If you discover that a beam is blocking the flow of God's love in your life, as these beams were blocking the river, then you must know that the only solution is the one to be found in Jesus. He is the Great Physician, and He is able to extract both motes and beams because there is nothing to hinder His vision. Besides, he will give you a vision of His glory, as you look to Him, that will then be reflected from your purified eye to others.
Now all of this really leads up to one great final point, and that is the need for love. We all need love. We need to love. And the reason is simply that when we are filled with love we will find ourselves uninterested in finding a speck in the eye of the other person.
Now we are going to see as we go on in our next study that none of this is meant to encourage laxity in regard to sound doctrine. We are to discriminate doctrinally. What is more, no congregation will ever be strong unless it is filled with persons capable of leadership who have drunk deeply at the fountain of God's Word and who are therefore able to do this. It does not support error. But it does mean that we are to be most careful in regard to our attitude to those who appear to us to be erring.
Another form of mote-seeking relates to doctrine, for there is always a type of person who listens to the minister or to another Christian, only to find out where he deviates from the mote-seeker’s personal standards. Often, because they come to the situation filled with harsh prejudices, such persons do not even do a very good job of listening.
In the second half of Matthew six, in the midst of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus had been talking about failures that will render a Christian apathetic in regard to Christian service. They are a love of money and anxiety. Both of these will have a desensitizing effect on his witness, for if a Christian has his mind centered on things (either to accumulate them or to worry about them) he will not see God and, hence, he cannot serve Him. At this point, however, Jesus goes on to show that there is also a type of zeal that will ruin his witness. This is a zeal for judging others. It is harmful because it will turn a believer into a sharp and unjust critic of his Christian brothers.
