The key verses are 1 Corinthians 11:31 & 32. (NIV) "31But if we judged ourselves, we would not come under judgment. 32When we are judged by the Lord, we are being disciplined so that we will not be condemned with the world."
There is one kind of judgment you don't want. And that is at the end of this age, to be judged with the world, attached to the world, condemned with the world, doomed to everlasting punishment with the world. The better options which are for those who are destined for eternal life which are to be judged before the end of the age. According to our aforementioned scripture, the two options are to proactively do it yourself, or to procrastinate which will lead to the Lord "doing it for you", after having out-waited the "grace period" which only God knows the length of. Our Righteous Judge wants us to turn ourselves in. He doesn't want to send for you. If you turn yourself in, there is leniency available from the court of the Lord.
It is clear from the scripture that even when we have failed to judge ourselves, that the Lord does it out of grace and with mercy so that we will not be condemned with the world. He truly loves us! But let me tell you friend, it hurts allot more when God does it because that means He is dealing with our pride, arrogance, disobedience and a generally uncooperative or even unteachable spirit. That calls for a bruising! And it's so unnecessary. Why lose the finances, the relationships, the opportunities, why suffer in health and in so many other ways just so that God can get your attention. (whether it's He Himself or Him allowing these things to come your way is a teaching for another time). Why indeed, when the Word of God says we can avoid all that mess and pain by simply judging ourselves!?
So how do we judge ourselves? I asked this question at one of my Life Groups last night and got some good answers. One lady said that she evaluates her day, every day and writes down everything noteworthy and flat out asks the Lord in prayer and with Holy Spirit interaction, what she did that pleases Him and what she did that could have been better and also what she did that did not please Him. She then thanks God for assisting her in her good decisions and she asks God's forgiveness in the areas she came up short or was sinful. She then repents. To repent is more than to ask forgiveness. It is to make a decision to turn from a wrong way and go in the right direction. "Sorry" may wipe your slate clean, but it won't prevent it from getting immediately soiled again. Repenting changes everything because it involves a commitment to make better decisions. To change. Her goal is to clear herself before her God every day and just as importantly to improve herself according to His ways every day. Another man talked about how he prays "purging prayers" every day. Praying through every issue and praying things literally out of himself. And another lady told us about how she gets together with a group of spiritual friends and they work together to judge themselves using an honest group evaluation. All of these are great examples of how we can judge ourselves.
The context of our scripture if you read all of 1 Corinthians 11:17-33 is that of judging ourselves before partaking of the Lord's Supper (Communion). The scripture exhort's us to first examine ourselves and then to judge ourselves. This means to us that one of the primary reasons for the ritualized partaking of the Lord's Supper in the organized Church is that it is an opportune time to examine and judge ourselves. However, the once a month that most Churches offer a communion element to the service is simply not enough. It should serve only as an example of what we need to do daily. In the New Testament, it is obvious that in the house Churches, they were participating in the Lord's Supper most every day. I believe that this is a call that before we partake of our food at every meal and even between meals, we need to be in constant examination of our motives, our words, our hearts and our deeds. Self judgment according to God's Word is 24/7.
Allow me to pose a few final questions: What good are Kingdom blessings received if they are continually eroded because we fail to judge ourselves and the judgments from outside ourselves just keep on coming?? Rather than just being focused on getting more blessings, why don't we try to hang on to some of them by avoiding judgment? Better yet, why don't we stop living by striving for blessings and learn to truly seek first the Kingdom of God, and His righteousness, and then all of these things will be added, not subtracted to us?
