Mat 7:3 (NIV) Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?

Those with specks and those with planks both have obstructions. Obstructions keep us from being able to see clearly. Partial obstructions (specks) keep us from seeing all that God wants to show us. Complete obstructions (planks) stop us from going any further in the things of God. We are blocked off from God’s light. And, we can’t help anyone else to see God’s light.

Mat 7:4-5 (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?

You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.

A critical attitude is always a plank. The problem we see in someone else is always a speck. We never start, in our relationship with others, in a superior spiritual condition. Just before we go straighten someone else out, we must first get the plank out of our own eye. That plank is the pride that we feel when we see someone with a problem. We feel superior to them. We frequently assume that they need someone like us with special spiritual skills and accomplishments to help them with their speck.

The thing that is needed first is our realization that we are in pretty bad spiritual condition ourselves. The only reason we feel so spiritually accomplished is that God hasn’t revealed all our problems to us yet. So, we first have to get the plank of pride out of our own eye so we “will see clearly to remove the speck from [our] brother’s eye.”