Main news for 27 September 2026

Paul speaks of the need to refrain from judging and evaluating a person. Obviously, here he has in mind the same thing as Jesus Himself, who called His followers not to judge their neighbors. This is precisely the feature that distinguishes true servants of Christ. The point, of course, is not the evaluation of particular actions or results of activity, for without such evaluation no interaction with people is possible, but the evaluation of the person himself. Often we transfer an evaluation of a person’s particular action or spiritual condition to the person himself, considering him to be nothing more than what he appears to be at the present moment. Yet people are capable of change, and the source of all change is a person’s spiritual “I,” the very thing the Bible calls the heart and that only God sees fully, down to the final depth. Therefore only He can evaluate a person adequately. We can judge fairly only particular words, actions, and results.

But even in this case it is important not to use such evaluations to determine a person’s place in one’s own world, in the world of one’s relationships. In the end, God gives each person his evaluation, and it is not at all important to Him what we think about one another, not because we and our opinions are indifferent to Him, but because our mutual evaluations are almost always quite far from the reality that is open to Him. That is why Paul does not attach special importance to people’s opinion of him and his ministry, and advises others to do the same. But in that case it hardly makes sense to demand from those around us that they take into account our opinion of them. At least when the matter is the evaluation of the person himself and not his actions.

Still, even when the matter concerns actions, it is important to keep in mind the motives that moved a person, and they can sometimes be very difficult to understand. All the more, one should not determine a person’s place in one’s own world on the basis of his words, actions, or passing conditions, whether spiritual or psychological. Otherwise every person will inevitably please us at one moment and not at another, seem close and understandable at one moment and alien and distant at another; we will consider him a friend, then an enemy. In reality this person may well be none of the things he appears to us to be.

Of course, his states, words, and actions can and inevitably will affect the possibility of interacting with him, but such interaction is only a function conditioned by the situation. To give a final evaluation of a person on the basis of the ways and forms of his functioning is, at the very least, rash. For often spiritually empty people turn out to be extremely active and “correct,” so that it may seem as if they are the very model of Christian life. But often such activists, having exhausted their strength and lost their former enthusiasm, prove bankrupt precisely spiritually, not having within themselves that life of the Kingdom which gives meaning to every kind of activity. That is why the apostle advises us not to judge and not to give evaluations before the day of the Savior’s return and the triumph of the Kingdom: for only then will it become clear who has walked his path and who is truly worth what.

The motto of the age we are living through has become the aphorism, "We wanted the best, but it turned out as always." This brilliant expression really does reflect how our life unfolds, because it applies not only to the activity of the state, but also to many of our own actions performed in "private life." It would be frightening to be judged by the fruits of these actions, because we would hardly be able to find anything not poisoned by sin. Only the sacrament of the Eucharist would be left to us then.

But the apostle Paul tells us that God will judge, in any case, not only by the fruits of our deeds, but also by the intentions of the heart. And in this there is amazing hope for us. Besides, our life is often such that we have many intentions deep in the heart and little strength. And this, according to the apostle's thought, is also not a hopeless situation. The small matter left is this: that the intentions of the heart be worthy of praise from God. Then it makes sense to ask Him for wisdom and strength to carry out these intentions.

Continuing the conversation about ministry, Paul turns to another theme very important for the servant and for everyone seeking the Kingdom: the theme of judgment and evaluation both of the person himself and of his activity. The apostle's reasoning undoubtedly echoes the Savior's words: "Do not judge, and you will not be judged," and for Paul they prove to be the expression of one of the most important principles of life and of relationships between people in the Kingdom. The key to the apostle's understanding of the problem of judgment and evaluation is his remark that he not only has no concern for other people's evaluations of his activity, but does not even evaluate himself in any way (vv. 3-4). Judgment is God's affair; it will take place at the end of time, so one should not get ahead of events with hasty evaluations (v. 5). Only in this way can mutual self-exaltation be avoided (vv. 6-7), and therefore one can become faithful servants and witnesses of Christ and the Kingdom (vv. 1-2).

Such an approach is not accidental, if we remember that in the Kingdom each person receives precisely his own reward. The Kingdom presupposes not collectivism but community life. A collective is a purely human phenomenon, and therefore the criteria for evaluating each person in it will inevitably be purely human and, consequently, universal. Here standardization is inevitable, and a final evaluation both of everything done by a member of the collective and of judgment concerning the person himself is entirely possible. By earthly measures, a person proves to be only, in the words of sociologists, a "product of the environment"; in himself he means nothing, and everything he has done is valuable only insofar as it is useful "for society," or more precisely, for the particular collective to which the person belongs. In the Kingdom, however, only God can evaluate both the person himself and everything he has done.

Of course, in a community a person's relationships both with God and with neighbors are extremely important, but here the person does not become derivative of the community in the way that in our still untransformed world he often becomes derivative of society, of the collective. And in that case it becomes clear that neither the community as a whole nor any of its members individually can or should "judge" a person, that is, give a final evaluation of the person himself and of his activity. Of course, if certain actions contradict the Torah and the one who committed them does not repent of anything and regrets nothing, the situation becomes quite unambiguous; but in that case one can say of the offender that he brings God's condemnation upon himself. In all other cases, as we can see, it is better to refrain from evaluations until the end of time, when the One to whom the decisive word belongs at the Last Judgment will speak His word.