AI-assisted analysis for orientation; read the source transcript or listen to the sermon to evaluate the interpretation.
The sermon centers on Paul’s command to examine whether one is genuinely in the faith and whether Christ is in them. Spurgeon distinguishes intellectual assent from saving union with Christ: like the ark, Christ must be entered and trusted, not merely admired or affirmed. Good works do not earn salvation, but they provide evidence of saving faith, while persistent public or private sin exposes a fearful spiritual condition. Self-examination is therefore urgent because of final judgment, yet it can also bring assurance by directing doubting believers to the reality of grace and Christ’s preserving power.
Theological center: Salvation is found not in merely orthodox beliefs or outward profession but in union with Christ through faith, a faith evidenced by transformed living.
Applications: Examine your faith · Test your faith in life · Repent of sinful living · Distinguish belief from union
Primary texts: 2 Corinthians 13:5 · 1 John 3:21 · Jeremiah 6:30
“Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves. Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates.” 2 Corinthians 13:5 I HAD intended to address you this morning from the third title given to our blessed Redeemer in the verse we have considered twice before, “Wonderful, Counsellor, the mighty God,” but owing to excruciating pain and continual sickness, I have been unable to gather my thoughts together, and therefore, I feel constrained to address you on a subject which has often been upon my heart and not infrequently upon my lips, and concerning which, I dare say, I have admonished a very large proportion of this audience before. You will find the text in the thirteenth chapter of the second epistle to the Corinthians, at the fifth verse, “Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves. Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates?”—a solemn text that we cannot preach too impressively or too frequently meditate upon. The Corinthians were the critics of the apostles’ age. They took to themselves great credit for skill in learning and in language, and as most men do who are wise in their own esteem, they made a wrong use of their wisdom and learning—they began to criticize the apostle Paul. They criticized his style. “His letters,” say they, “are weighty and powerful, but his bodily presence is weak and his speech contemptible.” Nay, not content with that, they went so far as to deny his apostleship, and for once in his life, the apostle Paul found himself compelled to “become a fool in glorying; for,” says he, “ye have compelled me: for I ought to have been commended of you: for in nothing am I behind the very chiefest apostles, though I be nothing.” The apostle wrote two letters to them, in both he is compelled to upbraid them while he defends himself, and when he had fully disarmed his opponents and wrested the sword of their criticism out of their hands, he pointed it at their own breasts, saying, “‘Examine yourselves.’ You have disputed my doctrine, examine whether ye be in the faith. You have made me prove my apostleship, ‘prove your own selves.’ Use the powers which you have been so wrongfully exercising upon me for a little season upon your own characters.” And now, my dear friends, the fault of the Corinthians is the fault of the present age. Let not any one of you, as he goes out of the house of God, say unto his neighbor, “How did you like the preacher? What did you think of the sermon this morning?” Is that the question…