It's been said that reading our Bible allows us to see God and no one else, but that statement is not entirely true. The Bible is a magnifying glass to help us magnify and examine the attributes and character of God, yes, but it is also a mirror that helps us magnify and examine our attributes and character as well, to check how close we are to becoming like Christ. And though it may seem that we are far from that goal, we still pursue Christ best when we get a good grasp of our progress thus far.
Yet the one thing the Bible is never like is a periscope to be used to peer into the character and lives of other people...but so many Christians still do that. Matthew 7:1–2 says, "Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you."
That's not to say that we don't rebuke when sin surfaces and when God exposes, but to deliberately put your nose in to make yourself feel better about yourself is not in the same category as rebuke and accountability.
It's in everyone, and I mean everyone, to struggle with comparison and judgment. Because we don't feel so good about our own weakness, we would rather look to and emphasise the weakness of others in hopes that it will cover our own. But that's not what God wants us to do. In Philippians 2:3 He tells us, "Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves" (ESV).
We find it so easy to preach to someone about purity, righteousness, repentance and so on, but have we ever stopped and asked whether we should be preaching it to ourselves too? I've been preaching for years now, and I admit that I haven't always been preaching right. When I would preach a message to people, I admit that there were times when I acted like I was Jesus on the sermon on the mount telling everyone to "be perfect just as God is perfect," but never letting that message sink in me first.
If we must preach a certain message, we should preach it first to ourselves. James 1:23 says, "For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror" (ESV). The moments we act in judgment towards a person, we're actually unknowingly facing a mirror and seeing our sins in them.
None of us are completely there yet, not even a preacher or even someone who preaches to people off the stage. We all need the grace of God through Christ equally as much and we all need a heap load of it. But thanks be to God that His grace is unlimited and that it flows through us all so that we can walk not in His judgment, but in His transformational love. But it's our individual jobs to first reflect on our need of Christ, not to reflect for other people.
