Tool Beta
Is It Actually in the Bible?
Phrases people quote as Scripture. The real verse, or the honest answer that there is not one.
"Judge not, that ye be not judged" means never make moral judgments
The very next lines are about removing the plank from your own eye: the target is hypocritical judgment, not judgment itself.
Matthew 7:1, in every translation this tool compares.
Matthew 7:1 is the famous opening clause, but Jesus keeps talking: "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?… 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" (7:3-5). The passage doesn't end with silence; it ends with clear sight and a specific, named action: helping remove the speck, after dealing honestly with the much larger problem in yourself first.
The teaching assumes moral judgments will keep happening; it's aimed squarely at a double standard, judging others by a strict standard you don't apply to yourself, not at the act of discernment itself. Paul makes an almost identical move addressing a different audience: "you who judge practice the same things" (Romans 2:1, NET) is a rebuke of hypocrisy, not an argument that judgment as such is forbidden.
