Living as a Saint and a Sinner
Did you know there are beach pebbles that need water to stay white? If you take them away from beach they turn boring grey and they lose their whiteness? It is the same way with Christians. If we stay away from baptismal water and daily renewal we become grey, we lose our whiteness.
I got an email yesterday from a new friend asking about “how does one saint not be also a sinner”. We all have experienced how difficult it is to stay white on our own. There is no way we can do it. We need Christ to wash our sins away.
So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature a slave to the law of sin. (Romans 7:21-25, NIV)
Even as Christians we still need Christ every single day of our lives. By the grace of God we are sinners that have been forgiven. We were saved by grace through faith in Christ Jesus, we were made right with God. (The big word for this is justification.) But the fact is that this is not the end of the story. Sin still lingers in faith-filled people. Because we are human beings we will always be sinners even thought we have been made right with God. We need to be made right day after day by Jesus. We need the baptismal water to keep us white. We need grace of God to keep us pure.
It is very hard for people to accept the fact that we constantly stand in need of God’s grace. We would like to be self-sufficient. But we are and we will always be fully dependent on God. There is another big word, sanctification, that needs to be mentioned here. It means that God does his work in us making us more Christ-like. This sanctification is a life-long process to make us holy. So it does not happen once and for all. But when we day in and day out cling onto Jesus this happens slowly but surely. But we will never outgrow our need of God’s grace. Never. But the good news is God loves to pour grace upon grace on us. God loves to keep us white so we can shine his light to the world! And God’s grace is more than enough to sustain us, renew us, and keep us white and shiny! Thanks be to God!
Gracious God,
Thank you for your grace!
Thank you for saving us!
Thank you for sustaining us!
Thank you for sending us!
In Jesus’ name,
Amen
Q4U: How do you go about living as a saint and a sinner?
Be blessed, my fellow pilgrim, as you cling onto Jesus! That is the best place to be! Rest assured God will never let you go! Rejoice!
2 thoughts on “Living as a Saint and a Sinner”
Are you accepting then, the same old suggestion that Paul was addressing in this section of Romans 5-8 (in reality the whole epistle), that the saint should go on sinning? How does he respond? “God forbid, how shall we who have died to sin, continue to live sinning”!
Personally I have wrestled for more than 40 years with this very problem seeing if there was another answer and haven’t found one. In fact I would say this is where Lutheran, Reformed, and Wesleyan writers alike have been less than Scriptural in letting Paul have his say as well as John in I John 3 (as one example). No, the Gospel is a call to be holy and to embrace the death of Christ as our death to the law of sin and death. Anything less not only denies what God says He has accomplished, but is actually powerless to produce & nourish the Christian life in a wicked and perverse generation. Those who would aspire to give counsel to others about living the crucified life must wrestle with this as perhaps no other part of Holy Scripture.
Thank you so much for your thoughtful comment! I am delighted we can have this discussion! Grace is one of my favorite subjects of all time! I am even in process of writing a book of all this.
I wholeheartedly agree with you that saints should not go on sinning. There is no license to sin! That would be cheap grace (Bonhoeffer). Still we do sin. We don’t want to but it happens. (That’s what this blog post was about). But, God has not left us alone here on earth. When we abide in Christ we receive power to live the Christian life, to live in grace. (Maybe I should write another post about this for tomorrow). We are called to be holy as our God is holy.
Thanks again for sharing your thoughts and starting this discussion. I truly appreciate it. May God continue to bless you and keep you!