’t have to feel love to show it — you just have to make a choice to meet someone’s needs despite your feelings. That’s what it means to love like Christ did.
When you choose to make allowances for someone’s faults and mistakes, you’re not being weak. You’re being Christian. You’re doing what Jesus taught: loving people who don’t deserve it, forgiving people who hurt you, treating others the way you’d want to be treated if you were the one who messed up.
Because you have been the one who messed up. We all have.
The real judgment to fear
If you’ve ever stayed away from church because you were scared of being judged, listen: Anyone judging you in that room isn’t acting like Christ. Their opinion of you should be irrelevant. And there will be people there who love and accept you exactly as you are — because that’s what Christ taught them to do.
No matter what you’ve done, God will forgive you if you ask. King David murdered someone and slept with another man’s wife. God forgave him. Not because David was special, but because God is patient with all of us.
The only judgment you should care about is God’s — and his judgment is mercy if you’re willing to receive it.
Verses:
Matthew 7:3
Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?
Colossians 3:12-13
Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.