Chapter 10
Chapter 10
JESUS—THE CENTER OF
OUR ATTENTION
"Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith"—2 Corinthians 13:5.
Probably no subject connected with the Christian life has been the cause of more discomfort and suflfering to tender consciences than this subject of self-examination. Nothing has led more frequently to the language of much less, which in our last chapter we found to be a great obstacle to all spiritual growth.
It has been constantly impressed upon us that it is our duty to examine ourselves. The eyes of most of us are continually turned inward. Our gaze is fixed on our interior states and feelings to such an extent that self, not Christ, has come to fill the whole picture. By self I mean all that centers around this great big Me of ours.
Its vocabulary rings out with *4," **me," and **my."
The question we ask ourselves in our times of self-examination are proof of this. Am I earnest
enough? Have I repented enough? Do I have the right sort of feelings? Do I understand religious truth as I should? Are my prayers fervent enough?
Is my interest in spiritual things as great as it should be? Do I love God with enough fervor? Is the Bible as much of a delight to me as it is to others?
All these and a hundred more questions about ourselves and our experiences fill our thoughts and sometimes our little self-examination books as well. Day and night we ring out the changes on the personal pronoun I, me, my, to the utter exclusion of any thought concerning Christ, or any word such as He, His, Him.
The misery of this tendency is known by many of us. But the idea that the Bible is full of commands for self-examination is so prevalent that it seems one of the most truly pious things we can do. As miserable as it makes us, we still feel it is our duty to go on with it, in spite of an everincreasing sense of hopelessness and despair.
Scriptural Self-Examination Many will be surprised to find that there are only two texts in the whole Bible that speak of selfexamination. Neither of these can be interpreted to approve of the morbid self-analysis that results from what we call self-examination.
''Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith." This is simply an exhortation to the Corinthians, who were in a sadly backslidden condition,
to settle definitely whether they were still believers or not.
**Examine yourselves whether you be in the faith.''
It does not say examine whether you are sufficiently earnest or whether your motives are
* 'whether you are in the faith." pure; it only says, In short, do you believe in Christ or not?
It is a simple question that requires only a straightforward answer, yes or no. This is what it meant for the Corinthians then, and it is what it means for us now.
The other passage reads, **Wherefore whosoever shall eat this bread, and drink this cup of the Lord, unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of that cup" (2
Corinthians 11:27-28).
Paul was writing here of the abuses of greediness and drunkenness which had crept in at the celebration of the Lord's Supper. In this exhortation to examine themselves, he was urging them to see to it that they did none of these things, but rather to partake of this religious feast in a decent and orderly manner.
Neither of these passages hint at the searching out of one's emotions and experiences that we call self-examination.
It is amazing that out of two such simple passages a teaching evolved that brought so much misery to earnest souls.
The truth is, there is no Scriptural authority for this disease of modern times. Those who are
afflicted with it are the victims of mistaken ideas of God's ways with His children.
You may be asking whether I have not overlooked a large number of passages that tell us to watch. You may wonder whether these passages mean watching ourselves, or in other words, selfexamination.
I will quote one of these passages as a sample, that we may see what the true meaning is.
**But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father. Take ye heed, watch and pray: for ye know not when the time is. For the Son of man is as a man taking a far journey, who left his house, and gave authority to his servants, and to every man his work, and commanded the porter to watch. Watch ye therefore: for ye know not when the master of the house cometh, at even, or at midnight, or at the cockcrowing, or in the morning: Lest coming suddenly he find you sleeping.
And what I say unto you I say unto all, Watch"
(Mark 13:32-37).
If we examine this passage and others like it carefully, we will see that, instead of teaching selfexamination, they teach something that is exactly the opposite. They tell us to watch, it is true, but they do not tell us to watch ourselves. Rather, they command us to forget ourselves in watching for Another.
The return of the Lord is the thing we are to watch for. His coming footsteps and not our own
past footsteps are to be the object of our gazing.
We are to watch as a servant watches for the return of the master of the house. We are to be ready as a good watchman should be, to receive and welcome Him at any moment that He appears.
Looking To Him "Blessed are those servants, whom the lord when he cometh shall find watching"
(Luke 12:37). Are they to be watching themselves? No, they should be watching for Him, of course.
Imagine a servant who, instead of watching for the return of his master, spent his time dejectedly analyzing his own past conduct, trying to discover whether he had been faithful enough. Suppose he became so absorbed in self-examination that he let the master's call go unheeded and the master's return unnoticed. This is a picture of what the soul experiences when it becomes absorbed in the wrong habit of watching and looking at self, instead of watching and looking at Christ.
These passages, therefore, instead of teaching self-examination, teach exactly the opposite. God says, *'Look unto me, and be saved"
(Isaiah 45:22). But the self-analyzing soul says, **I must look unto myself if I am to have any hope of being saved. It must be by getting myself right that salvation is to come."
The phrase ''Looking unto Jesus" is generally acknowledged to be one of the watchwords of the Christian faith. All Christians will unhesitatingly
declare that, of course, this is the one thing we all should do. But after saying this, they will go on in their old way of introspection, trying to find some salvation in their own feelings or in their own works of righteousness. Then they feel depressed because they never find it.
It is obvious that we see what we look at and cannot see what we look away from. We cannot look at Jesus while we are looking at ourselves.
The power for victory and endurance comes from looking to Jesus and considering Him. Certainly, no power comes from looking to or considering ourselves or our circumstances, sins, or temptations.
All that looking at ourselves causes is weakness and defeat. This is because when we look at ourselves we see nothing but our own weakness, poverty, and sin. We cannot see the remedy for these and, as a matter of course, we are defeated. The remedy was there for us all the time. But it is not found where we are looking, for it is not in self but in Christ. We must decide whether we will turn our backs on Christ and look at ourselves, or turn our backs on self and look at Christ.
The Christian author Adelaide Proctor suggested, *'For one look at self take ten looks at Christ." This simple statement carried conviction to my soul and delivered me from a habit of selfexamination and introspection that had made me miserable for years. It was an unspeakably wonderful deliverance. My experience since that time
leads me to believe that even a better motto would be, *Take no looks at self at all, but look only and always at Christ."
Eliminating The Old Man The Biblical law regarding the self-life is not that the self-life must be watched and made better.
Rather, it must be put oflF.
'That ye put oiBf concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts" (Ephesians 4:22).
The old man is of course the self-life. This selflife (which we know only too well is corrupt according to deceitful lusts) is not to be improved, but to be put oflf.
It is to be crucified.
Paul says that our old man is crucified or put to death with Christ. *'Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put oflf the old man with his deeds"
(Colossians 3:9).
Some people's ideas of crucifying the old man is to set him up against a wall, and then throw darts at him to make him miserable, keeping him alive all the time. But crucifixion means death. To crucify the old man means to kill him outright and to discard him as a snake discards its dead and useless skin.
It is useless then for us to examine self and to tinker with it, in the hope of improving it. The Lord wants us to get rid of it. Fenelon, in his
* 'Spiritual Letters," says that the only way to treat self is to refuse to have anything to do with it. He says we
must turn our backs on this great big / of ours and say to it, **I do not know you and am not interested in you, and I refuse to pay any attention to you whatever."
But self is always determined to secure attention.
It would rather be thought badly of than not to be thought of at all. Self-examination, with all its miseries, often gives a sort of morbid satisfaction to the self-life in us.
It even deludes self into thinking it is a very humble and pious sort of self after all.
The only safe and Scriptural way is to have nothing to do with self at all, either good self or bad self.
It is much better simply to ignore self and to jfix our eyes, thoughts, and expectations on the Lord alone. We must substitute the personal pronouns
/, me, and my,with the pronouns He, Him, and His, We must not ask ourselves, **Am I good?"
Rather, we should ask, '*Is He good?"
Unravelling Life's Snarls The psalmist says, **Mine eyes are ever toward the Lord; for he shall pluck my feet out of the net"
(Psalm 25:15). As long as our eyes are toward our feet and toward the net in which they are entangled, we only get into worse tangles. But when we keep our eyes on the Lord, He plucks our feet out of the net.
I have found this to be true through many personal experiences. No matter what sort of a difficulty I may have been in, when I kept my eyes on
the problem and tried to unravel it, it grew worse.
But when I turned my eyes away from the problem and kept them fixed on the Lord, He always unraveled it and delivered me.
Have you ever watched a farmer plowing a field?
In order to make straight furrows, he must fix his eyes on a tree or a post in the fence or some object at the far side of the field. He then will guide his plow unwaveringly toward the object. If he begins to look behind him to see whether he has made a straight furrow, his plow begins to jerk from side to side. As a result, the furrow he is making becomes a zigzag.
If we want to make straight paths for our feet, we must do what Paul says he did, "Forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus" (Philippians 3:13-14). To forget the things that are behind is an essential part of pressing forward toward the prize of our high calling.
This prize can never be reached unless we forget the past. When we do, we put an end to all our self-examination because if we do not look back over our past misdoings, we will find little food for self-reflection.
We complain of spiritual hunger and torment ourselves by wondering why our hunger is not satisfied. The psalmist says, *The eyes of all wait upon thee; and thou givest them their meat in due season"
(Psalm 145:15). Having our eyes upon
ourselves and on our own hunger will never bring a supply of spiritual meat.
To examine self is to be like a man who spends his time examining his empty refrigerator instead of going to the market for food. No wonder so many Christians are starving to death in the midst of all the fullness there is for them in Christ. They never see that fullness, because they never look at it.
Somehow, people lay aside their common sense when they come to the subject of spiritual things.
They expect to see things from which they have deliberately kept their backs turned. They cry out,
**0 Lord, reveal Yourself." Then instead of looking at Him, they keep their gaze fixed on their own inward feelings. They wonder at the mysterious dealings of God in hiding His face from their fervent prayers. But how can they see what they do not look at?
It is never God who hides His face from us. We turn our faces from Him. 'Tor they have turned their back unto me, and not their face" (Jeremiah
2:27).
When Christians spend their time examining their own condition, listing all their sins, and bemoaning their shortcomings, they are setting up their own sinful self upon the chief pedestal in their hearts. They are making it the center of their whole religious life and of all their care and eflforts. They gaze at the great, big, miserable self until it fills their whole horizon. At the same time,
they turn their backs on the Lord, until they lose sight of Him completely.
We are never commanded to behold our emotions or our experiences or even our sins. But we are commanded to turn our backs upon all these and to behold the Lamb of God who takes away our sins. One look at Christ is worth more for salvation than a million looks at self. Yet, we think that the humility which results from self-examination must have in it some saving power because it makes us so miserable. We have to travel a long way on our heavenly journey before we fully learn that there is no saving power in misery. A cheerful, confident faith is the only successful attitude for the believer's soul.
God's Chosen Fast In Isaiah we see God's people complaining that they fasted, and He did not see. They afflicted their souls, and He did not notice. God gave them this significant answer, **Is it such a fast that I have chosen? a day for a man to afflict his soul? is it to bow down his head as a bulrush, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? wilt thou call this a fast, and an acceptable day to the Lord?" (Isaiah
58:5).
Whoever else may be pleased with the miseries of our self-examination, it is very certain that God is not. He calls upon us, as He did upon His people of old, to forget our own miserable selves and to go to work to lessen the miseries of others.
*'Is not this the fast that I have chosen?" He says, *To loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke? Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him?" (Isaiah 58:6-7).
Service for others is of infinitely greater value to the Lord than the longest sessions of self-examination and self-abasement. He shows us the surest way of deliverance out of the mire of misery, into which our habits of self-examination have plunged us. We need to give up our own **fast" of a£9icting our souls and bowing down our heads.
''And if thou draw out thy soul to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted soul; then shall thy light rise in obscurity, and thy darkness be as the noonday: And the Lord shall guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy bones: and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not"
(Isaiah 58:10-11).
All this is exactly what we have been striving after, but our strivings have been in our own way, not in God's. The fast we have chosen has been to afflict our souls, to bow down our heads, and to sit in sackcloth and ashes. Instead of our bones being made fat and our souls refreshed like a watered garden, we have found only hunger, thirst, and misery. Our own fasts, no matter how fervently they may be carried on or how many groans and
tears may accompany them, can never bring us anything else.
Now let us try God's fast. Let us lay aside all care for ourselves and care instead for our needy brothers and sisters. Let us stop trying to do something for our own poor, miserable self-life and try to do something to help the spiritual lives of others. Let us give up our hopeless eflforts to find something in ourselves to delight in. Instead, let us delight ourselves only in the Lord and in His service. If we will do this, all the days of our misery will be ended.
Some may ask whether it is necessary to examine ourselves in order to find out what is wrong and what needs mending. But since we are
God's workmanship, He is the One to examine us.
He is the only One who can tell us what is wrong.
The man who makes watches is the one to examine a watch when it is out of order. We have too much sense to meddle with our watches. Why is it that we do not have enough good sense to give up meddling with our lives?
Surely we must see that the examining of the Lord is the only kind of examination that is of any use. His examination is like that of a physician who examines in order to cure. Our self-examination is like that of the patient who becomes more of a hypochondriac as he continues to examine the symptoms of his disease.
Dealing With Sin When there has been actual sin, should there be self-examination and self-reproach, at least for a time? This is a fallacy which deceives a great many
Christians.
It seems too much to believe that we can be forgiven without first going through a season of self-reproach.
But what does the Bible teach? John tells us, **If we confess our sins" (not bewail them or try to excuse them), **he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness" (1 John 1:9).
All that God wants is for us to turn to Him at once, acknowledge our sins, and believe in His forgiveness. Every minute that we delay in order to spend the time in self-reproach only adds further sin to that which we have already committed.
If ever we need to look away from self and have our eyes turned to the Lord, it is when we become conscious of having sinned against Him.
All through the Bible we are taught this lesson of death to self and life in Christ alone. ''Not I, but Christ" was not intended to be a unique experience of the apostle Paul, but should be the experience of every Christian.
We sing sometimes, 'Thou, O Christ, art all I want," but we truly want a great many other things. We want good feelings; we want fervor and earnestness. We want realizations, and we want satisfying experiences. And we continually
examine ourselves to try to find out why we do not have these things. We think if we could only discover our points of failure, we would be able to set them straight.
But there is no healing or transforming power in gazing at our failures. The only road to Christlikeness is to behold, not our own sinfulness, but His goodness and beauty. We grow like what we look at.
If we spend our lives looking at our sinful selves, we will become more and more sinful.
Dangers Of Self-Reflection Self-examination always seems to make us worse instead of better. As we gaze at self, we are changed into the image of self. We can instead spend our time beholding the glory of the Lord, /js we let our minds dwell upon His goodness anc^ love and drink in His Spirit, we will be, slowly perhaps but surely, changed into the image of the Lord upon whom we are gazing.
Fenelon says that we should never indulge in any self-reflective acts, either of disappointment at our failures or of congratulation at our successes.
Rather, we should continually commit self and all self s doings to oblivion and keep our interior eyes upon the Lord only. It is very hard in self-examination not to try to find excuses for our faults. Our self-reflective acts are often in danger of being turned into self-glorifying ones. The only way is to ignore self altogether and to forget there is any such being in existence.
I have known Christian workers whose lives have been one long torment because of these selfreflective acts. The **Blue Mondays," which so many clergymen complain about, are the result of an indulgence in self-reflective acts concerning their church services the day before.
The only way to treat all forms of self-reflective acts is simply to give them up. They always do harm and never good. They are bound to result in one of two things: either they fill us full of selfpraise and self-satisfaction or they plunge us into the depths of discouragement and despair. In any case, the soul is shut out from any sight of God and of His salvation.
An eiBFective way of conquering the habit is to make a rule that whenever we are tempted to examine ourselves, we will immediately begin to examine the Lord instead. Then we will let thoughts of His love and His all-sufficiency sweep out all thoughts of our own unworthiness and helplessness.
When we set the Lord before our eyes in all the beauty of His character and His ways, the sight will be so lovely that it will take our eyes ofi" everything else. But no revelation of God will be of any use if we will not look at it. We can do no good if we persist in turning our backs on what has been revealed and gaze instead at our own inward experiences.
I must repeat that we cannot see self and see the Lord at the same time. While
we are examining self, we cannot be looking at Him.
Fenelon says this concerning self-examination:
* There is something very hidden and very deceptive in the suffering it causes; for while you seem to yourself to be wholly occupied with the glory of God, in your inmost soul it is self alone that occasions all your trouble. You are indeed desirous that God should be glorified, but you wish it should take place by means of your perfection, and you thus cherish the sentiments of self-love. It is simply a refined pretext for dwelling in self."
Fenelon goes on to say, **It is a sort of infidelity to simple faith when we desire to be continually assured that we are doing well.
It is, in fact, a desire to know what we are doing, which we shall never know, and of which it is the will of God we should be ignorant.
It is trifling by the way, in order to reason about the way. The safest and shortest course is to renounce, forget, and abandon self, and, through faithfulness to God, to think no more of it. This is the whole of religion—to get out of self and self-love, in order to get into God."
What we must do, therefore, is to shut the door resolutely and forever upon self and all of self s experiences, whether they are good or bad. We must say with the psalmist, **I have set the Lord always before me: because he is at my right hand,
I shall not be moved. Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoiceth: my flesh also shalt rest in hope" (Psalm 16:8-9).