Examine Yourselves

2 Corinthians 13:5-10

Examine Yourselves

Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves.  Do you not realise that Christ Jesus is in you—unless, of course, you fail the test?  And I trust that you will discover that we have not failed the test.  Now we pray to God that you will not do anything wrong.  Not that people will see that we have stood the test but that you will do what is right even though we may seem to have failed.  For we cannot do anything against the truth, but only for the truth.  We are glad whenever we are weak but you are strong; and our prayer is for your perfection.  This is why I write these things when I am absent, that when I come I may not have to be harsh in my use of authority—the authority the Lord gave me for building you up, not for tearing you down.

mong the most disturbing affirmations Jesus ever uttered is that one recorded in Matthew 7:21-23. Not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.  Many will say to me on that day, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?”  Then I will tell them plainly, “I never knew you.  Away from me, you evildoers!”  People who are convinced they are Christians, acceptable to God and accepted by God, will be openly rejected by the Son of God at the Judgement.

How can men and women so deceive themselves?  It is no great task to deceive others, but to deceive oneself seems amazingly difficult.  That it is possible to deceive oneself is apparent from even a casual reading of the Word of God.  People listen to the Word, and ignore its commands, thus deceiving themselves, just as is stated in the Word.  Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves.  Do what it says.  Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like.  But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it—he will be blessed in what he does [James 1:22-25].

In our text is an admonition for those considering themselves to be a people of God to examine themselves.  Though assuming that he was writing Christians, the Apostle nevertheless urged self-examination to avoid deceiving oneself.  The message this day is a call to self-examination to avoid divine condemnation.  Join me in exploration of this unsettling, though necessary, exercise in Christian growth.

The Examination – Examine yourselves…  We Christians are an amazing people, capable of practising the most incredible self-deceit.  Did you ever take note of the number of warnings written in the Word against deceiving oneself?  In Romans 16:17,18 we are warned against being deceived by smooth talking religious leaders who are themselves deceitful.  Apparently, the naïve among our churches are especially vulnerable to such deceit.  Christians may deceive themselves about their own importance in the world [1 Corinthians 3:18-20].  Again, the Apostle warns against being deceived by the disobedient [Ephesians 5:6,7] and he warns against being deceived by fine-sounding arguments [Colossians 2:3].  Of course, it is especially possible that one may be deceived about the doctrines concerning Christ’s Second Coming [2 Thessalonians 2:3], as is also apparent from observations of contemporary believers.

All these examples of self-deceit have no impact on our eternal salvation, though they do affect our relationship to the Lord.  In the text for this morning’s study, however, Paul speaks of some who are attached to the church, perhaps even apparently part of the Body of Christ, who may be self-deceived about their own salvation.  In this, he is in line with warnings issued by both by James [James 1:22-27] and by John [1 John 1:8-10].

Therefore, his call is to examine whether we are in the Faith … whether we are saved.  The issue is of such importance that we must challenge ourselves, lest we deceive ourselves.  Long years before Paul, Jeremiah had warned that the heart is deceitful about all things and beyond cure.  Then he asked rhetorically, Who can understand it [Jeremiah 17:9]?  With the contemporary emphasis upon emotions and the need to be in touch with our feelings, we are a people susceptible to grossest deception.  That preacher who calls the professed people of God to self-examination will not necessarily be loved, but he will provide a vital service to those spared that awful judgement before the Living God.

The precise question put before us is to test whether we are in the Faith.  The specific means by which we apply this test is to discover whether Christ Jesus dwells in us.  Let’s apply the test and engage in some healthy self-examination.  First, Christ dwells in the believer by faith.  Have you, in faith, called on Him as Lord of life?  Have you confessed that you are a dreadful sinner and that your sins caused Him to die?  Have you submitted to Him as Lord of life, calling on Him to be your Saviour?  This is the message of life presented in the Word of God.  If you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.  For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved.  As the Scripture says, “Anyone who trusts in him will never be put to shame.”  For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile—the same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him, for, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” [Romans 10:9-13].

As has been stated in previous messages, either Christ is Lord of all or He is not Lord at all.  Either we submit ourselves to Him or we do not have His life.  Yet, simple as this call is, some remain confused.  They have joined the church, been baptised, partake of the Communion Meal on a regular basis … and yet they have no peace.  Challenged to state whether they are in the Faith, they are staggered by the difficulty of that affirmation.

Certain characteristics mark the life of the child of God.  John, in his first epistle, outlines those characteristics.  Turn back to that wee book that together we may discover these marks, applying them to our lives.  1 John 2:29 informs us that If you know that He is righteous, you know that everyone who does what is right has been born of Him.  The first mark to be observed is that the Christian does right.  Here, as in other places, we can deceive ourselves.  We imagine that “right” is defined by what feels “right”.  If it feels good, do it sounds so right.  It carries with it the stench of death, however.

Right is defined by what honours God, by what is pleasing before Him, and by what is for our best good.  We are a society controlled by our feelings, and consequently we are a society moving steadily away from what is right.  We fall in love.  Should it be any surprise that we fall out of love almost as fast as we fall in love?  We worship in the church of our choice.  Is it really a surprise that we choose more frequently to worship at home while watching the latest sitcom or the hot new video release?  We let our conscience be our guide.  Why are we surprised that we can justify nearly any action on that same basis?  The Christian does what is right, however.

The second mark John presents is that the Christian does not continue to sin.  No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in him, he cannot go on sinning, because he has been born of God [1 John 3:9].  Don’t misunderstand, the child of God is not perfect, but the child of God cannot sin with impunity.  A friend of mine used to say that though the lamb may fall into a mud puddle, it will not lay down and wallow.  Pigs, upon discovering a mud puddle, lie down and roll in the slop and the mire.  Sheep may become soiled, but they will not enjoy being dirty.

If you enjoy sin, you need to ask the hard question of how you, a professed lamb, can enjoy lying in the slop of a dying world.  The child of God, though perhaps stumbling into sin, can never enjoy himself or herself in rebellion.  If that child attempts to enjoy sin, because he or she has a relationship to the Living God, He will call them to account, disciplining them for their own good.  Remember the words recorded by the author of the Hebrew letter: If you are not disciplined (and everyone undergoes discipline), then you are illegitimate children and not true sons.  Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it.  How much more should we submit to the Father of our spirits and live!  Our fathers disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness.  No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful.  Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it [Hebrews 12:8-11].

The third mark of a Christian is that he loves the brothers.  We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love our brothers.  Anyone who does not love remains in death.  Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life in him [1 John 3:14].  That individual who insists that he or she is a Christian, but who holds himself or herself aloof from the people of God, reveals by that chosen lifestyle that Christ is not present in their life.  The child of God will want to be with the people of God.  The child of God will seek to be one with the people of God.  Listen, if it is true that Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her [Ephesians 5:25], those whom He redeems will also love that same church.  Those who have no evident love for the church reveal that they have not Christ; they are not in the Faith.  Their own life condemns them.

The fourth mark of a Christian is that he loves as God loves.  What is presented is not simply caricature; it is a true mark of the child of God.  John states the condition in 1 John 4:7,8: Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.  Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.  In our touchy-feely society, we have redefined love according to our feelings.  Let me state the matter forcefully: love is an action.  Love is not an emotion.  Nowhere in the Word of God do we find love – either God’s love or that which we are responsible to express – defined as a feeling.  We do find repeated references to the action which reveals love.

Each morning as I walked the halls of the Einstein College of Medicine, I would hear pious Jews reciting the Shema prayer: dj;a, [ynIdoa]} Wnyhel¿a> [ynIdoa}] laer;c]yI [m'v] Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.  Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.  These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts [Deuteronomy 6:4-6].  What I would have you notice is that love is demonstrated by obedience to the commands God gave.  Loving Him with heart and soul and strength is demonstrated by obedience to His commands.  The same truth of love expressed through obedience is found in Deuteronomy 10:12; 11:1,22.

Focus on those passages that the issue of love as an action may be apparent.  And now, O Israel, what does the LORD your God ask of you but to fear the LORD your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to observe the LORD’s commands and decrees that I am giving you today for your own good [Deuteronomy 10:12,13].  Love the LORD your God and keep his requirements, his decrees, his laws and his commands always…  If you carefully observe all these commands I am giving you to follow—to love the LORD your God, to walk in all his ways and to hold fast to him— [Deuteronomy 11:1,22].

Not one word about how to feel or even of how one will feel is found in any of these passages … nor elsewhere in the Word of God.  It is a wicked and self-absorbed society which has become infatuated with “self” and which emphasises love as a feeling.  In every godly society preceding this day love was recognised as the manner in which one served another.  In such godly societies, love was seen as commitment, focusing outward on the one loved instead of focusing inward on “self”.  Love was defined as what was given and not as what was received.

In a simpler day when we were closer to our God than is true of this day, a man demonstrated love toward his wife through self-sacrifice, through providing for her and showering her with attention.  A woman demonstrated love toward her husband as she expressed an attitude of submission and treated him with respect.  Just so, we know those who dwell in God’s love because they show love toward others – not the syrupy, sugary, saccharine, sweet “warm-fuzzies” so longed for in a dying world and which fade with each new morn – but love which dares act for the good of the one loved.

The fifth and final mark which characterises the presence of Christ Jesus is that the saved one overcomes the world.  Everyone born of God overcomes the world.  This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith.  Who is it that overcomes the world?  Only he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God [1 John 5:4,5].  We are engaged in warfare, not with the weapons of this world, but with the weapons of the Spirit.  We are equipped with prayer and the Word of God.  We have faith and the support of fellow Christians, truth and righteousness, to shield us from defeat.  Armed with such spiritual weapons and clothed with such godly armour, we engage in conflict … and the child of God wins.

These marks are found in the life of the child of God.  Because Christ Jesus is in that one, he is in the Faith.  Because he is saved: he does right; he does not continue to sin; he loves the brothers; he loves; and he overcomes the world.  Child of God, do you have these marks?  They are the indelible marks of the one who is indwelt by the Spirit of God.  They are the marks which cannot be disguised since they are the marks identifying the one bearing them as belonging to God.

The Purpose for Examination – Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith.  Throughout this second letter to the Corinthian saints the Apostle has subjected himself and his ministry to scrutiny.  Having now handed the lens to the Corinthians, he has challenged them to examine themselves, considering their own conduct.  Were they Christians or not?  Whatever doubts these Corinthians may have had about Paul’s ministry, he was confident that a sober evaluation of his conduct would lead them to conclude that he had fulfilled the will of God.  He believed they would vindicate him and see that he was approved by God.  However, it was their reputation and their standing in the Faith, not his, that concerned him.

Our self-examination is carried out in view of others who share the faith with us.  Those of our fellow worshippers who know us are aware of the results of our personal self-examination whether we share the results or not.  Whether we are progressing the Faith, or whether our life has become stagnant, is apparent to others.  The Apostle challenged the Corinthians to focus first on themselves.  He was concerned for them, just as any true minister of God is concerned for the flock God has assigned him.

It is distressingly easy to see the sins of others.  Most of us are experts at discovering the flaws represented in the lives of our fellow worshippers, and we are altogether too quick to publicise those flaws when once they are discovered.  However, when it comes to the publication of our own flaws, we are less eager to see them publicised, wishing only to hide them from the view of others.  In fact, we are rather too quick in our attempts to hide our personal character and spiritual flaws.

The self-examination called for in this text is carried out through comparing our lives and the progress of our walk in the Faith against the perfect standard of the Word.  This means that we must be aware of the will of God.  We discover the will of God as we invest time alone with Christ in the Word so that He can reveal His standard to us.  How do we know the way we should treat one another if we are ignorant of the Word?  How will we know the manner in which we are treat our family except we know the mind of God which is revealed in His Word?  How do we know which actions in the world of business displease God except He should reveal them to us through His Word.

We are called to compare our lives to the standard set forth in the Word of God.  That standard is a fixed standard, and not a fluid measure of our own making.  When we rely on experiences, we will always be changing the rule.  When we appeal to our feelings, we will discover that we are submitting to a tyrant.  It is that perfect pattern of the mind of God which serves as a pattern for our growth and our walk in the Faith.

Are you more mature in the Faith than a year ago?  Are you more like Christ than a year before this date?  If you are not growing in grace, becoming more Christlike, you are dying.  Are the choices you make for daily life more likely to honour Him, regardless of the perception of the inhabitants of this dying world, or are you yielding to the pressure to accommodate the views of those associated with this darkened world?  You need not permit others to rank you according to an artificial standard associated with this world, but you must stand in comparison to the rule provided by the Living God.

Paul prayed that the Corinthians would be perfected, made mature.  Just so, I pray that God will give each of us maturity in the Faith.  I pray that He will make each of you complete, perfect before Him, able to stand as one mature in the Faith.  I have often pointed to Paul’s statement concerning elders as an example of the mature Christian.  Though the conditions are set for those gifted men set apart for Christian ministry, it does not change the truth that any Christian should aspire to such maturity.  Listen again, if you are in doubt as to the standard by which to examine your maturity.

The [mature saint] must be above reproach, the husband of but one wife [or the wife of but one husband], temperate, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not given to drunkenness, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money.  He [or she] must manage his [or her] own family well and see that his [or her] children obey him [or her] with proper respect…  He [or she] must not be a recent convert, or he [or she] may become conceited and fall under the same judgement as the devil.  He [or she] must also have a good reputation with outsiders, so that he [or she] will not fall into disgrace and into the devil’s trap [1 Timothy 3:2-7].

Add to that the few situations which are additionally spoken of in Titus 1:6-9, and you will have all the conditions necessary for gauging maturity.  A [mature Christian] must be blameless … [one] whose children believe and are not open to the charge of being wild and disobedient.  [A blameless saint is one who is] not overbearing, not quick-tempered, not given to drunkenness, not violent, not pursuing dishonest gain.  [A mature saint] must be hospitable, one who loves what is good, who is self-controlled, upright, holy and disciplined.  He [or she] must hold firmly to the trustworthy message as it has been taught, so that he [or she] can encourage others by sound doctrine and refute those who oppose it.  These are each areas of life which should see steady progress in each Christian’s life and walk.  We can each one focus on one of these areas where we know we are weak and work to progress in that area in the coming months.

I have frequently reviewed those conditions set forth by the Apostle for eldership.  There are some twenty-three marks of spiritual maturity, each pointing to character.  Though there are subtle shades of difference in some of the characteristics, all alike provide a measure of maturity by which the child of God may gauge his or her Christian growth.  Both outsiders and the people of God will see and testify to the maturity of the child of God.  Sit down with an open Bible and invite your spouse or a trusted spiritual advisor to review the characteristics with you.  Though the potential for hurt is present, remember the words of the wise man: Wounds from a friend can be trusted [Proverbs 27:6].  If you are in the Faith, the standard is to ensure that you are growing in the Faith.

The Result of Examination – Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves.  Do you not realise that Christ Jesus is in you—unless, of course, you fail the test?  The Apostle was confident that the Corinthians would pass the test.  No doubt there are some, perhaps even among us, who are self-deluded.  Certainly, within the churches of our Lord there are multiplied individuals who grow as weeds among the wheat of the faithful.  Should any such be discovered through the call to self-examination, I urge them to cease from their efforts to make themselves Christians and turning to the Saviour to cast himself on His mercy.  He will receive each such individual, forgive them their sin and give to them that precious gift of eternal life.

When I issue a call to you as a congregation to examine your own lives, I do so in the knowledge that such an examination, though possibly painful for the moment, will immediately yield a harvest of righteousness for each one who passes the test.  Those who discover themselves to indeed belong to Christ will be greatly encouraged to continue doing those things which are pleasing to the Lord.  I recognise that the benefit of such examination is that those who are Christians will draw rich encouragement in their life.  Examine yourselves that you may convince yourself of God’s power at work in your life and that you may continue to grow and glorify Him.

To you who apply the test and discover though that you are Christians you have begun to turn aside to your own desire, may I warn you with a heart of love that will do you good and not evil, that God shall discipline you for your own good.  You have already heard that the Lord disciplines those He loves, and since you are His dear child He will discipline you.  That which you think will bring you happiness will turn to dust in your life.  Your heart will be buffeted and He will stand opposed to you in your mad pursuit of self-will.  If you persist in do your will instead of His, He will remove that which you thought most dear in life.  If you do not heed His warning, He may well remove you from this life that you do harm neither to His Name nor yourself.

You who honestly apply the test and find that you have failed can yet benefit, though the knowledge that you have failed will no doubt be painful for the moment.  If the knowledge of failure serves to turn you who are self-deceived to the Lord, what a rich benefit will be yours!  If the knowledge that you have deceived yourselves serves to bring you to life in Him, how you will rejoice.  Though others may suspect that an individual has lived a life of self-delusion, ultimately it is the Lord alone who knows.  If He now speaks to your heart, please submit to Him that you might enter into life.

If I now speak to such an individual, do not let pride turn you away from responding to the Spirit’s call.  Do not let your fear of what your fellow church members may think keep you from life that is true life.  Confess that you have deceived yourself, receive Christ as Master of life that He might become your Saviour in very fact.  Amen.