Luke 6:42 “How can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me remove the speck from your eye,’ while you yourself don’t see the beam in your own? You hypocrite! First remove*~ the beam from your own eye, and then you can see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.”
Individuals tend to minimize their own sins while maximizing those of others. Whenever you seek to warn someone else against pursuing a sinful behavior, understand that the person you seek to help could easily see a weakness or failure in your own life as a beam or log while viewing his own sin as a splinter.
This text is obviously a hyperbole—an exaggerated statement— intended to provide a vivid picture of the biblical teaching so we may apply it to our personal lives before we attempt to help others.
Everyone commits sins. John wrote in his First Epistle that the person who does not admit his own sins is deceiving himself, and “the truth is not in [him]” (1 Jn 1:8). This is a symptom of an unsaved person—that is, one who does not know the Bible’s teachings about sin. Such people fail to see the reality of how awful they appear in the light of God’s holiness.
Their focus is so critical toward others that they do not waste time examining their own disobedience. They ignore the inconvenient commands—especially ones that deal with attitudes of service, mercy, loving each other, and being nonjudgmental—all the while criticizing and defaming anyone not following their set of rules.
One of the joys of teaching is the opportunity to research the Scripture to determine its meaning in the time in which it was written and then applying the same principle to your own life in a prayerful commitment. This may mean a personal repentance, a reconciliation, or restitution of actions done in the past before the teacher has a sense of the liberty to be free to teach it to others.
Anyone who desires godliness or holiness must constantly search the Scriptures to know the commands and adjust his life to a transparent dependency on God’s power in order to obey them. The reality is that we are all struggling together to overcome sin. We cannot shoot our wounded.
“Renew a right spirit within me, dear Jesus, and remind me to check my own heart before trying to correct or teach Your ways to another.”