Mat 7:4 (NIV) How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye?

Most of us would assume that this passage isn’t talking to us. Few of us feel we have a plank in our own eye. As we look around at the people and all their faults, failures, and shortcomings; we actually look pretty good. We aren’t nearly as bad as most of them. Sure, we aren’t perfect. But, we definitely aren’t as bad as the people we see around us. That attitude in us is what the Bible is calling a plank. The plank is obscuring our vision. It is keeping us from seeing our true condition.

Rom 3:10-18 (NIV) As it is written: “There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.” “

Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit.” “The poison of vipers is on their lips.” “Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.” “Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and misery mark their ways, and the way of peace they do not know.” “There is no fear of God before their eyes.”

This is every human being on the face of the earth without God. This is you and me without God. There are no exceptions. We don’t like seeing this nature in us. But, it is always lurking in the background. If it hadn’t been for the Holy Spirit convicting us (John 16:8), we would have fulfilled every one of these sinful things.

When we go to help someone, we have to face this truth first. When we do, we are a lot nicer and less condescending when we talk to a person with a speck in their eye. The big question we often face is why the plank is in our eye and the speck in the eye of the person we are trying to help? Here is how God looks at things.