37 “Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. 38 Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” ~ Luke 6:37-38
The Sermon on the Mount is not for all people, it is only for the believer in Christ. The Sermon on the Mount is not about getting us into heaven, it is about getting heaven into us, now. The goal is our sanctification which is the process whereby our minds snd wills are being changed by God. The goal of our sanctification is God's influence in the lives of the unbelieving world through our broken lives.
In v.37-38 the Lord Jesus gives the persecuted believer four commands which facilitates the practical expression of His love to the unbeliever. Nobody gets saved by being loved. But, through love, a platform is created which gives the believer the opportunity to represent the love of the Lord Jesus to their unbelieving enemies.
These four actions make it easier for the believer to earn a hearing with the unbeliever. These four are: don't judge, don't condemn, forgive and give. Note that the first two of these are negative and the last two are positive. We are to do these four things to our enemies for their eternal benefit.
The first of these four is, "Do not judge." This doesn’t forbid exercising our discernment, conviction, rightly assessing someone's sinful actions. This command forbids harsh, hard, critical, heartless hostility toward our enemies who treat us badly. The Lord Jesus is telling us to not pronounce judgment on our enemies, those who treat us poorly. We are to speak blessing into their lives. We are to not pass sentence on them. We are to love them mercifully.
And the response from them is a reward for us: "we will not be judged" by them. We must remember this is not justification teaching, this is sanctification teaching. Sinners will always give us back what we give them, and if we are not judgmental, harsh, cold, and condemning, they will return to us the favor. Unbelievers are good to those who do good to them. And, when we treat them this way, the potential of the door opening to share the good news with them will be more likely to open.
The next command in v.37 is, “Do not condemn.” The Lord Jesus is telling us to not put ourselves in the place of the judge. This happens when we feel that our country is going down the tubes, and all of a sudden we identify the people who are leading this parade as the enemy, and we pronounce damnation upon them.
Next, on the positive side, in v.37, we read, “Forgive.” We are never more like God than when we forgive somebody. If we are merciful like God, if we are kind and compassionate, tender-hearted, forgiving, we are representing Him to them.
According to v.38 we are to, “Give.” And, as we give, and give, and give, it will be given to us. The Lord Jesus says, “Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”
If we do not judge them, they won’t judge us. If we do not condemn them, they won’t condemn us. And if we forgive them, they will tend to forgive us. And if we give to them, they will tend to give to us. That is the common human way to love. But for us, it has to start with loving those who hate us before they can see that His way is the best.
In v.38, we read, “and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” In order to understand these words, we must understand the practice known as “gleaning.” When harvest time came, the wealthy landowners would hire workers to come and help them bring it in. By custom and practice, they would also allow the poor and the widows and orphans to come and “glean” or pick up the grain or produce that the workers spilled, missed or otherwise left behind. This was how the poor were taken care of in biblical times.
The workers job was fill their baskets and take them to the barn and come back out to the field and start the process again until the day was over or the harvest was complete. Since they were paid by the hour, they had little incentive to fill their baskets to the brim. Both in terms of lighter loads and extending the work day, it wasn’t in their best interests to completely fill their baskets.
Not so with the gleaners. The gleaners would fill their baskets to the brim and then they would shake them so that the grain would settle further down — as far down as possible. After that, they would press the grain down even more to take advantage of every available iota of space until the basket was overflowing. To them, it was literally a matter of life or death.
A full basket meant that their families would eat one more meal or two and a partially full basket meant that they might not. Pressing down the grain then, might make the difference between surviving the winter or starving. When the Lord Jesus spoke these words about a good measure being pressed down, the folks hearing them would have immediately understood the implied illustration.
The goal, then, is to have sinners not judge us, not condemn us, forgive us for the offense against them, and be generous with us. And, if that’s the case, that would indicate that they have accepted us. It will be at this point that we will have the best opportunity to share the gospel with them. Once we have earned the right to tell them about God's love as demonstrated at the cross of the Lord Jesus, they will be more likely to listen and believe.
I close with a question given by President Abraham Lincoln. “Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?”
