Dealing with the Log

"Consider the words of Christ on how we should address the sin of another person.

How can you say to your brother, "Let me take the speck out of your eye," when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye. (Matthew 7:3-5)

Imagine a husband, railroad tie protruding from his face, attempting to remove a dust particle from his wife's eye. He will have whacked her silly long before he can address her speck. Just approaching her brings pain.

In using the image of logs and specks, Jesus reveals this approach as wrong, ineffective (to put it mildly), and absurd. When our goal is to address someone else's sin, Jesus tells us, our own sin must loom large in our sight. It must be, by far, the primary and more significant issue. What is striking is his use of the word "hypocrite" to describe those who are speck focused. Why such a seemingly harsh assessment? It has to do with the blatancy of the log. Jesus is saying that to ignore the "obvious" log in favor of the not-so-obvious speck is not simply wrong, it is hypocrisy. In other words, it lacks integrity to ignore a major problem to deal with something trivial, simply because that's where you prefer to focus.

Let's say you and your spouse have recently had a conflict to which both of you contributed some sin (this, by the way, probably describes every conflict you have ever experienced!). What would happen if you evaluated that conflict in light of this passage, and your spouse did too?

What if, to you, the log (not the speck) was yours . . . and to your spouse the log (not the speck) was his or hers? Would one of you be wrong? Would that be a misapplication of this passage? I don't think so. I think it's exactly what is supposed to happen!

Jesus is not concerned here with which of you is more at fault in a particular instance. His emphasis is your focus, what you find to be the most obvious fact to you whenever sin is in view. He's calling for inspection to begin with me. In light of who we are compared to God, and because of the reality of remaining sin, it is nothing more than basic integrity to consider our sin before we consider the sin our spouse. To do otherwise lacks integrity. It's hypocritical."

- Dave Harvey, When Sinners Say "I Do"