There are two possible responses to this statement: one, operating under the assumption that no one can possibly live up to a high standard, holds to the interpretation mentioned above that no one should ever judge anyone else, since we’re all sinners.
If we cannot hold to the standard we use, we have no business applying that standard to others. Jesus follows up his warning against judgment with an explanation-we will all be judged by the same measure that we use. Yet again, we find that a text without a context is a pretext-the primary exegetical fault leading to misinterpretation is neglecting to read closely the surrounding section of a key verse. Despite how it appears if one stops reading after the first verse, this passage in Matthew is not forbidding judgment but hypocrisy. “See,” it is said, “he shouldn’t have judged-he’s no better than anyone else.” Though this latter interpretation is often considered to be an extension of the former, the first interpretation entirely misses the point of the passage while the latter one nails it dead center. Often this verse is thrown around after some church figure (like Ted Haggard, for example) is found to be doing the very things he thundered against in the pulpit.
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