Examine Yourselves

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2 Corinthians 13:3-7 KJV
3) Since ye seek a proof of Christ speaking in me, which to you-ward is not weak, but is mighty in you.
4) For though he was crucified through weakness, yet he liveth by the power of God. For we also are weak in him, but we shall live with him by the power of God toward you.
5) Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves. Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates?
6) But I trust that ye shall know that we are not reprobates.
7) Now I pray to God that ye do no evil; not that we should appear approved, but that ye should do that which is honest, though we be as reprobates.

They wanted Paul to prove himself to them, Paul's reply was that they should prove their own selves by their self examination, that they are in the faith. Do you know your own self, that Jesus Christ is in you?

Romans 8:15-16 LITV
15) For you did not receive a spirit of slavery again to fear, but you received a Spirit of adoption by which we cry, Abba! Father!
16) The Spirit Himself witnesses with our spirit that we are children of God.

If you know Him, you will know. You cannot fake "Christ in you". Either your heart cries out to your Father, or your heart cries out in emptiness.

Much love!

 

[stunnedbygrace]

It confounds me when I read others talking about faith. I don’t think they understand what faith means. When someone asks, yes but how do you know you have a true and living faith rather than just mental assent, I just scratch my head.
When Jesus would ask, why is your faith so little, He was saying, why do you trust so little? He wasn’t asking anything other than that.

Faith means trust. So when the apostle says to examine yourself and whether or not you are in the faith, he’s saying, examine if you really ARE trusting God. If you ARE practicing trust or just saying so but really putting trust in something or someone else.

Is examining whether you are trusting God a monumentally difficult thing? He has said many things. You must trust Him in all of those things He has said. However, your trust grows. You start out believing and trusting He forgives and that you will never perish. But when you examine yourself, you begin to see things you don’t trust Him about. You begin to say, but…I’m worrying about money, inflation, the economy, the shrinking of my savings, worrying I haven’t saved enough, etc. So you see you’re a hypocrite, telling others to trust God and what He has said even while you haven’t been doing so. So you’re in danger of being disqualified from the race of trust for being a hypocrite.

Or, you might see that you’re not trusting Him for your spiritual provision and you worry incessantly about that or that it’s going too slow.

Examining yourself to see if you are trusting is not that hard. It’s true that it’s easier to see when others are not trusting than when you are not, but God helps us in it. The very fact that you HAVE those aha moments where you say, oh my gosh, I’ve been such a hypocrite in this or that IS by Gods help.

Examining if you are in the faith means examining if you are trusting God. It’s is not a set of doctrines boiled down to creeds. If you say you believe there is one God (creed) but worry about money, what kind of bind are you in?
There is one God, you trust that He has told the truth in that. But He also said, don’t worry about money, He will provide for you, and in that, you find you’ve been worrying rather than trusting. So will you commend yourself for your creed or doctrine even while continuing in your worry over temporal provision and what He has said about it, which proves you a hypocrite?

It’s a race of trust, not a race of reciting stuff to jump through the hoops of religious men. Must I believe for a certainty what men insist I must believe and recite or must I trust God? What if I think of God as a father and son but can’t understand God, who is Spirit, as a different being than the Holy Spirit and instead think God IS the Holy Spirit? If I think of Him as God the Father who IS the Holy Spirit but have come to such trust that I never worry over temporal provision, while another man spends long years insisting on the trinity doctrine while worrying about temporal provision, should he commend himself for reciting a creed and condemn the man who trusts more than him? What kind of nonsense have we descended into?

Why did those men not enter into the promised land? Was it because they didn’t have the right doctrines and creeds to recite or was it because they didn’t trust God?

God said to only collect enough for the day. Had they trusted Him to provide enough again the next day, they would have listened and done as He said. But they didn’t trust and so they didn’t do what He said. They had previously trusted Him to save them so they did what He said and stepped out under the wall of water. But they didn’t continue in trust and remain trzusting about temporal provision. Their hearts became evil and untrusting after that initial trust by which He saved them. They trusted Him to save them then began to not trust. And this is why we are to examine ourselves as to if we are trusting still and continuing in our initial trust - to make sure we do not do exactly as they did and become just as they did.

There is no deal we can make to cheat death. If our hearts become evil and untrusting as theirs did, how can we think it will go better for us than for them?

 

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2 Corinthians 13:5 LITV
5) Examine yourselves, whether you are in the faith; test yourselves. Or do you not yourselves perceive that Jesus Christ is in you, unless you are disapproved?

"in the faith", faith here is a noun, not a verb. The meaning then is not, Examine yourselves whether you be trusting. It's not a question about what you are doing. Are you "in the faith?" Where are you?

Examine yourself, test yourself to see if in fact you are "in the faith".

This is more than asking how are you thinking about things right now.

Acts 14:22 LITV
22) confirming the souls of the disciples, exhorting to continue in the faith, and that through many afflictions we must enter into the kingdom of God.

Philippians 1:27 LITV
27) Only behave yourself worthily of the gospel of Christ, so that whether coming and seeing you or being absent, I hear the things concerning you, that you stand fast in one spirit and one soul, striving together in the faith of the gospel,

Colossians 1:21-23 LITV
21) And you then being alienated and hostile in your mind by evil works, but now He reconciled
22) in the body of His flesh, through death, to present you holy and without blemish and irreproachable before Him,
23) if indeed you continue in the faith grounded and settled and not being moved away from the hope of the gospel which you heard proclaimed in all the creation under Heaven, of which I, Paul, became a minister,

Paul says, test yourself, prove yourself, do you know yourself? Whether Jesus Christ is in you?

Where are you? Test yourself. Am I trusting for my next meal? Am I a new creation? Do I know the Spirit of God in my heart? Does it matter what I say about myself?

I'm more interested in what God says about me, and to me. To me, that is the more sure proof.

Paul did in fact provide proof of his apostleship, it was the results in those to whom he ministered.

2 Corinthians 3:1-3 LITV
1) Do we begin again to commend ourselves? Or do we, as some, need commendatory letters to you, or commendatory ones from you?
2) You are our letter, having been inscribed in our hearts, being known and being read by all men,
3) it having been made plain that you are Christ's letter, served by us, not having been inscribed by ink, but by the Spirit of the living God, not in tablets of stone, but in fleshly tablets of the heart.

Do you have that testimony, inside you, the Spirit testifies with our spirit that we are the children of God? Does the Spirit testify with your spirit?

Examine yourself . . . do you know that Jesus Christ is in you?

This is not a doctrine, not a declaration. It's not holding to this or that teaching, or saying a prayer, or saying many prayers.

Jesus said He would come to us, has He come to you? Are you in a real relationship with your Creator?

Our walk is by faith and not by sight.

Without faith it is impossible to please Him.

The just shall live by faith.

Are you in that faith? That makes you pleasing to Him? That gives you the unseen assurance of how to live? That leads you in righteousness? That faith?

We are justified by faith in Jesus Christ, and by that same faith in Christ we have access into the grace in which we stand.

That faith?

Much love!