FINAL EXAMS

5 Examine yourselves as to whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Do you not
know yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?unless indeed you are disqualified. 6 But
I trust that you will know that we are not disqualified. 7 Now I pray to God that you do
no evil, not that we should appear approved, but that you should do what is honorable,
though we may seem disqualified. 8 For we can do nothing against the truth, but for the
truth. 9 For we are glad when we are weak and you are strong. And this also we pray,
that you may be made complete.
--2 Corinthians 13:5-9 (NKJV)
As we draw to the close of the year, I thought this would be a good time to
approach this text. Just as students face final exams at the end of the school year to
evaluate their learning, I find it a good practice to do some self-examination at this time
of year, some reflection on the events of the year. In doing so, we can clearly see the
points at which we are making or not making spiritual connection, where we are
experiencing God in the events of our lives. The process can be an eye-opening
experience, whether we discover spiritual growth of which we were unaware, or discover
that we have begun a slow slide away from spiritual things.
And so Paul urges us to examine yourselves. The purpose? He states it very
clearly: To see whether you be in the faith. And notice that he uses the word
disqualification. The only other place Paul uses this word is in 1 Corinthians 9, where
he has described the Christian life as a race. As I discovered this, I immediately thought
of a track meet and the different kinds of races, and I began to compare these types of
races to some of the runners of the faith we find in Scripture.
For instance, some runners specialize in running hurdles, and I compared these to
the great overcomers we find in the Bible. Moses was one of these, having left Egypt
under questionable circumstances, and now being commissioned by God to go back and
face Pharaoh. He obviously had some sort of speech impediment which he felt limited
his ability to carry out the task. Even after accomplishing the delivery of the people from
Pharaohs hand, he was faced with guiding an unruly crowd against impossible odds in
the desert.
David was another overcomer. He first made his name by overcoming a Philistine
giant that no one else had been able to defeat. When he was chosen as the successor to
Saul, he had to face Sauls kingly jealousy and spent a great deal of time running for his
life. He spent more time running from his own son Absalom, who had usurped his
throne. He had to overcome difficulties of his own making in his relationship with
Bathsheba.
Then there are those who are great sprinters, who start quickly out of the gate and
know how to run well. I see Joshua as one of these, because he was a man who never
showed a sign of wavering or backing up. Elijah was another, particularly evident in the
tremendous victory at Mt. Carmel over the priests of Baal. And he also seems to have
literally fit this category, judging by his 17-mile run to Jezreel in front of a chariot.

And of course we cant do without the relay runners, those who know the race is
not run alone and look to pass the torch to others. Moses, for instance, evidently had
Joshua in training for years before the reins of leadership were passed to him, which may
explain Joshuas unusual capabilities. And following in Elijahs footsteps was Elisha,
who seems to have picked up where Elijah left off without missing a beat.
As we examine ourselves after another year: perhaps some of us have been
sprinters, and we have run far and well (although even sprinters may not think themselves
to be so); probably most of us feel like we have been running hurdles, and it seems one
obstacle after another has been thrown into our path to spiritual growth during this past
year; or maybe some of us have learned to run relays, and have learned to depend more
on the support of othersor maybe we have been carrying a torch that we will now pass
on to someone else.
Whatever our position in the Christian race, let us take strong notice of Pauls
question in verse 5: Do you not know yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you? That
question alone says to me that his exhortation to examine yourselves is not the negative
statement that many read it to be. In other words, when Paul says to examine yourselves,
he is not saying Do you KNOW you are NOT in the faith, what he is saying is Do you
NOT know that you ARE. Thats a significant difference, and let me suggest to you that
Pauls instruction to the Corinthians to examine themselves is not intended as a negative
thing which would communicate a desire for them to straighten up. Rather, it is a
positive examination which Paul seems to be certain will result in a renewing of
assurance as they see the points at which God is at work in their lives.
After all, there are already enough negative things at work in the world to pull us
away and get us discouraged without having negative instructions and warnings hanging
like a sword of Damocles over our heads. And we all, from the least to the greatest, have
had negative experiences in our lives which have not necessarily brought about a result of
not being in the faith. Look at Moses: as great as he was, he was not allowed to enter
the promised land because of one irrational act of disobedience in striking the rock
instead of speaking to it. And David, great a king as he was, was not allowed to fulfill the
desire of his heart and build Gods Temple, because he had been a man of war. And even
Elijah, after the great victory over the priests of Baal, sat moping in self-pity when he
heard that Jezebel sought his life.
But these are still HEROES of the faith. These negative incidents did nothing to
make them any less so. I truly believe we tend to forget that when dealing with our own
failures and shortcomings and human weaknesses.
Several years ago I was a runner on the high school track team. I had not had that
much experience, since I never tried for the team until my senior year. But I made it with
no problem, partly because I tried out for the mile run, and there really was no true mile
runner on the team. The only runners I had for company in the mile run were the
offensive linemen from the football team, who had been required to be there as a part of
their conditioning. All that season, I never won a race, but I did have some second and
third place finishes.
When the season drew to a close, it was no surprise that we were neck and neck
with the Travelers Rest Devildogs for the conference championship. No matter what the
sport, Wren and Travelers Rest in those days would go head-to-head to decide the
conference champion. When we got to the final meet of the season, it was at Travelers

Rest, and the contest was too close to call. The mile run came early on in the contest, and
Travelers Rest easily had the edge, having several good runners while we basically had
me. The lead runner set a strong pace, and I set a faster than usual pace to try to stay
within reach of him. By the time we reached the last half-lap, however, he had widened
the margin to about a quarter-lap, so that there was no way I would catch him. So I set
my sights on the man in front of me, who was the third-place runner at the moment. As I
reached the last turn, I let loose with all the afterburners and gave everything I had to try
to pass him. As I got on his heels, though, several of my teammates, who were gathered
at that part of the field, began shouting and encouraging me, urging me on. He heard the
commotion, turned around and saw me, and put on a burst of his own, barely edging me
as we crossed the line.
I thought no more of it at the moment, knowing I had given my best shot. I rested
up and watched the rest of the meets events. When we came to the last event, the mile
relay race, it was so close that the winner of this event would take the meet. As the coach
looked around to put the runners together for this race, he found himself needing one
more runner to have all four legs for the relay. He eventually came down to two
possibilities, and I was one of them. He asked me if I thought I was rested enough to try
it, and I said, I dont really think so. The 440 leg I would have had to run was a faster
pace than I was accustomed to as a miler, and I wasnt sure if I had any left after having
run the mile earlier. He turned then to Roger Hudgens and asked the same question, and
he answered, Ill give it a try.
What I did not realize at the time, and someone filled me in later, was that Roger
had just gotten through running three straight 220 sprints and was almost completely
exhausted. They started the race, with Roger running the second leg for us. When he got
the baton, he ran well at first, but slowed way down after the first quarter-lap. By the
time he finished his run, we were almost a half-lap behind their runners. They
maintained that lead at the time Tommy Joy, our final leg runner, got the baton. And then
an amazing thing happened. Tommy took off like he was being chased by a street gang.
It had to be the most incredible 440 run I ever saw in my life, because he ran more like a
hundred yard sprinter, and maintained that pace all the way around the track. By the time
he made the last turn, he was within five yards of their man, and closing ground quickly.
Then, in an almost exact replay of the earlier mile race, their runner heard the commotion
of our team screaming encouragement to Tommy, turned and saw him closing, and put on
a burst that put him across the finish line about a half-yard in front of Tommy. When the
points were tallied, we discovered we had lost the meet by a single point.
For years, every time I remembered that race, I felt I had lost the meet for us. But
I was wrong about the reason I thought I had lost. You see, all I could think about was
that mile race and the difference that would have been made if I had somehow overtaken
the runner in front of me for third place. The one point he received for third place would
then have gone over to our side and instead of losing by a point we would have won by a
point. If only I had not decided not to maintain the lead runners pace, maybe I would
have been farther up in the pack. If only he hadnt seen me coming, I think I could
have passed him. If only I could have found enough inside of me to pour it on and
outrun him.
But somewhere along the line, Im not really sure when, I began to see with more
honest eyes why I lost the meet for us. Because I really did not lose the race when I

failed to get the third-place point for the mile runI lost when I failed to try when the
coach said he needed me. And there is absolutely nothing I can do to turn back the hands
of time and answer that question again. All I can do is remember the lesson learned and
apply it to this race we call Christian living.
You know, we can spend an eternity hammering ourselves for our faults and our
failures. We can take a negative approach to our spiritual growth and wind up like Paul
in Romans 7, struggling and struggling and never moving ahead. Or we can follow
Pauls exhortation to examine our lives, and then recognize that self-condemnation will
lead us nowhere, and realize that we have a place we can come and surrender all those
faults and failures. Remember, there is a big difference between saying I failed and
saying I am a failure. As we take that look back, lets remember to accentuate the
positive; and if there is any negative there, instead of magnifying it beyond all belief,
lets remember that Christ is a specialist in restoration and renewal. The answer to our
search for spiritual victory is often found not in our struggle to triumph, but in our
willingness to surrender the struggle to one more able.