Sinner ... Saint ... Or Both?

If you would, please stand as we say together our memory Scripture for this quarter:

Romans 12:4-5

“Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.”

And our memory refresher Scripture is …

1 Thessalonians 4:16-18

“For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first.

“Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we shall ever be with the Lord. Therefore comfort one another with these words.”

Please open your Bibles to 1 John 1:5-10, 1 John 2:1-2, 1 John 3:1-10 which we will read in a few minutes.

People all want to be free, isn’t that true?

People who live under the tyranny of a dictatorship or under communism yearn to be free.

Young women and children who are trapped in the sex slave trade yearn to be free.

Those in prison yearn to be free.

Those trapped in slavery to sin also yearn to be free. They may not know it when it starts out but eventually that sin will have them by the throat and they will yearn for freedom from sin.

We know that after we come to Christ for salvation that we CAN sin but should that be our identity?

Are we sinners who should identify ourselves as such or are we people who have been born of God and therefore cannot go on living in habitual sin?

Well … yes and no …

In order to answer that question we need to identify what sin is and what it is not.

Sin is the willful transgression (rebellion against) the known will of God by a morally responsible person.

How do we know that, we know it from Scriptures! We always look at God’s Word!

James 4:17,

“Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn’t do it, sins.”

By the same token, anyone who knows the evil he should not do and does it anyway, sins.

1 John 3:4 AMPC

“Everyone who commits (practices) sin is guilty of lawlessness; for [that is what] sin is, lawlessness (the breaking, violating of God’s law by transgression or neglect - being unrestrained and unregulated by His commands and His will).

------- Illustration -------

The seventh commandment says, “You shall not steal.”

One day, many years ago, Pastor Karenlee and I were stopping off at a shopping mart for a bungee cord to hold up a plastic part of the car that had come loose until we could get home. So we got a bungee cord. While we were there we decided to get some coffee and I absent mindedly stuck the bungee cord into my jacket pocket and got some coffee. When we got up to the checkout I suddenly remembered the bungee cord in my pocket and took it out and paid for it.

What if I had forgotten that it was there and had walked out the door?

Regardless of whether I was caught or not, would it have been a sin?

No, because it did not meet the three criteria of sin, it was not a willful transgression.

This would be a mistake caused by the frailty of a human mind and not a sin.

When would it have become a sin? When I realized that I had it and had not paid for it.

Suppose your two year old child sitting in your shopping cart had picked up a candy bar and stuck it in his pocket. Would that have been a sin?

No, because the child does not know that stealing is against the will of God and the child is not yet a morally responsible person knowing right from wrong.

------- End Of Illustration -------

One of the distinctive doctrines of the Church of The Nazarene is the doctrine of Holiness or Entire Sanctification.

We believe that a person can be so filled with the Spirit of God and have such perfect love for the Lord our God that he is no longer enslaved to sin but is now ruled in heart, mind and action by obedience to the will of God. And, that this obedience is driven by that perfect love.

But, is that even possible???

Let’s check it out by reading … 1 John 1:5-10, 1 John 2:1-2, 1 John 3:1-10

Please keep your Bibles open as we read through these passages verse by verse

(… and make comments along the way)

Vs 1:5-7: light = perfect purity and holiness / darkness = evil and sinfulness