(sometimes quite unconscious) that provoked it. A mote means in the
Greek a little splinter, whereas a beam means a rafter. And the Lord
Jesus means by this comparison to tell us that our unloving reaction
to the other's wrong is what a great rafter is to a little splinter!
Every time we point one of our fingers at another and say, "It's your
fault," three of our fingers are pointing back at us. God have mercy
on us for the many times when it has been so with us and when in our
hypocrisy we have tried to deal with the person's fault, when God saw
there was this thing far worse in our own hearts.

But let us not think that a beam is of necessity some violent
reaction on our part. The first beginning of a resentment is a beam,
as is also the first flicker of an unkind thought, or the first
suggestion of unloving criticism. Where that is so, it only distorts
our vision and we shall never see our brother as he really is,
beloved of God. If we speak to our brother with that in our hearts,
it will only provoke him to adopt the same hard attitude to us, for
it is a law of human relationships that "with what measure ye mete,
it shall be measured to you again."

Take it to Calvary.

No! "First cast out the beam out of thine own eye." That is the first
thing we must do. We must recognise our unloving reaction to him as
sin. On our knees we must go with it to Calvary and see Jesus there
and get a glimpse of what that sin cost Him. At His Feet we must
repent of it and be broken afresh and trust the Lord Jesus to cleanse
it away in His precious Blood and fill us with His love for that
one--and He will, and does, if we will claim His promise. Then we
shall probably need to go to the other in the attitude of the
repentant one, tell him of the sin that has been in our heart and
what the Blood has effected there and ask him to forgive us too. Very
often bystanders will tell us, and sometimes our own hearts, that the
sin we are confessing is not nearly so bad as the other's wrong,
which he is not yet confessing. But we have been to Calvary, indeed
we are learning to live under the shadow of Calvary, and we have seen
our sin there and we can no longer compare our sin with another's.
But as we take these simple steps of repentance, then we see clearly
to cast out the mote out of the other's eye, for the beam in our eye
has gone. In that moment God will pour light in on us as to the
other's need, that neither he nor we ever had before.