Matthew 7:5 You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.
Again Jesus uses an extreme illustration to get his point across to us. Remember what it is like to get a speck of dust in your eye? You squint, feel the tears well up, and struggled to focus from your other eye. It was difficult to see and to even think of anything else until you got that small speck out, right? Now imagine having a baseball bat in your eye. It would be impossible to see or concentrate on anything else but your own problem. Well, this is the perspective Jesus wants you listening from.
When helping others along their Christian journey care is needed. We can get overconfident in our own beliefs and spiritual progress that we fail to empathize with others who struggle. Sometimes we become the obstacle to another’s growth or hearing of our message. Over confidence and dogmatic prescriptions do not heal people. The Holy Spirit does.
The presence of objects that cause our blindness cannot make us more effective in ministering to others. Without a healthy understanding of our own sinfulness and imperfect faith, we cannot understand the struggle that others face. We may never understand their fall into sin if we have not admitted to ourselves the sinfulness of our actions at times.
If we want to really help someone else, we would start by helping ourselves. Begin with repentance of our own sin and brokenness. Let God remove our sin, heal us of their damaging effects and restore us to a new relationship with Him. Only then will our approach to others will bring help and not further harm.
