Luke 6:38-42: in context

Jesus teaches about giving and about judging. Give, he says, and it will be given to you, good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over. He warns that the blind cannot guide the blind. And then a vivid image: why do you look at the speck in your brother's eye, but do not notice the beam in your own? How can you offer to remove the speck from your brother's eye while a beam is in your own? First take the beam out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's.

The picture Jesus draws is almost comic, and deliberately so: a man with a plank protruding from his own eye, peering closely to pick a speck of dust from someone else's. It captures a very human failing, our sharp eye for the small faults of others and our blindness to our own larger ones. We notice, and are quick to point out, the speck in a brother's eye, the minor flaw, the small wrong, while remaining oblivious to the beam in our own, the greater fault we do not see because it is ours. And so we set ourselves up as correctors of others while our own graver faults go unaddressed. Jesus does not forbid ever helping a brother with the speck in his eye; he says, first take the beam out of your own. The order matters. Self-examination comes before correction of others; we must deal with our own sin first, honestly, before we presume to address someone else's. And there is more than order here; there is a promise. First remove your own beam, Jesus says, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's. Dealing with our own faults first does not only silence our hypocrisy; it clears our sight, so that if we do go to help a brother, we do it with humility, with clear vision, out of a heart that has known its own need of mercy. The one who has taken the beam from his own eye helps his brother differently, gently, having been there himself. So the call is to turn the sharp eye first on ourselves, to deal honestly with our own greater faults before fussing over others' smaller ones, and only then, cleared of the beam, to help our brother see.

Do I have a sharp eye for the small faults of others and a blindness to my own greater ones, quick to correct the speck while a beam is in my own eye, or can I heed Jesus and first take the beam out of my own eye, dealing honestly with my own sin before presuming to address anyone else's?