Examine your own selves, whether you are in the faith. Test your own selves. Or don’t you know about your own selves, that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless indeed you are disqualified.
ExplanationCommentary
Verse 5. Try your ownselves if you be in the faith. [1] He does not mean if they have a right Christian faith or belief, but either whether they had a saving Christian faith working in them by charity, or as Saint John Chrysostom says, a faith that shewed itself by the gift of miracles, at that time commonly given to the first Christians.—Unless perhaps you are disapproved, [2] rejected, and justly deprived of this gift, which was a proof that they were Christians, and had received the Spirit of Christ. I judged it better to translate here disapproved, that reprobates, which in other places is often taken as opposed to the predestinate and the elect, whereas there it signifies those who were rejected, and deprived of the gifts of the spirit, particularly of that of miracles, and of those spiritual gifts granted to the first Christians, and which were a proof that they had received the grace: and the 7th verse, not that we may appear approved, but that … we may be as reprobates. That is, we wish that we may have no occasion to shew the power and the gifts of the spirit, and that of miracles, but as if we were rejected, disapproved, reproved, and deprived of such proofs. Witham.