Examine Yourself (2 Corinthians 13)

Sovereign Grace Family Church

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Welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist.

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My name is Keith Foskey and I am a Calvinist.

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Today we're going to be finishing our study of the book of 2 Corinthians.

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Now, as you know, every day we are reading through the New Testament, one chapter at a time.

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And if you need a copy of that reading list, you can go to our website, sgfcjax.org, and you can find a copy of that, and then you can see where we are and read along with us.

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We're reading through the New Testament in the order that we believe that the books were written.

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So where we are right now is we're finishing up 2 Corinthians, and then next, our next lesson, we will be beginning the book of Romans.

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So we're in 2 Corinthians chapter 13.

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Paul is finishing up the writing of this letter to the church of Corinth by writing to them some warnings.

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And the warning that I want to focus on today is the warning in verse 5.

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Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith.

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Test yourselves, or do you not realize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you? Unless, indeed, you fail to meet the test.

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Years ago, I heard a pastor say, you should never question your salvation.

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If you've believed in Jesus, you should never have any doubts, that you should live always without any doubts.

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In fact, his recommendation was that whenever you led someone to the Lord, that you would write them a spiritual birth certificate, maybe write in their Bible the day that they were converted, the day that they, in his words, prayed the sinner's prayer.

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And that from that moment forward, as long as they had prayed the sinner's prayer, if they ever had a time when they doubted whether or not they were truly believers, they could go back to that date, they could look at their spiritual birth certificate, and that was to them almost like a punched ticket.

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That was their promise of eternal life.

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That was the day that they became a Christian.

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Now, I want to say something about that.

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I do believe that there is a day in our lives, if we are believers, where we went from death to life.

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There was a day, and I can remember the day for me, when I was, after several weeks of severe spiritual battle, I was broken, I was in my truck driving home on Broward Road, and I remember just crying out to the Lord that I knew I needed to be saved, I wanted to trust in him with my whole life, and I wanted to follow after him and to serve him, and I wanted to repent of my sins, and I wanted to be a new person.

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And I believe that's the day that I was genuinely regenerated, even though since then I know there have been times where I have failed, and in fact every day I experience battles with sin, I can look back on that day and say, yes, I remember the day that God saved me.

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And so, I understand in a sense what some of those pastors are saying, who are saying you should think about the day that you were regenerated.

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But on the other hand, I want to challenge you with this today.

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There is a reason why there are so many warnings in the Bible, so many times that the scriptures encourage us to examine ourselves.

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And the reason is this, is there is such a thing as false conversion.

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Again, I use myself as an example.

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I was baptized at eight years old.

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I wanted to be baptized, I wanted to join the church community, I wanted to feel like a part, but I wasn't quite ready to repent of my sins, I didn't even quite understand what it meant to be a follower of Christ, and I certainly was not willing to take up my cross and follow Him.

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I was baptized again at twelve years old, because I was encouraged to do so because I had then, in the eyes of some, reached a certain level of accountability.

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And so, I was baptized again, and yet was still not saved.

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However, if I would have died during those periods, many people would have said, oh look, he was baptized at eight, or he was baptized at twelve, and therefore he made a confession of faith and he was saved.

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But I wasn't saved.

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I wasn't saved until I was nineteen, on that road, in my truck, all by myself, just me and the Lord.

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And so, there does come a time in all of our lives where we need to examine ourselves in light of the truth, and ask ourselves the important question, have I truly been born again? Am I just going through the motions? Am I a part of the church simply because it satisfies some social need in my life? Am I truly a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ? And so, Paul says here, examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith.

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Have you ever done that? Have you ever really sat down with yourself and had a conversation, and asked, am I truly in the faith? Now, the last thing I would want to do is to cause a believer to live in doubt, and thereby be ineffective.

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But that's not what this passage is about.

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This passage isn't about inspiring doubt.

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It's about encouraging confidence.

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Self-examination is about looking at yourself and asking yourself the tough questions.

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It's supposed to happen every time we go to the Lord's table.

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The Apostle Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians that we are to examine ourselves, and thus participate in the bread and the cup.

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The self-examination of the believer is something that should be a regular thing, not to continue to live in doubt, but to continually be encouraged that, in fact, we are believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, and our lives bear testimony to that.

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That's what he talks about with the test.

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He says, test yourselves.

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Look at your life.

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Is your life bearing witness to your faith? Now, again, sometimes our lives are where we have the biggest question mark, because sometimes our lives are where we struggle the most.

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Ultimately, where the test really comes is, where is our faith? Is our faith in what we have done? Is our faith in our good works? Is our faith in our willingness to be in church or give offerings or participate in ministry? Or is our faith, in fact, in the finished work of Christ? Because if our faith is in the finished work of Christ, then that's where it is supposed to be, and it is properly founded.

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If we try to establish our salvation on our own works, we'll be establishing it on shifting sand.

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But if we establish our faith on the works of Jesus Christ, it will be founded upon a rock.

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And as Jesus said, when the winds come and they blow against that house, it will stand because it is founded upon the rock.

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I hope today has been an encouragement to you.

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I hope this whole study of 2 Corinthians has been useful to you, and I look forward to tomorrow when we begin the book of Romans.

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Thank you again for watching Coffee with a Calvinist.

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I'm Keith Foskey, and I've been your Calvinist.