⁵Test yourselves to see if you are in the faith; examine yourselves! Or do you not recognize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you—unless indeed you fail the test?

Midst the aberrant behavior in which the folks at the church in Corinth are engaged, a sobering question arises, and each one must answer for him or herself: “Are you a genuine believer?” Paul does not go immediately to eternal security to assure the believers. Nor does he care to give a false assurance to those who have come short of true faith. To be sure, the Scripture unabashedly teaches what we refer to as eternal security. That is, when a person has come to genuine, saving faith in Jesus Christ by God’s grace, he is secure forever. Among many verses in support of this, we refer the reader to 1 John 5:11–13 and Romans 8:28–39 as exemplary.

Why would Paul even raise the question about the authenticity of their faith? The answer is this: their behavior suggests an unsaved style of life. If the foundation of faith is not there, then there is no ability to live in a Christ-like way. But if Christ truly “is in you,” then there should be an observable change in behavior, which in some cases was apparently not the case. So it is a legitimate question to ask.

But notice Paul does not give Christians license to judge the authenticity of another professing Christian’s faith. He says, “Test yourselves.” The reflexive “examine yourselves” is practiced in the singular, but is to be pervasive—everyone is to do it. This is clearly seen in the teaching about participating in the Lord’s Supper, where “a man must examine himself” (1 Cor. 11:28, the verb is in the singular).

Again, this goes back to the central theme of Paul’s writings and his ministry, “I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:22). Lives are changed by that understanding of Christ—a faith in His substitutionary death for us, who could do nothing to achieve our own salvation or standing with God. It is not just a mental assent, like the first checkmark in a list of do’s and don’ts, a first step on the stairway to heaven. It is the fulcrum, the pivot point of humanity. It distinguishes those who are “in the faith” and those who are not, those of whom it is true that “Jesus Christ is in you” and those of whom it is not true.

There is a time for assurance, but there is also a time for questioning. The professing believer who has a consistent lifestyle of worldliness, fleshliness, carnality, must take sober stock of whether or not his faith is genuine.

Lord, I endeavor to live in accordance with the change You brought into my life.