5. What do we fail to consider in pointing out another person’s faults? Matthew 7:3.
COMPILER’S NOTE: A mote is a tiny speck of dust. A beam, in this sense, is a large piece of timber used in constructing ceilings and roofs.
NOTE: ‘Individuals sometimes get, in their own mind, the mote and the beam misplaced. In their own eye there is but a mote (if anything), while in their brother’s they clearly discern the beam, and in fevered haste set themselves about the work of casting the beam out of the eye thus affected. With a manifest view to correct such, the great Teacher says, “Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.” Verse 5. Had this principle always been lived out, how much hatred, jealousy, envy and malice would this poor, dark world have been spared, how much strife, and confusion, and backbiting.’ Uriah Smith: Review & Herald, September 18, 1860.
6. How does Jesus describe the foolishness which often accompanies our attempts to criticise others? Mattthew 7:4.
NOTE: ‘How can a man be sure that his own eye is so clear that he is justified in attempting a surgical operation on his brother’s eye? The man in whose eye the beam is and who sees, or thinks he sees, a mote in his brother’s eye, is totally unconscious of the beam in his own eye. He thinks that the fault is all with his brother. So the fact that one is not conscious of a fault in himself is not therefore any reason why he should think that he has not the fault, and that he can serve as a regulator for his brethren.’ E. J. Waggoner: Present Truth, May 3, 1894.