Judging ourselves

"But if we judged ourselves rightly, we would not be judged" (1Co.11:31). The context here is of examining ourselves before taking part in the holy communion. But there is a wider application to this. When we are born again, God gives us a new heart that wants to be always pleasing to Him. But we also know that because of the sinful nature we have, which we carry even after we have been born again, we are far from being perfect in His eyes. Much of it comes from not knowing the right thing to do, and sometimes we say or do something even when we don't really want to. God's plan is that we should be making progress in overcoming sin and becoming more like Jesus in our character. It is easy to see that for this to happen, we should be becoming increasingly aware of what is pleasing to God and where we are failing. This is God sending us 'light' so that we can see ourselves as He sees us and move forward towards His nature.

This is where judging of ourselves comes in. If we sit as judges over our own life, then we can see where we are going wrong and take steps to overcome. But we need to be sincere in wanting to become like Jesus and honest in looking at our real condition. Some Christians seem to have misunderstood grace merely as providing forgiveness of sins, and not seen the offer of victory over sin (Ro.6:14;1Jn.2:1). Some others expect that God will automatically work in them and make them like Jesus once they are children of God. But our salvation depends very much on what we choose to do whenever we are tempted. Remember, the first sin came when Eve chose to disobey God and obey Satan. When we are tempted all through the day, our choice is also between doing what God tells us to do, and what our natural desires want (Jas.1:14,15).

If we really want to stop sinning and become like Jesus, it follows that we need to be ruthless towards our sins while we examine our own life from the position of a judge. We cannot afford to take them lightly, justify them or find excuses for them. If we compromise here, we will remain in defeat.

At the same time we will find that merely deciding to overcome sin will not give us victory, because our fleshly desires are stronger than we imagine, and we have allowed them to become stronger by giving in to them in the past. So now when we want to stop sinning, we need to learn to cry out to God for supernatural help (He.5:7,8). If we fail, there is forgiveness available, but we cannot lean on that and slacken our fight against our sinful desires. The Holy Spirit is given to us to help us especially in this way (Ro.8:13).

Some people shy away from judging themselves because they satisfy themselves with the good opinion people have about them from observing their external behaviour. But to judge ourselves truly, we must look also at the motives, intentions and attitudes of our heart. God knows these already, and only honesty before God can help us to deal with these (He.4:12,13).