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“And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?…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” (Matthew 7:3,5).
A mote is something very small, and today we would use the words “speck” or “particle.” Sometimes we have a speck of something in our eye, and we like it if someone who can see well will take it out for us. But the Lord Jesus exaggerates here, to make a point. He says that if we have a beam, like a very large piece of wood, in our own eye, how could we see clearly to take a speck out of someone else’s eye? Of course, no one could have anything as large as a beam of wood in his eye, but that is how some of us are when we want to correct others.
We can see the smallest sin or failure in someone else, but we often cannot see the much greater failure in our own life. Then, when we go to someone else to point out their failure, perhaps they draw to our attention the much greater failure in our life. First of all, we ought to correct our own life and our own failure. Then we could see clearly to help someone else deal with sin in their life.
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