Wow, so you think you are in a position to judge the heart, when "God alone knows the hearts of men?"
We do not JUDGE the heart, but we are supposed to---even commanded to---judge righteously concerning all things, whether they be truth or lies, and whether they are serving the cause of Christ, or the cause of the enemy.
Now that you've touched on the subject, let's discover about how Christians are to judge.
There is a vital aspect to judging. One of the gifts of the Spirit is the “discerning of spirits”, found in
1 Corinthians 12:10. The Greek word for discernment is, “diakrisis”, which comes from two words: “dia”, meaning “through, between”, and “krino”, meaning, “to judge”. In other words, the Holy Spirit gifts people so that they can make a judgment between two things, as to which right, and which is wrong. The specific gift of “discernment of spirits” involves being supernaturally able to distinguish between a person who is serving the cause of evil spirits, and one who is serving the cause of God. As soon as one says, “ No person has the right to judge”, then that person is actually quenching the Holy Spirit’s gifting of people to make judgments which will edify the church.
To say that we the Church cannot judge a situation or a person in sin is to allow cultural relativism to slip into the church, falling into an unbalanced doctrine of judgment. This is happening more and more now.
The Lord Jesus shows that it is good to “judge with righteous judgment” (
John 7:24). We should make judgments based on the yardstick of righteousness as revealed in His Word, which looks beyond mere outward appearances, and are made with the right spirit in heart.
When Jesus said, “Judge not, that you be not judged” (
Matthew 7:1), we immediately know what kind of judgment He is referring to there. He cannot mean that we must never make any judgment at all, otherwise we would not be able to fulfill some other scriptural mandates, such as never to allow anyone to deceive us...see
Matthew 24:4; Luke 21:8; 2 Thessalonians 2:3; Ephesians 5:6; Colossians 2:8. If only God can judge, as many think, then how will we be able to fulfill the apostle John’s command: “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world” (1 John 4:1). Far from being wrong, judgment is actually a vital part of the Christian armour!