I. All Jewish history, the Apostle had told the Corinthians, was an ensample to them, upon whom the ends of the world had come. They were as liable to forget the new and better covenant as their forefathers were to forget the inferior one. They were as likely to think that they were not the children of God as those who were under the Law that they were not His servants. The consequences would be the same in kind, worse in degree: heartlessness, idolatry, division, self-exaltation, alternating with despondency. It was most needful for them to examine themselves, whether they were getting into this state of indifference and forgetfulness, to see whether outward as well as inward tokens did not show that it was creeping upon them, whether they were not conscious of a continual and growing degeneracy, whether the loss of brotherly feelings towards men did not accompany the loss of filial feeling towards God.
II. St. Paul goes on, "Know ye not your own selves, that Christ is in you?" The Apostle has been speaking of self-examination; now he speaks of the self-knowledge which justifies that examination, which makes it a reasonable, a possible, exercise. He speaks out the name of the invisible Lord and Teacher of his own spirit; he says to each man, "He is the Lord and Teacher of my spirit." He says that He has come into the world, and taken the nature of men upon Him, and died the death of men, and risen from the dead as man, and ascended on high as man, and is ever living as man at the right hand of God.
III. Self-examination involves no wretched poring over our own motives. It leads us at once to turn from the accusing spirit, which tells us that we are yielding to some vile motive that will lead to some vile act, and to ask for the inspiration of Him in whom are the springs of all right action. This examination involves no neglect of plain work for the sake of morbid contemplation. It is in work we learn what we are liable to become if we have no helper, if we are left to ourselves. The temptation to be fretful and cowardly, to utter keen and bitter words, to feed upon flattery, to feed upon thoughts of malice or lust, to palter with dishonesty in common acts, to lie for the sake of a worldly end or of a godly end, the temptations of each particular craft and calling, the temptations of domestic life, of national life, of ecclesiastical life these are the schools in which men have learnt to examine themselves, in which they have learnt the feebleness of mere rule, the necessity of a present living Teacher, in which they have found what this old nature is, which has to be mortified and crucified, what that new and true man whom Christ would renew in us day by day.
F. D. Maurice, Sermons,vol. iii., p. 207.
The Necessity and Right Method of Self-examination.
I. Consider the necessity of self-examination. Every one stands placed against a standard unseen, but real, that by which God judges and marks the spiritual state of every one, the eternal law, the rule of Christian character. Every one stands in some certain, precise, discriminated relation to this grand rule of judgment. That is his true and exact condition. There is a manifestation of the Divine rule, and there is himself to bring, with all his consciousness, into comparison with it. And the state he is in, by the decision of that rule, is the state of his relations with all that is the most solemn in heaven and earth, in time and eternity. Therefore "know your own selves."
II. Notice the objects of self-examination. The earnest force of this examination should fix on the points named by the Apostle: "whether ye be in the faith, whether Jesus Christ be in you." It should not expend itself on the mere external conduct, for if that alone, in its simple gross sense, were to be taken account of, a well-regulated formalist or Pharisee, nay, possibly a hypocrite, might go off to considerable self-complacency. And you can imagine how often man has been frightened out of his soul to take refuge in the apparently better quality of his conduct. Any impulse the examiner feels to do so should warn him to stay a while longer there, in the interior. Doubt and uncertainty ought to be a powerful incentive to self-examination. For surely the chief questions in the concern cannot be decided too soon. Indeed, to be content to remain in doubt would itself be one of the most ominous signs. If the true state of the case be unhappy and unsafe, it should be distinctly seen, that the soul may be instantly in action. If the state be, on the whole, such as the supreme Judge approves, and safe for time and eternity, who would not in this evil world desire to possess the joy of knowing it to be so?
J. Foster, Lectures,1st series, p. 337.
References: 2 Corinthians 13:5. H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xii., p. 409; Clergyman's Magazine,vol. viii., p. 253; Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. iv., No. 218. 2 Corinthians 13:7. Preacher's Monthly,vol. ii., p. 253.