I’ve been in conversation many times with people confessing the depths of their lives—the sin they’ve engaged in, the shame they carry. My response is never the same for each person.

There are different circumstances, situations, and family histories that have led them to that point. While sinful patterns certainly exist, we must do our best to be led by the Holy Spirit in each specific encounter.

Let’s dive in.

We, as human beings, love to categorize. It’s a mental shortcut. We create boxes: “Pharisee,” “Sinner,” “Tax Collector,” “Gentile,” “Liberal,” “Conservative,” “That Kind of Person.” It makes the world feel simpler, more manageable. We see the group, apply the label, and move on.

But this tendency to lump people and ideas together without careful examination, is not just a social flaw. It’s irresponsible. It is a failure of discernment, and it has devastating consequences for how we share the Gospel. It is a primary reason the raw, powerful truth of God’s Word is so often rejected before it’s even truly heard.

The Bible does not commend this lazy thinking. Instead, it commands the opposite: case-by-case, Holy Spirit filled discernment.

The Command to Judge Rightly

Often, Christians will misquote Jesus, saying, “Judge not” (Matthew 7:1), as a blanket statement against all assessment. This is not what Jesus taught. The same Jesus who said that also commanded, “Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment” (John 7:24).

The issue is not if we judge; it’s how. Judging “by appearances” is an act of the flesh—it’s grouping. It’s seeing the “outward appearance,” the label, the stereotype (1 Samuel 16:7). “Right judgment,” however, is a spiritual work. It requires wisdom, patience, and a standard found only in the Word of God.

This spiritual maturity is what the author of Hebrews calls the ability “to distinguish good from evil.”

“But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.” (Hebrews 5:14)

The Greek word for “discernment” here is diakrisis. It means “a judging, a distinguishing, a differentiation.” Mature believers are not those who stop distinguishing; they are those who are trained by constant practice to do it rightly—to separate the holy from the profane, the true from the false, and the individual soul from the worldly group.

When we trade this spiritual work of diakrisis for the fleshly shortcut of stereotyping, we abandon our biblical mandate.

Christ: The Master of Individual Discernment

If we need a model for this, we look to Jesus. No one was more discerning, and no one was more opposed to unrighteous, group-based judgment. His ministry was a constant offense to those who lived by labels.

• He engaged Nicodemus, a Pharisee. (John 3:1-2) To the disciples, “Pharisee” meant “enemy.” It was a box labeled “hypocrite,” “legalist,” “lost cause.” But Jesus saw an individual—a man wrestling with spiritual hunger, a “teacher of Israel” who needed to be born again. He didn’t preach at the group “Pharisee”; He spoke to the man, Nicodemus.
• He sought out the Woman at the Well, a Samaritan. (John 4:7-9) The Jews had a category for Samaritans: “unclean,” “heretic,” “despised.” They were a group to be avoided. Jesus not only spoke to this woman—a shocking breach of protocol—He saw past her group and her sinful reputation to her desperate spiritual thirst.
• He called Zacchaeus, a Chief Tax Collector. (Luke 19:1-10) Tax collectors were the ultimate “sinner” category, traitors to their own people. The crowd “grumbled” when Jesus went to his house (Luke 19:7). They saw the group. Jesus saw a “son of Abraham” whom He had come “to seek and to save” (Luke 19:9-10).

In every case, Jesus looked past the label and saw the person. He “looks on the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7). We, in our failure to discern, look only on the appearance.

How Group-Think Cripples Evangelism

This failure to see the individual is precisely where our evangelism breaks down. The Gospel is an intensely personal message of individual reconciliation to a personal God. But when we approach people as categories, we poison the well before they can ever drink the “living water.”

The clearest biblical example of this is the Apostle Peter.

In Acts 10, Peter is still bound by group-think. He holds to the rigid Jewish distinction between “clean” (Jews) and “unclean” (Gentiles). God has to literally shock him out of it with a vision of unclean animals, commanding him, “What God has made clean, do not call common” (Acts 10:15).

When Peter finally enters the house of Cornelius, a Roman centurion, the truth hits him. He declares:

“Truly I understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to Him.” (Acts 10:34-35)

This is our current problem today. We carry prejudices—barriers—that God has already torn down at the cross (Ephesians 2:14).

• Instead of seeing a person loved by God and trapped in sin, we preach at a category instead of telling them the Truth as it is written in the word of God.
• We see an atheist and, instead of hearing their specific doubts, we launch a pre-packaged argument at “an unbeliever.”
• We see someone from a different denomination and, instead of discerning their actual beliefs, we attack them personally.

In doing so, we commit “folly and shame” described in Proverbs: “If one gives an answer before he hears, it is his folly and shame” (Proverbs 18:13). We give our “answer”—the Gospel—before we have ever truly heard the individual person, their hurts, their questions, or their story.

This doesn’t mean that their feelings are valid or that their experiences override the word of God. It just means that we should do our best by God’s grace to engage in every single conversation as led by the Holy Spirit.

The Tragic Result: Truth Rejected

This is why the truth of God’s Word is rejected more than it is received.

It’s not always because the truth itself is offensive, though the cross is an offense (1 Corinthians 1:18, 23). Often, the truth is rejected because the messenger has failed. We have delivered the right message with the wrong judgment. We have spoken truth, but not “in love” (Ephesians 4:15), because “love” requires seeing the individual.

Instead of becoming “all things to all people” to save some, as Paul did (1 Corinthians 9:22), we demand that all people fit our “one thing” before we will even speak to them. Paul adapted his method to reach individuals—speaking as a Jew to Jews, as one without the law to Gentiles—all without compromising the message.

You cannot effectively witness to someone you have already stereotyped.

When we approach a person as a “case” or a “group,” we are no longer a messenger of Christ; we are a clanging cymbal (1 Corinthians 13:1). The person doesn’t reject the truth of God; they reject us—our arrogance, our prejudice, and our refusal to see them as a soul made in the image of God.

Application: The Path of Right Judgment

We must repent of this lazy, fleshly, and destructive habit of “grouping.” The Gospel’s integrity and our witness depend on it.

1. Acknowledge Your Partiality. The command in James 2:9 is severe: “But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors.” Showing partiality—favoring one group, despising another—is sin. Confess it as such.
2. Pray for God’s Eyes. Before you evangelize, pray as David did: “Search me, O God, and know my heart!” (Psalm 139:23). Ask God to replace your worldly categories with His perspective—to see people as He sees them: individual souls for whom Christ died.
3. Listen Before You Answer. Obey Proverbs 18:13. Ask questions. Hear their story. Understand their specific objection or hurt. You are not there to win an argument against a “type”; you are there to introduce a person to The Savior — Jesus Christ.
4. Aim the Truth with Love. Once you have listened, speak the truth of Scripture boldly. But speak it to them, to their situation, to their need. Do not use the Bible as a club to beat a stereotype; use it as a scalpel to heal an individual heart.

We are called to be fishers of men (Matthew 4:19), not managers of categories. Let us abandon the dangerous shortcuts of the flesh and embrace the diligent, loving, and righteous discernment of the Holy Spirit. Only then will we see the truth of God’s Word received as it ought to be.