Dear friends, please, take a moment to meditate on 2 Corinthians 13:5 where Paul says: “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?”

In both letters to the Corinthians, Paul is very direct in encouraging the believers to take time for introspection or self-examination because, I assume, there was a lot of criticism, intolerance and despising within the body of Christ, as it is evident in 1 Corinthians chapter 12. In that chapter, the apostle urges everybody to not consider themselves self-sufficient while belittling others just because they have different abilities or functions. He goes as far as saying that a sense of self-sufficiency on one hand and an inferiority complex on the other could produce damaging schism in the body of Christ.

In Matthew 7:5, Jesus taught His disciples and the public in general that they should take care of the beam in their own eyes before they try to pull out the mote from a brother’s eye. As a final lesson on humility and incentive to unity, our Lord went as far as washing the disciples’ feet, hoping that they would reach the needed unity in preparation for the great work awaiting them after Christ’s ascension.

Today, we are called to do that same important work—and unity is as important as ever. Through the articles in this magazine, the authors are hoping to encourage Christ’s followers to take more time for self-examination and less time to examine others, while praying together with the psalmist in Psalm 139:23, 24 “Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”

—Adrian Finaru