You judge by human standards; I pass judgment on no-one.

“by human standards” =  “after the flesh” (KJV) = the nature of the flesh is to be weak and incomplete and so it is with their judgment. Even though Jesus will later state that He came into the world for judgment (John 9:39), His purpose in coming was not judgment, but salvation (John 3:17, 12:47). The judging He will do is just a natural consequence of His coming and will be a result of the rejection of the salvation He brings. In fact, men were upset with Him for not judging during His stay on earth. (He mingled with publicans and sinners Mark 2:16, Luke 15:2, did not get rid the sinful woman in Simon’s house Luke 7:39, and refused to condemn the woman caught in adultery John 8:11.) In any case, He does not engage in the type of judging the Pharisees are doing. They are judging after the flesh and thus making imperfect judgments.

Mark 2:16  When the teachers of the law who were Pharisees saw him eating with the “sinners” and tax collectors, they asked his disciples: “Why does he eat with tax collectors and ‘sinners’?”

Luke 15:2  But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, “This man welcomes sinners, and eats with them.”

Luke 7:39  When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would know who is touching him and what kind of woman she is—that she is a sinner.”

Do we ever judge “after the flesh”? This isn’t speaking only of judging other people, but it also applies to every decision we make based upon the information we have available and not upon the direction of God. Are your decisions a result of consultation with God and receiving His direction, or do you make your decisions all on your own?

Our decisions are wrong for a couple of reasons. First, we don’t know all the facts, much as the Pharisees in the previous verse. DNA testing has recently been the cause of overturning many convictions for rape and murder. Those original verdicts were made with incomplete knowledge. Second, our methods of making decisions are carnally influenced, as shown in this verse. Our logic is human logic and will sometimes fail.

So how do we make right decisions in our lives? One way of looking at that process is this:

  1. Ask God.
  2. Listen. Expect an answer.
  3. Obey when God tells you what to do.
  4. If you don’t hear anything, you may not have done the last thing He told you to do.
  5. Some decisions He trusts you to make based upon your knowledge of Him and His ways. This is called maturity. We do the same thing with our children. Some examples are that we don’t have to ask Him if we should gossip or lie and we don’t have to ask Him if He wants us to become a prostitute or a burglar.