"Examine and test and evaluate your own selves to see whether you are holding to your faith and showing the proper fruits of it. Test and prove yourselves [not Christ]. Do you not yourselves realize and know [thoroughly by an ever-increasing experience] that Jesus Christ is in you...." (2 Corinthians 13:5--Amplified Bible)
So many in today's world "test" Christ and not themselves. They have allowed acculturation to be "the faith," rather than "the faith of Jesus Christ." Acculturation has always been the main battle for the Believer. A synonym for acculturation is "assimilation," defined as "the social process of absorbing one cultural group into harmony with another." This just does not, has never, and will never work for the person who seeks to live under the authority of Jesus Christ. There is no absorption here, just dead to the one and alive to the other. To keep ourselves from the three "A" evil, Believers are commanded to "examine your own selves." Disobediently, so many leave this up to preachers et. al. who are acculturated themselves.
Biblical examination leads to affirmation that I am "holding to [the] faith," or correction if I am not "holding to [the] faith," a correction which leads to repentance, which is the catalyst of change. Of course I have met many people over the years who have engaged in the process in their "own understanding," and it led to self incrimination. Crimination is never the result of Biblical examination. Biblical examination will always lead to conformation to the image of Jesus Christ. Of course, if a person does not want to be persecuted, or "hated by all" on account of Jesus Christ, then he will continue to attempt living the assimilation life. But if he desires what the God-Breathing Word describes as the "holiness, without which no one will see the Lord," then he will pursue our text, and find that "having been freed from sin and enslaved to God, you derive your benefit, resulting in sanctification, and the outcome, eternal life."
Father, in Jesus' Name, teach me Your "self examination." Amen.
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I am preaching this weekend in the CCE gathering
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"Looking Unto Jesus"
Hebrews 12:2
Hebrews 12:2
