GODLY SELF-EXAMINATION
ASSESSING OUR SPIRITUAL GROWTH
© Hubert Krause  Feb 19, 2000
The Church of God in Williamstown
WEB SITE: http://www.alphalink.com.au/~sanhub/index.htm

INTRODUCTION
The Passover season is soon to be with us once again, and with its advent comes a greater emphasis on the need for spiritual renewal, for rededication, for self-examination.As we reflect upon the enormity of the blood-sacrifice of Jesus Christ, so pertinent during this period, it is incumbent upon us, is it not, to do all we can to ensure that our hearts are clean before God? David's admonition to his son Solomon is therefore relevant also to us:

Given the deceptive nature of the human heart, hearts and minds not always single and willing, how can we ensure that any process of self-examination we set in train is honest and effective, and approved of by God?

THE WAYWARD AND THE CONVERTED HEART
We understand the essence of the problem, don't we?

Who indeed? Who can readily detect a heart not right with God? As indicated by Scripture, what are a few of the symptoms of a wayward heart, and some of the fruits of a godly one?

Let's briefly note some of the warnings given to hearts lacking conversion or gone astray:

Could we recognise any of these symptoms in our own hearts?

In contrast, what are some of the fruits of the converted heart God wants to see?

Similarly, can we identify these godly traits as they reside in our hearts?

Certainly we human beings, left to our own devices, cannot transform this incurably perverse heart. Indeed, our human heart can deceive us into believing that our ways are quite right and acceptable:

We are all right in our own eyes, but as our thoughts are not God's thoughts (Isa 55:7-9), what does He say He does because of this reality—because we think we are pure in our own eyes, in our own hearts? Similarly: But why does God say He does this?

THE EYES OF GOD…..
It is the teaching of Scripture, as we no doubt realise, that the actions, the lives, the ways and the hearts of all men, good and evil, are subject to the scrutiny of the Most High God:

More specifically, as we understand, it is the spirit of man that is subject to the searching of the Almighty God: God knows, sees, examines and searches the hearts of men, the reasons for which we will note shortly. For us human beings, however, it's an altogether different story. At times, we seem to see very little indeed—at least about ourselves—spiritually speaking!

….. AND THE EYES OF MAN
The failure to always see clearly, to hear constantly with understanding, and to remember what is important are some of the oldest of human maladies. For those claiming to know God, they are symptoms of a spiritually-careless, a dull, or even a hardened heart. This afflicted Israel of old:

Yet the nation had been warned: It afflicted the disciples training with Jesus Christ, the perfect example of their Master notwithstanding: Like ancient Israel, or the early disciples of Christ, we likewise can all too readily fail to correctly understand, all too quickly forget the workings of God in our lives, and even become spiritually calloused. God wants us to remember, to view with seeing eyes, and to understand with hearing and discerning ears. Unless we do this consistently, we may delude ourselves as to the true nature of our spiritual condition. Our perspective of ourselves and of our hearts before God can be distorted. This was the case for the Church in Laodicea, wasn't it?

SPIRITUAL COMPLACENCY: THE "I'M OK" SYNDROME
Christ's warning in the letter to Laodicea is to a church marked by a comfortable self-satisfaction which had rendered it incapable of bearing true witness to Christ:

It's easy to think we're OK, collectively and individually, isn't it? After all, we've come such a long way over the past few years. We've learnt so much, and continue to do so. We can hold our own and answer those who question or challenge our beliefs. Yet would any one of us know if we were indeed lacking, or spiritually deficient, or even destitute? How can we see ourselves—our hearts—with the eyes of God?

Paul tells us that Christ should be dwelling—residing—in our hearts:

Could it be that for some of us, Christ has yet to take up full residence within our hearts? Perhaps it's because He's only occasionally comfortable there. Or because He knows too well that He's not always welcome deep down in our very heart of hearts. Or is He still standing outside at the door of our hearts, seeking permanent right of entry and residence? Yet if the door is closed, as it was with some in Laodicea, He will not make a forced entry. It's up to us to let Him in.

Complacency—notions that we are indeed spiritually self-sufficient, "on track", as we used to say (the very term gave people a false sense of security, for it meant that they were now OK and nothing further needed to be done, except to stay "on track")—is something against which we also need to be on guard. It's a very deceptive ailment which can take a number of forms:

God would have us exercise sound spiritual judgment at every turn, in every situation, to determine His will for us and whether our lives are indeed conforming to this: How are we to begin to go about this? Paul gives an answer in the following verse: So some sober reflection, contemplation, is involved.

THE EYES OF THE CONSCIENCE
Yet, as David asked, "Who can discern his errors?" (Ps 19:12). How do we go about actively measuring the conversion of our hearts, assessing our spiritual state?

Let us consider this prayer of the apostle Paul for the spiritual enlightenment of the Church at Ephesus (Eph 1:15-19). We'll begin in verse 17:

It's a matter of the enlightening of the eyes of the heart, of an inner vision. We all have need of this illumination from God in our hearts, and the wisdom to grasp what He reveals to us—including what He reveals to us about ourselves—as we come to know Him more and more. Yet our deceitful hearts may delude us as to our lapses, so how do we enlighten them?

Scripture tells us that to be enlightened, our hearts—in this case our Christian conscience—must be active, alert, weighing and assessing what is within, so that any impurity encountered can be washed away:

The author of the Book of Hebrews makes a similar point: Again, how do we obtain such a true heart?

TESTING OURSELVES AND OUR WORKS
Let us notice what God adds immediately after Jeremiah's recorded description of the perversity of the human heart, as sometimes we forget that the first solution to the problems of the human heart is immediately offered by God in this verse:

God, through His Spirit, notes and examines the heart of men (Jer 20:12a), as we have seen. We all need to ensure that we regularly receive from God this feedback on the condition of our heart and mind; after all, God's scrutiny of us is for our benefit—there is nothing He doesn't already know about us, but there is an awful lot that we don't! Among the "thoughts" that God can "declare", or reveal, to man (Am 4:13) are his own—that is, man's own thoughts, of which he all too often is unaware.

God tests us, but we also need to test ourselves. This is also the teaching of Scripture.

We are told that there is to be a final test of our Christian lives, or works and our spiritual growth:

The Day of Judgment may therefore yield some surprises to those of us unaware of the calibre of our spiritual workmanship, as not everything we have built up over the course of our Christian lives may survive intact. Are we correctly building upon the foundation of Jesus Christ laid in us, and how can we tell? Will all our work endure, so that we will be amply rewarded for our efforts, or will some of it be burnt away in the final fires of testing? How do we know, how do we assess, the nature of the building-blocks we are adding to our spiritual foundation?

God, through Moses, bemoaned the mentality of a nation not wise enough to "consider [its] latter end" (Dt 32:29) in the face of God's miraculous works. The prophet Haggai several times besought his people to "consider [their] ways" (Hag 1:5-7) in the light of all the evil was happening to them. Israel in the days of Hosea was castigated by God for not considering in their hearts the fact that God would remember all their wickedness (Hos 7:2). Isaiah wrote of a nation who sought God, day after day, as though eager to know His ways, but who were reprobate (Isa 58:2-3).

The Christian is told that he, too, needs to consider, to test, to prove, "all things", and to cling to what is good and approved of by God (1Th 5:21). In the very first instance, this means that we need to test ourselves. Indeed, Paul makes this very point to the Corinthians:

Here Paul is telling the Corinthian Church: "It isn't me that you should be examining, but rather yourselves! (It's easy to put other people to the test, especially if we know they'll be found wanting, but it tends to run against the grain to be prepared to honestly test ourselves—just in case…). Test yourselves for marks of genuineness. Can you say that Christ is living in you? You should be able to, unless perhaps you were never converted!" How would we go with this test? Could we, like the Church in Laodicea, be so well-satisfied with the produce of our spiritual lives that we may inwardly feel little need to put ourselves to any testing whatsoever?

Paul continues with this theme in his epistle to the Galatians, where he stresses the need for believers to examine or test all their Christian works:

Let's note some specifics we may be able to personally take to heart. And this applies just as much to our own heart: what are we accepting, and what are we rejecting? Negative spiritual influences—within and without the Church—are everywhere extant. Deceit and delusion require careful discernment as to the source of inspiration of what we hear and see, whether it be of God, or of the Devil. Let's not uncritically accept—or reject—spiritual teaching, but instead be careful in all matters to assess the good and hold fast to it while rejecting the false and the evil.
The early Church was commended by Christ for doing this: The Word of the living God is a powerful tool to aid in spiritual self-assessment: And if we prayerfully, sincerely, enlist the help of God and apply His Word in the process of assessing our hearts and minds, what should the result be? The apostle Paul tells us of false teachers in the latter days whose consciences have been seared as with a hot iron because of evil (1Ti 4:1-2). A failure to examine ourselves can allow evil to run unchecked, as it did in the Church in Corinth: A conceited self-satisfaction that permeated the Church of Corinth was exemplified in a blatant disregard for the basic laws of Christian morality! Even considering the debased, licentious habits of the Greeks, there was no relationship commonly known among them to compare with the depravity to which one of the Christians had sunk (although such cases of immorality can actually be quoted, they were most uncommon and were certainly not countenanced, as in the Corinthian Church)—and this apparently just prior to Passover (vv 7-8)! What does it tell us about the degree of self-examination by members of the Corinthian Church of their spiritual condition, individually and collectively, of their standing before God, that this sin continued unchecked? They had failed to correctly assess and judge themselves—their individual responses to this sin were inappropriate and ungodly—and they were therefore unable to render the appropriate collective judgment against this blatant evil required by the Law of God.

SELF-JUDGMENT AND PRE-PASSOVER EXAMINATION
So before we make judgments in accordance with our Christian responsibilities, do we first correctly judge ourselves?

The accusation of hypocrisy by Christ is valid not so much because an individual, whose vision is so impaired, can hardly see to remove the speck in the eye of his brother (some people's sins are obvious, are they not, and we all have the obligation to rebuke for sin, even though none of us is sinless?), and more because he is behaving as though he can see perfectly, whereas he himself, as the apostle Paul points out in the second chapter of the Book of Romans, is guilty of the same problem he is addressing in his brother: How many of us can claim to see perfectly on any matter or any problem that we come across? Perhaps we think we already do. We are here told that when we bring up a sin we had better be clean in respect to it in our own hearts before we confront another with the problem. Again, the need for self-assessment, self-examination. As we have been told, if we first judge ourselves, we will not be judged in such a matter, for our judgment will then be free of hypocrisy.

Let us then examine a little more closely the apostle Paul's warnings and instructions about the role of self-examination, of self-judgment, in the proper observance of the Lord's Supper commemoration, for here its vital importance as a life-or-death issue is most saliently illustrated:

God is ever merciful. His aim in having us assess ourselves in this manner, especially prior to the commemoration of the Lord's Supper, is not to have us feel unworthy and reluctant to partake—for who indeed is worthy?—but to make us more aware of our motives as we take, as is commanded, the precious symbols of the bread and the wine.

The absence of the self-judgment that follows correct godly self-examination may necessitate divine judgment, whereas godly self-examination preserves us from condemnation! The lesson of the danger of ceasing to examine our own spiritual condition is a very sobering one. Judgment begins at the house of God (1Pe 4:17), and sometimes, when all else fails, the direct fires of refining are called for—God's has to intervene very personally before we can see our evil in our hearts for what it is:

So let us take to heart Jeremiah's wise counsel: HONEST SELF-EXAMINATION
You know, Job, in the midst of the most horrendous suffering and resultant depression, also petitioned God to examine him, but what was the attitude behind his appeal? You've no doubt heard similar words before. Under the extreme pressure of his trial, Job in effect parodies David's question in Ps 8 which actually praises God for His mindfulness of and care for insignificant human beings; contrary to the spirit of the Psalm, Job here asserts that God's searching and examining of man, and himself in particular (his petition notwithstanding), is a kind of sadistic torment, hardly for his benefit—"God, your scrutiny of man is suffocating", he maintains! His call for God to examine him is in fact a challenge to God to prove him guilty: Let's now contrast Job's attitude with that of David, who likewise understood that God scrutinised him: David knew that every detail of his daily routine was known to God, every fleeting thought, every unspoken word. He could keep nothing back from God, for He was ever close by, protectively covering him with His hand. Yet what was his response to this? His reaction to God's omniscience is one of awesome wonder, and he gladly submits to the divine scrutiny, understanding the nature of God's omnipresent and omniscient care for him (see also vv 7-12). So he was able in honest sincerity to call upon God to continue this process of examining him so that he could further examine himself, as in: As we know, of course, Job, through the mercy of God, came to see his distorted perceptions of the Almighty; he, too, had not been seeing clearly. Thus he was finally able to see himself a little more fully through the eyes of God, something we too should be striving for, as the ultimate purpose of godly self-examination—"eyes" that truly see: Perhaps deep down we similarly feel that too close a scrutiny by God of the deepest recesses of our hearts, our minds, our spirits, is undesirable. Do we sincerely yearn for God to reveal to us where we are still wrong, where we yet need to change? Do we truly want to see ourselves as God sees us? And do we think this way, even more so, during our trials and tribulations? For these are also God's means of getting us to look more closely at ourselves. So when we ask God for eyes to truly see and analyze ourselves, what's our attitude? James' warning to the Church is most pertinent to us in this matter of sincere self-examination: So let's be sincere when we enlist God's help in this process. If we are then we should be able to express to God the same willingness and readiness to submit to His examination that was exhibited by David: What should be some of the lasting good fruits of such godly self-examination?

THE FRUITS OF SELF-EXAMINATION
Our consciences need to acquit us before God. If we have correctly examined ourselves, this will be the case. The apostle Paul attests to this:

David was likewise able to make a similar claim before God: Not that either Paul or David were claiming to be without sin. It's a matter of a sincere, enlightened attitude, and the result of an on-going process of deep self-examination which includes a readiness to be corrected—for Job made a similar assertion, didn't he, but he was deluded: Correct, godly self-examination will result in a desire to strengthen or renew our obedience to God, as was David's experience: CONCLUSION
Let's conclude with a simple truism from the apostle Paul: The hope we have means that we purify ourselves, even as Christ is pure (1Jn 3:2-3). We must always strive to present ourselves as approved of by God (2Ti 2:15), for we need His commendation, not any self-commendation that may arise from a deluded perception of our standing before God.

We have the opportunity, using the impetus afforded us by this forthcoming Passover season, to re-examine our spiritual foundation, to assess our hearts. Is God's law there (Heb 10:16)? God, David reminds us, desires truth in the inward parts, the hidden parts of our hearts, the deepest recesses of our minds (Ps 51:6). He knows whether or not it is there. The question is: do we?

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