28. Testing Ourselves
28
Testing Ourselves1
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
You doubt, from 2 Corinthians 13:5, whether you are in Christ or not? And so then, whether you are a reprobate or not? I answer two things to the doubt. First, you owe charity to all men, but most of all to lovely and loving Jesus and some also to yourself, especially to your renewed self, because your new self is not yours but another Lord’s, even the work of His own Spirit. Therefore, to slander His work is to wrong Him. Love thinks no evil; if you love grace, think not ill of grace in yourself. The great Advocate pleads hard for you; be upon the Advocate’s side, O poor, feared client2 of Christ! He pleads for you, whereof your letter (though too, too full of jealousy) is a proof.
For if you were not His, your thoughts (which, I hope, are but the suggestions of His Spirit, who only brings the matter into debate to make it sure to you) would not be such nor so serious as these, “Am I His?” or “Whose am I?” Second, dare you forswear your Owner and say in cold blood, “I am not His”? What nature or corruption says in the first place in you, I regard not. Your thoughts of yourself, when sin and guiltiness round you in the ear and when you have a sight of your deserving, are apocryphal and not Scripture, I hope. I charge you by the mercies of God, be not that cruel to grace and the new birth as to cast water on your own coal by misbelief.
You may put a difference between you and reprobates, if you have these marks.3
1. If you prize Christ and His truth so as you will sell all and buy Him, and suffer for it.
2. If the love of Christ keeps you from sinning, more than the law or fear of hell.
3. If you are humble and deny your own will, wit, credit, ease, honor, the world, and the vanity and glory of it.
4. Your profession must not be barren and void of good works.
5. You must in all things aim at God’s honor; you must eat, drink, sleep, buy, sell, sit, stand, speak, pray, read, and hear the Word, with a heart purpose that God may be honored.
6. You must show yourself an enemy to sin and reprove the works of darkness, such as drunkenness, swearing, and lying, albeit the company should hate you for so doing.
7. Keep in mind the truth of God that you heard me teach, and have nothing to do with the corruptions and new guises entered into the house of God.
8. Make conscience of your calling in covenants and in buying and selling.
9. Acquaint yourself with daily praying; commit all your ways and actions to God by prayer, supplication, and thanksgiving; and count not much of being mocked; for Christ Jesus was mocked before you.
Persuade yourself of this: “This is the way of peace and comfort for which I now suffer. I dare go to death and into eternity with it, though men may possibly see another way.”
1. Letters, no. 293, 588.
2. client: follower, or dependent
3. Letters, no. 172, 324.