Building up believers and the New Testament church

Principles of Spiritual Fellowship

We Cannot Sit In the Judgment Seat

Now we go on to the third principle, which is that we cannot sit in the judgment seat. This means that we cannot look on our brothers and sisters in this great fellowship and judge them. We must take our eyes off one another and look to the Lord Jesus Christ. Admittedly, this is difficult; it cannot be done apart from tasting the real work of the Cross. This is one of the hardest areas for any gathering of God's people to attain to. It is a place of maturity, when we look at one another through spiritual eyes, that is, as the Lord looks at us. It means that we consider each one in the nature of God, which is love, and we serve one another with love as the source of our ability.

As long as we continue to judge and criticize one another, we can know nothing of real corporate and spiritual fellowship. We become judges of the law rather than doers of the law. The spiritual man is one who has the law written in his heart and his mind, and is a doer of that which God is speaking to him. The carnal or natural man is one who is moving in his senses or his emotions, or in the imaginations of his own mind. This causes him to judge others, comparing himself with them and then judging according to his own standards, rather than leaving them in the hands of God. We must not be in the judgment seat if we are going to know real spiritual fellowship.