Thank you to Tullian Tchividjian, a Lutheran pastor from whom much of the message theme is borrowed.
There’s something wonderful our Epistle lesson today that can be overlooked, in that Paul calls the Christians living in Corinth “saints.” In fact, “Saint” is a term he uses to describe all of us who are in Christ. Now, growing up Roman Catholic, I have one idea of Saints, and it certainly wouldn’t have anything to do with the Corinthians. They were possibly Paul’s biggest pain in ministry, given that he had planted the church in Corinth and pastored the church there for years, and they turned against him after he left to preach the gospel elsewhere, which is why he had to write them back several times.
The word saint means “holy ones,” those who have been set apart, consecrated, and are being sanctified by God. Consider this chalice. I was given one similar to this when I was ordained. When I’m thirsty, I don’t fill it with Diet Ginger Ale. It’s set apart for special use. That’s the Corinthians, and that’s us.
Unfortunately, another term that describes us well is sinners. Some modern preachers obsessed with self-esteem hate using the word “sinner” to describe Christians. Can you be both a Sinner and a Saint? Once God saves us, aren’t we new creatures? The old (sinner) is gone, and the new (saint) has come?” These are important questions. And dealing with the problem was the spur of the Reformation.
Martin Luther helps answer these questions as he struggled in understanding the Gospel. He described Christians as “being simultaneously justified and sinners” which became a reformation slogan. Luther was saying that we are at the same time, but in different senses, righteous and sinful.
And most importantly, the label “sinner” does NOT describe the Christian’s core identity. In truth, before God the Father, our identity is not a both/and (sinner and saint); it is an either/or (sinner or saint).
If I stand before God the Father, and I stand on my own efforts, by best, best efforts, and the best of my good works, and I plead my best, and tried my hardest, I still stand as a sinner. In the same way a little cyanide ruins a large batch of Grape Kool Aid, (Gabe)a little sin destroys a soul. My best is Toxic.
But when I stand before God the Father, with Christ as my advocate, and I plead His blood, and Christ has cast my sin into the sea, I stand before God as a Saint, because of all Christ has done, and is doing in me.
But while it is no longer our identity, until that day when we stand before the Father in glorified bodies, we still have the taint of sin all over us. We all sin. We all fall short of God’s glory. In fact, 1 John 1:8 makes clear “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.”
While it is true that there is nowhere in a Christian’s life that the Holy Spirit has not infiltrated, it is equally true that there is no part of any Christian in this life that is free of sin. So, if it feels like you are caught in the middle of a spiritual civil war—it’s because you are! Pulled this way by sin, that way by the Spirit (see Romans 7).
I am fully Justified, and can stand fully righteous before God. The perfection of Christ has been imputed to us and we are therefore fully justified on the basis of his finished work. NOTHING—can separate us from God’s love because God’s love for us is in no way dependent on us, and what we do. It is entirely dependent on what Jesus has done for us.
On the other hand, we all fall short of God’s demand for perfection on a daily basis. Even our best works have something in them that needs God’s pardon. A Christian poet named William Beveridge wrote this and it hits me hard:
I cannot pray but I sin. I cannot hear or preach a sermon without sin.
I cannot give alms or receive the sacrament but I sin. I can’t so much as confess my sins, but my confessions are further aggravations of them. My repentance needs to be repented of, my tears need washing, and the very washing of my tears needs still to be washed over again with the blood of my Redeemer.”
In other words, Christians are fully human—with real problems, real pain, real faults, and failures. We are, therefore, simultaneously “saint AND sinner.” With this paradigm in mind, the Apostle Paul refers to himself as a “saint” while at the same time calling himself the “chief of sinners.”
Knowing this allows us to affirm that in Christ, the Christian is 100% righteous before God, while at the same time recognizing the need to fight the persistence of sin in my life.
If we don’t understand that we are both a sinner and a saint, then it’s easy to question our salvation when we sin. And it’s hard to turn back to God, to seek forgiveness, because we feel we can’t face Him. I can’t be saved, because I am clearly not totally righteous. This was Luther’s struggle.
So, if you’re a Christian, here’s the good news: Our true identity as a Christian has nothing to do with you—how much you can accomplish, your strengths, your weaknesses, and so on. Your identity is anchored in Christ and accomplishment, his strength, not yours;. Your identity—who you ultimately are—is steadfastly established in his substitution, not your sin.
Understanding that I am simultaneously “saint AND sinner” liberates me to live my life with hope and without hiding. I am now free to confess the truth about myself—the ugly, hard truth that I desperately try to conceal from even myself—without fear of God’s rejection and I can come before him Just as I Am.
The guilt and shame that accompanies sin is not beat by convincing ourselves that we aren’t sinners. It certainly isn’t overcome by trying to justify our sins, and tell the world that it really isn’t sin.
Our sin is overcome by believing that Christ saves sinners. Not only saves them, but makes us holy. As Martin Luther said, “When the devil tells me I’m a sinner, he does me a favor because Jesus DIED for sinners.”
