Has anyone ever experienced your faith as rules and guilt rather than freedom? What did you contribute to that impression?

Kent told the story of a student he had known since high school — call him Sam — a committed young Christian who went off to study film at SMU. There were not many other committed Christians in the film department, so before long he was at lunch with a fellow film student and began to share how he came to faith in Christ. He barely got started. She cut him off: "Look, I don't need the rules, I don't need the guilt, so just leave me alone." And she got up abruptly and left. Kent's reaction was not anger. It was grief. How sad that the greatest message of freedom and release this world has ever heard was experienced by her as a message of repression and guilt. How did that happen? How have we let the best news in the world land on so many people as bad news? That question is the doorway

Who have you quietly rendered a verdict on? What would it feel like to hand that judgment back to God this week?

Kent said this passage is emancipating, and then reached for an image nobody expected in a Presbyterian church in Miami: it is like the first time you went skinny-dipping in a lake as a kid. That freeing. His point was serious. It is not my responsibility to declare who is in and who is out. God will be the judge. People ask him all the time — do you think so-and-so is a Christian? His usual answer: God knows. I don't. I may have an opinion based on how he or she lives, but God knows and I don't. Do you think that person who died is in heaven? God knows. I don't. That is not evasion. It is a job description. You were never given the office, so you can put down the gavel. And Jesus attaches a warning to picking it up anyway: the measure you use will be measured to you. Whatever standard

What fault do you find genuinely irritating in other people? What are the odds it is a smaller version of something in you?

Kent joked that in these six verses Jesus gives his views on judicial philosophy, ophthalmology, and animal husbandry. Verse 3 is the ophthalmology. "Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?" The comedy is deliberate. A speck of sawdust and a construction beam. Jesus is not describing a slight imbalance of perspective; he is describing a man walking around with a plank sticking out of his skull, squinting at somebody else's eyelash. And notice the verbs. You *see* the speck — you are looking hard at it, examining it closely. You do not *notice* the log. The thing that is objectively larger is the thing you are least aware of. That is how it works. Our own faults do not feel like faults from the inside. They feel like con

Is there a conversation you need to have with someone — and what work do you need to do on yourself before you have it?

Here is what this passage does not say: mind your own business. Jesus says, "first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye." First and then. He fully expects there to be a *then*. The goal was never that you would stop caring what happens to your brother's eye. What he forbids is the order. Correction that comes from someone who has not dealt with themselves is not correction; it is superiority wearing a helpful face. That is why he uses the word hypocrite. But correction that comes from someone who has been honest about their own log — that lands completely differently. You can always tell. Somebody who knows what they are like themselves can say a hard thing to you and it does not crush you. The log has to come out f

Where do you need more discernment, and where have you been confusing discernment with judgment?

And here is the animal husbandry — the verse that stops "judge not" from collapsing into having no discernment at all. "Do not give dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before pigs." If verse 1 were the whole story, the Christian life would mean never making any assessment of anybody, ever. Verse 6 makes that impossible. Jesus assumes you can tell the difference between someone who is genuinely asking and someone who only wants something sacred to trample. That is discernment, not judgment, and the difference matters enormously. Judgment declares a verdict on a person's standing before God — not your call, ever. Discernment reads a situation wisely and responds accordingly — required of you constantly. So hold both. Refuse to render verdicts about who is in and who is out. A

Read Matthew 7:1-5 out loud. Kent thinks the crowd on that hillside actually laughed at the log-in-the-eye picture, and that Jesus laughed with them. What is Jesus exaggerating on purpose here — and what part of it is not exaggerated at all?

“Do not judge” may be the most quoted and least understood verse in the Bible. Kent Keller on the log in your own eye, and the difference between condemning and discerning.

Kent noticed that Jesus says "judge not" in verse 1 and then in verse 6 expects you to work out who not to hand your pearls to. His line was between people and actions — "Do you think so-and-so is a Christian? God knows, I don't." Where do you find that line hardest to hold?

“Do not judge” may be the most quoted and least understood verse in the Bible. Kent Keller on the log in your own eye, and the difference between condemning and discerning.

Kent's former student Sam started telling a classmate at lunch how he came to faith, and she cut him off — "I don't need the rules, I don't need the guilt" — and walked away. What do you think she had already heard from Christians before that lunch?

“Do not judge” may be the most quoted and least understood verse in the Bible. Kent Keller on the log in your own eye, and the difference between condemning and discerning.

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What Jesus Really Meant About Judging · Group Guide

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Matthew 7:1-6

Kent Keller Sunday, February 22, 2026

Icebreaker

Tell us about a time someone gave you advice they very obviously were not taking themselves. What was it, and how did you react in the moment?

Matthew 7:1-6

Discussion Questions

1
Read Matthew 7:1-5 out loud. Kent thinks the crowd on that hillside actually laughed at the log-in-the-eye picture, and that Jesus laughed with them. What is Jesus exaggerating on purpose here — and what part of it is not exaggerated at all?
2
Kent noticed that Jesus says "judge not" in verse 1 and then in verse 6 expects you to work out who not to hand your pearls to. His line was between people and actions — "Do you think so-and-so is a Christian? God knows, I don't." Where do you find that line hardest to hold?
3
Kent's former student Sam started telling a classmate at lunch how he came to faith, and she cut him off — "I don't need the rules, I don't need the guilt" — and walked away. What do you think she had already heard from Christians before that lunch?
4
Kent told about George Wilson, who refused President Andrew Jackson's pardon, and Chief Justice Marshall's ruling that a pardon refused is no pardon at all. He also described a judge who sentences a rebel, then steps down, takes off the robe, pays the fine, and takes him home as a son. What makes a pardon like that hard to accept?
5
Kent said that if you have shared your faith with someone and it has gone nowhere, stop — no tracts left where they'll find them, no links you think they really ought to read, no more invitations they have already declined. Tell them you'll be praying, and then pray. Who is that person for you, and what would stopping actually look like?
6
About twenty years ago Kent went back to a handful of people he owed apologies to for things he had said, and every one of them forgave him. Who is one name on that list for you, and when this week will you make the call?

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What Jesus Really Meant About Judging · Group Guide

Matthew 7:1-6

Discussion Questions

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