No Room For Criticism

Have I ever criticized anyone for anything?  

• Then I am without excuse, because my criticism arises from the fact that I have a conscience, 
• which now recognizes a sin in another because it is aware of the existence of sin itself; 
• and I have never lived up to the light of my conscience, whatever it may be.  
• If I have ever criticized anything in anybody, 
• I have thereby written my own condemnation.  

For even the finest critic has been guilty in some degree of the thing he has judged in another.  

• I can take the most violent contrasts as proof.  
• The meekest old grandmother who ever spoke a sharp word against a tyrant or a despot in high or low places has been guilty of being dictatorial and arrogant at some moment in life, 
• or of having the longing for domination.  

No individual has ever criticized another for lying without having, sometime or other, 

• been guilty of shading the truth.  
• The conscience that makes me aware of imperfection in another finds written on itself the guilt of its own imperfection.

The only judgment or censure that is allowable in this world 

• is that permitted to those who hold up the Word of God in order to mirror the sin of mankind.  
• Such stand forth to tell me of my sinfulness not through any possession of righteousness of their own, 
• but only through the fact that they have come to the cross 
• to receive the righteousness of Christ imparted as a gift and imputed to their account.  
• All other censure or criticism is blind and arrogant foolishness that will one day itself be brought into judgment. 

Those people are on a dark spiral downward.   But if you think that leaves you on the high ground where you can point your finger at others, think again.  Every time you criticize someone, you condemn yourself.  It takes one to know one.

Romans 2:1 (The Message)

Adapted Excerpt From Romans, vol. 2: God's Wrath 

Donald Grey Barnhouse