The Calvary Road by Roy Hession

Author:Roy Hession [Hession, Roy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: CLC Publications
Published: 2017-04-12T00:00:00+00:00

7

The Speck and the Log

There’s something in our friend’s eye! Though it is only something tiny—what Jesus called a speck—how painful it is and how helpless our friend is until it is removed! It is surely our part as a friend to do all we can to remove it, and how grateful that person is to us when we have succeeded in doing so. We would be equally grateful if the same service was done for us.

In the light of that, it seems clear that the real point of the well-known passage in Matthew 7:3–5 about the log and the speck is not the forbidding of our trying to remove the fault in the other person, but rather the reverse. It is the injunction that we should do this service for one another at all costs. True, its first emphasis seems to be a condemnation of censoriousness; but when the censoriousness in us is removed, the passage ends by saying, “Then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye” (Matt. 7:5). According to the New Testament, we are meant to care so much for other people that we are willing to do all we can to remove from their eyes the specks that are marring their vision and hindering their blessing.

We are told to admonish one another (see Col. 3:16), “exhort one another” (Heb. 3:13), “wash one another’s feet” (John 13:14) and “stir up one another to love and good works” (Heb. 10:24). The love of Jesus poured out in us will make us want to help our brothers and sisters in this way.

What blessing may not come to many others through our willingness to challenge one another humbly, as led by God. A humble Swiss named Nicholas of Basel crossed the mountains to Strasbourg and entered the church of Dr. Johannes Tauler, the popular preacher of that city. Said Nicholas, “You must die, Dr. Tauler! Before you can do your greatest work for God, the world and this city, you must die to yourself, your gifts, your popularity, and even your own goodness, and when you have learned the full meaning of the cross, you will have a new power with God and man.”1

That humble challenge from an obscure Christian changed Dr. Tauler’s life. He did indeed learn to die, and he became one of the great factors that helped prepare the way for Luther and the Reformation. In this passage, the Lord Jesus tells us how we may do this service for one another.

What Is the Log?

First, however, the Lord Jesus tells us that it is only too possible to try to take the speck—a tiny bit of sawdust—out of the other’s eye when there is a beam—a great length of timber—in ours. When that is the case, we haven’t a chance of casting out the speck in the other, because we cannot see straight ourselves. In any case, it is sheer hypocrisy to attempt to do so.

Now we all know what Jesus meant by the speck in the other person’s eye.

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