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Exams—no matter their form—are uncomfortable. Midterms and finals, the SAT and ACT—does anyone enjoy such scrutiny? Not to mention various health examinations, such as routine checkups, the six-month dental appointments that we like to avoid, and health exams of a weightier nature; they, too, are unpleasant. Spiritual examination, however, can be the most alarming of all: “If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand?” (Ps. 130:3). Yet the Lord actively calls His children to a holy introspection: “Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith” (2 Cor. 13:5). Upon hearing such a command and biblical expectation, we might feel unsettled. “Examine myself to see if I am in the faith?” we wonder. “Isn’t that a troubling thought?” Wouldn’t we rather have a more positive end than suspecting that we are not in the faith?
Here is where context helps. The goal of self-examination isn’t doubt but confidence. Paul continues: “Test yourselves. Or do you not realize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?” (v. 5). The expectation is that believers will find themselves to be in Christ. Elsewhere, Peter states a similar concept: “Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election” (2 Peter 1:10). The aim of biblical self-examination is not so that we would doubt, disbelieve, and fear, but the opposite. Our merciful heavenly Father desires us to stand firm in the truth, not to be consumed by worry that we don’t.
Such self-examination and introspection are also to be a regular occurrence. We are called to do so at least “as often as [we do this] in remembrance of [the Lord]” when we come together to partake of the Lord’s Supper (1 Cor. 11:25). And while churches obviously observe the Lord’s Table with varying frequency, such self-examination is to be a regular part of the Christian life (v. 28).
On that solemn night of the Last Supper, when the Lord Jesus first instituted the sacrament with His disciples, Jesus called the Twelve to appropriate introspection. He shared of one who reclined at the table with them who was a betrayer. Now, the Eleven knew that they had not gone out and conspired against Christ, and yet they honestly examined their own hearts and asked Jesus, “Is it I, Lord?” (Matt. 26:22), each doing so in succession. At the same time, Judas, that son of perdition, feigned humility and asked the same question (v. 25). The believers at the table engaged in biblical introspection; the unbeliever did not. The believing disciples did so not to invalidate their faith but to establish it. Faithful self-examination should call us not to an undue questioning, worry, or fear but instead to a recognition that we do believe and that we are in Christ.
With all this faithful self-meditation, however, there is an excessive self-scrutiny that we all must seek to avoid. First, we can become so self- focused that we lose sight of the God who is seeking to establish us more fully in the faith. The believer may engage in navel-gazing, undermining the very vertical relationship with our Father that such introspection is meant to foster and strengthen. But second, and more likely, we can become so fixated on the need for self-examination that it becomes an end in itself.
The Puritans were somewhat notorious for being religiously scrupulous when it came to self-analysis. Well aware of this tendency, John Bunyan famously captures an important caution in his beloved allegory The Pilgrim’s Progress when he tells the portion of the story in which Christian falls into the Slough of Despond. Bunyan describes this bog:
This miry Slough is such a place as cannot be mended; it is the descent whither the scum and filth that attends conviction for sin doth continually run, and therefore is it called the Slough of Despond: for still as the sinner is awakened about his lost condition, there ariseth in his soul many fears, and doubts, and discouraging apprehensions.
Christian finds himself trapped in this awful place, being overly focused on his sin and conviction, until a helper named Help comes along to offer him a hand. Before pulling our hero out of the swamp of fear-inducing introspection, Help asks Christian: “Why did you not look for the steps?” Bunyan is cleverly inviting the reader to do some introspection about our introspection. He is asking us to consider our needless wallowing, our miserable focus on our sin and struggles in the Christian life, and is pointing us to the simple way out of the mire of excessive self-examination: the gospel of Jesus Christ. How does the believer walk right up the steps out of undue introspection? One need only look to Christ.
The child of God who gazes long at his or her standing before the Lord, without “looking for the steps,” is not aimed at the proper end of self-scrutiny. As the Apostles Peter and Paul both indicate, the end of biblical introspection is finding oneself resting in the finished work of Christ on our behalf. Bunyan perceived the Puritan tendency to engage in a bit too much soul-searching and thus pointed to the time-tested solution: looking to the gospel and being assured that we believe. So, too, we must perceive when our rumination is headed into a miry downward spiral or, alternatively, when it is focused on its true end, our Savior, Jesus Christ. May we examine ourselves this day, and may we find that we sincerely believe.