cast the mote out of thy brother's eye."
According to the New Testament, we are meant to care so much for the
other man, that we are willing to do all we can to remove from his
eye the mote which is marring his vision and hindering his blessing.
We are told to "admonish one another" and "exhort one another" and to
"wash one another's feet" and "to provoke one another to love and
good works." The love of Jesus poured out in us will make us want to
help our brother in this way.

What blessing may not come to many others through our willingness
humbly to challenge one another, as led by God. A humble Swiss, named
Nicholas of Basle, one of the Society of the "Friends of God,"
crossed the mountains to Strassbourg and entered the Church of Dr.
Tauler, the popular preacher of that city. Said Nicholas, "Dr.
Tauler, before you can do your greatest work for God, the world and
this city, you must die--die to yourself, your gifts, your
popularity, and even your own goodness, and when you have learned the
full meaning of the Cross, you will have a new power with God and
man." That humble challenge from an obscure Christian changed Dr.
Tauler's life, and he did indeed learn to die, and became one of the
great factors to prepare the way for Luther and the Reformation. In
this passage the Lord Jesus tells us how we may do this service for
one another.

What is the Beam?

First, however, the Lord Jesus tells us that it is only too possible
to try to take the tiny mote, a tiny speck of sawdust, out of the
other's eye when there is a beam, a great length of timber, in ours.
When that is the case, we haven't a chance of casting out the mote in
the other, because we cannot see straight ourselves, and in any case
it is sheer hypocrisy to attempt to do so.

Now we all know what Jesus meant by the mote in the other person's
eye. It is some fault which we fancy we can discern in him; it may be
an act he has done against us, or some attitude he adopts towards us.
But what did the Lord Jesus mean by the beam in our eye? I suggest
that the beam in our eye is simply our unloving reaction to the other
man's mote. Without doubt there is a wrong in the other person. But
our reaction to that wrong is wrong too! The mote in him has provoked
in us resentment, or coldness, or criticism, or bitterness, or evil
speaking, or ill will--all of them variants of the basic ill, unlove.
And that, says the Lord Jesus, is far, far worse than the tiny wrong