Are we Sinners or Saints?

I once believed that I was an active nasty sinner. I believed this all the while I said I was a Christ follower. It wasn’t until recent years, that I began to understand this.

Now before you get your panties in a bind about the statement I just made, let me make myself clear. We ALL have sinned and have fallen short of the glory of God. (I took that one from scripture, and you probably know that because that is a verse hammered into the minds of all sinners to make sure they never forget.)

Yes. We all have sinned and are prone to doing it again.

But, When the word of God says:

“For the death He died he died to sin, once and for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive too God in Christ Jesus.

Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness.”

Paul goes on to talk about not abusing grace… Go read that. Romans 6:5 on through- As long as you want to read. Bottom line, he makes a point to use the terms “Those of you who were ONCE slaves to sin”, or “Having been set free of sin”.

I think he is inferring that we used to be classified as Sinners, and now we are not classified as active Sinners, but rather clothed in righteousness.

Let’s look at this logically.

If the word says that we have been “transformed and a new creation and having a renewed mind” Romans 12- Then what does that mean? Should we continue to live out the way of life we use to live? No. In fact, your life will become more of a challenge, because typically speaking, dying to our flesh is not an easy task. We have “members of our bodies” constantly wanting to resurrect themselves to participate in some operation of sin. But even if the temptation is there, does that make us active participants? No. Jesus was tempted in every way, and he remained without sin.

Here is another thought. Why, would anyone want what we Christians claim to have, if what we have is no different than what the world has? If we are busy sleeping around, boozing it up, swearing like a sailor, cheating, lying, manipulating, destroying and generally being a boil on the side of the earth’s rump, why would anyone want what we have? If we say we are no different than the world, by repeatedly claiming we are a loser, a horrible person, not worthy and walking around touting false humility and… Claiming we are a sinner, why would anyone want what we have?

We are called to be conquerors! We are to be filled with the Holy Spirit and our lives should be lived out with cloaks of holiness, freedom, healing and most importantly be giving away the HOPE of Christ.

We live into what we say we are. If I am constantly saying I am a sinner… What am I living into? I’ll let you ponder that question.

Let's face it. Working our way out of false beliefs and wrong thinking is one of the hardest things we will ever do. But, still we all have them and we all have to deal with them.

I have sinned. Yes. This is true. Will I sin again? Maybe, but I don’t actively plan to sin again. Because, what the word says, is that I am an heir of Christ Jesus. And I am in fact royalty. I am not to be a slave to sin any longer. (Romans 8:12)

Am I saying I am perfect and won’t ever sin again? No. So don’t try and peg that on me here. We are in no way perfect, but we should not use that as an excuse to screw up on purpose and have a mindset that we can just lather ourselves with grace just because we make a purposeful decision to sin.

Christian, we need to stop throwing ourselves under the bus and calling ourselves sinners. We need to stop singing about it, constantly thinking about it and saying it to others in order to make ourselves look un-special. Thats false humility.

The King of the universe does not want his children broadcasting how they live lives of poverty and how he has done nothing for them.

How do we think this feels to God our father, when we toot our horns about how we are such complete losers? Or worse, we do not turn from sin, and keep rolling in our standard M.O. because we just want too or think we can because God’s grace covers it all…

Hey, God knows our hearts. We aren’t fooling Him in any way shape or form.

We need to stop camping at the foot of the cross, where he demonstrated grace for us all. Yes, there is time for us to be there, but not forever. (We should all be wearing open tomb necklaces, not crosses which represent death.)

Now, we need to move to the open tomb where he demonstrated the resurrected life and transformation into freedom!

Jesus was in both places. Can we celebrate his example of overcoming death?

Then lastly, he let people watch his ascension into heaven. Where our eyes should be looking too. He didn’t stay on the cross, and neither should we.

Jesus’s example: His flesh was killed- and then he was resurrected- and he walked around showing people the miraculous thing that had happened to him! Shouldn’t we be doing the same? Shouldn’t we be telling the world that we died and were raised to a newness of life rather than believe that we haven’t died to our flesh yet?

Because that in a sense is what we are saying when we believe we have never walked away from sinning. When I constantly say- “I am a sinner”, I am telling the world, the cross never worked for me, and I am still waiting, just like a large portion of the Jews were waiting for the messiah to come and still are, I am still waiting to die on the cross.

Come on now, crucify the flesh already and move into transformation. Tell the world about that! Tell the world about how he has transformed you! Tell the world about goodness of God and live a life that makes those around you want what you have!

We WERE sinners. However, we should not actively be living in sin anymore.

We are Conquerors, over comers and are to be riding the wave of explosive hope!

This is the message we should be giving the world.

Our identity is not that we are a sinner. We are royalty and sons and daughters of God. Get your crown and wear it!