“Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves. Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you—unless, of course, you fail the test?” 2 Corinthians 13:5
This is Paul’s second letter to Corinth and he has had to address issues there before. He was planning on returning there and was hoping that the individuals in the church who were sinning would realize what they were doing and change. He wanted them to repent and start living according to their faith.
He told them to examine themselves to see if they were truly living out their faith or if they were just putting on a show for others. Having to have someone tell them they were sinning was not going to be as effective as them realizing it on their own. The same is true for us today. When we sin and we realize it, we tend to be harder on ourselves, have more guilt, feel more sorrow about the sin than when someone else has to point it out to us.
I am not saying that we should be carrying around guilt, but we become more invested in correcting our behavior and more committed to maintaining that change when we are the ones noticing that it is not in line with God’s will for our lives. Sometimes we don’t realize what we are doing and a leader or close friend will bring it to our attention. Hopefully they are confronting us in love and we are accepting of the intervention. Either way it happens, once we know we have sinned, we have a choice to change our behavior or not.
Some of the Corinthians were not only unaccepting of Paul’s intervention, they were challenging Paul as their leader. There are times when we do that very thing, either not accept the confrontation that what we are doing is sin or challenge the person as not being a person of authority to address us. We usually do this when we don’t want to admit our sin or we are not wanting to change our behaviors.
My encouragement for everyone today is for us to examine ourselves much the way that Paul told the Corinthians to examine themselves. Look at our thoughts, our actions and reactions and see if they are in line with what God wants for us. If they are then that is wonderful, but if they are not, then I pray that we will acknowledge them, ask for forgiveness and ask the Lord to help us change them.