By Pastor Jon

This has been a Saint vs Sinner week at RELOVUTIONARY.

It started with the content of this Sunday’s sermon, and followed through with Posts ONE and TWO. The words of today now amount to a third. I know. I didn’t go to school to only play sports!

Arithmetical!

Without really planning this specific flow, this series exemplifies one way this blog can work through my words. I would like to chew things over with you, so that you personally vision God’s ideas as never conceptually detached, intellectually routine, nor tritely cliche.

The assumptions that tend toward the theological exercise as not having much real-world experience need to be proven-through-practice as incomplete, and therefore, false, as the ultimate destination.

God willing, RELOVUTIONARY can play some small part in helping to reverse this curse.

Gaining a foothold, like you can handle the terrain of biblical ideas, can feel like having to wrestle an enemy territory of understanding. The battle is real. As one who has navigated into, and then, through, and still very much on that journey, I understand if you don’t keep pressing on, you easily revert to a type of default when this journey becomes practically lost.

We forget. And this is not only because of sin.

We want you to rely on Sundays at RELOVUTIONARY as a good starting point, but our planned-for-goal in the weekly process is to personally work the preached ideas, and further flesh-out each preached proposal. If you think about gaining this type of biblical and theological understanding as conquering newly discovered land, you can use that metaphor to understand the work required to clear that location for life to be lived, and for culture to gain traction.

In the theologically-informed process, this is often gained as the lights become progressively turned on from any number of different angles. This can be like life by a thousand reads. Again, I had not planned to write on this specific Saint vs Sinner contrast. The providence of God is powerful through history’s real time, which means this has become very purposeful. Periodically over this recent week, I have been encouraged to consider again, as my mind has found another set of tracks to navigate the content of this truth, and here we are again.

In the second piece in this now forming written trilogy, I affirmed the absolute demand to understand how you are now Saint (Noun/Identity), but still, how you can be “One who Sins” Sinner (Verb/Reality).

If you have been around biblically-astute Christians, you may have heard talk about their own struggle with sin, and how it still distorts their practice. This is true. I take Romans 7:14-25 in the present tense of the Christian life, which means there can still be confusion, where and how, this Saint vs Sinner can personally apply. And just when you think you’ve nailed it, a wrinkle through another biblical horizon comes into view, and forces you to work it again. This underscores the need to be theologically sophisticated. What I mean is that you’ve spent enough time covering the increasing array of biblical truth, you are now able to cogently exercise this knowledge into more coherent application, so that you don’t get tripped-up by an unsuspecting subject.

There is much more that can be said, but in this piece, I want to spend more time on the Sinner side of the fence, affirming why it is important you still integrate a proper shape.

This does mean we will cover some previous material. But, this should be viewed as a positive.

This inexplicably brought thoughts to my attention after viewing a headline at the bottom of a sports article online from a Christian, entitled, “I’m a sinner too.” While more could be said, this could easily distract from the point of this piece, and we wouldn’t want that now, would we?! Glad you agree. I began to conceive of how any other Christian, let alone person, would read that headline, and whether their integration would reflect biblical truth.

And in that moment, I internally wrote some more.

Therefore, to begin, and this is more of our previous piece, this “I’m a sinner too” line can not be true for the Christian and the Unbeliever, in the very same sense. If these are both proper nouns, this is biblically improper, and untrue.

This means, to work familiar territory, if Sinner is your Identity, you will not be saved; are not born again; and can not describe yourself as a child of God according to the Bible, as you are still in Adam, when you must be in Christ.

You cosmically can’t be in both, even as each can reflect the other side’s emphasis, in practical action!

I will explain.

In a real sense, only the noun Saint can practically include and explain the verb, in the Christian sense. It does not biblically work the other way around. However, just to confuse you, the Bible does explain how a noun Sinner can include the action-verb of a Saint. If this reads like too much of a rabbit trail, and it does confuse, just move onto the next paragraph. But this is my please explain. The Image of God and Common Grace underscore why Sinners many times complete actions more befitting of the Saint. And conversely, the still remaining flesh of the Saint underscores why the Christian many times appears more like the opposite.

This then puts practical emphasis on the vivifying ministry of the Holy Spirit, and the Believer’s active mortification of the flesh, which of course, is also by the Spirit (Sorry, I couldn’t resist the bigger words, but I have linked-you-up, which means there is purpose, so do make the most of this process).

Moving on and back.

In light of the confession that, “I’m a sinner too,” and in light of passages such as Romans 7:14-21 (1 John 1:8-9 is another) how do we correctly apply into real life?

Christians are not saved because of anything they do. You can’t go to the gym of religion. That will just make you want to look increasingly in the mirror, mirror, on the wall. In fact, it is despite our very best efforts that God saves us still, and not our worst. Consider that for a moment. Your very best offering is filthy rags. This means all we have contributed to our salvation is sin. We have sinned because we’re sinners (More to say soon). Therefore, our specific points of departure from God’s Will were merely an outworking from this already living reality, passed-on from our humanly-speaking, Head of State, Adam.

Therefore, when the headline affirms, “I’m a sinner too,” it can be short-hand for this is my starting point, and would be my continued status – like everyone else – except for the purposeful intervention of God. In and of ourselves, this would be our future state, and not simply our daily betrayal. But this underscores why you have to view the contrastive language differently, because, if historically, “I sin because I’m a sinner,” today, “I sin because the flesh is still active, even though that old-man-state is dead, because I’m born again.” This can feel so contradictory that we are prone to slip into default ways of thinking that moves us inside-to-outside-to-inside the family of God, which become devastating for living this life.

Just imagine this at a human relational level. If you’ve been blessed with the reality of having both your parents as always, Mum and Dad, it will help to consider this ramification. Imagine if you lived like one moment they were your always parents, and then in another, as something else entirely? Imagine if this persistently happened through each and every day? That would be relationally debilitating. It would be emotionally excruciating. How do you think this would affect and effect the course of life?

Now connect into this life in Christ. Maybe you find it so hard to relate to your Creator, because as a base relational level, you keep removing Him from the family picture, which means you keep stumbling over the starting-point small-talk, and so this can’t move into changing your deeper stuff?!

The consequences are real, and become even more troubling, as you consider.

You’re potentially perplexed at this point, but don’t expect that it will all make sense because you’ve quickly skim-read through this once. I have an idea. Maybe actually print out the pieces of this Saint vs Sinner digression, and go away from civilisation to a beautiful location, and give yourself a morning to read, think through, and write out questions, considerations, or reflections.

At worst, you will be on the proper journey!

But, I can’t stop here, as we have a finish line ahead.

To continue the previous paragraph, “I’m a sinner too” can be short-hand for “I daily fall short of the glory of God too!” Biblically-speaking, that is about right. Because this is very much living out the Gospel story. Practically, this must be something we positively rehearse throughout every day. This is Gospel-centred. Humility is something that grows as we consider our starting/continued placement in contrast to the holiness of God, and we can only bow the knee, or lie prostrate before, the only righteous One.

But, even in this thinking, you must still understand that the only reason you can rehearse this drama is because you are now Saint. You know what we call that line?

A CIRCLE-BOOM!

I will say in Volume One of the Philosophy that this Christian life involves many both/ands, plenty of nuance, and a good deal of tension. This particular subject may be personally illustrative as you’re reading.

One of the radical realisations for me personally is not that I sin, but that I doubt I’ve ever attained the righteous standard of God in anything I’ve ever done. Understand, this amounts to something like 100% perfection in both motivation and action. We think too highly of ourselves. We are always conflicted. However, and again, this can never skip into Identity because we get His; even as it should daily inform where you have come from (In Adam, as an enemy of God); how you’ve have arrived (By God’s grace alone), and what still impacts inside your mortal frame (You still daily sin with too much impunity).

We most definitely need the grace of God, and this realisation should only grow!

You must preach this to yourself, as it will take time to really grasp the ramifications, and intimately understand how this life in Christ fits together.

In conclusion, someone reading the second piece in this now trilogy commented that this Saint vs Sinner lack-of-understanding is what plagues most of the younger Christians they’ve communicated with. It is not easy to grasp, and because the type of biblical depth inside many Churches mostly leaves much to be desired, it can sound new or foreign. And because, it doesn’t have time or repetition to do its work of burrowing deep inside your internals, so it gets practically kicked to the curbside in real-time.

Sadness!

You were never meant to only grasp how God’s ideas fits together.

Cultural Value: “God’s Truth is Not Rocket-Science, but Rocket-Fuel.”

It is intended to change your life, not just your ideas about life. Don’t settle for anything less. Jesus proved on the Cross that His ideas about life had no limitation on the existential application and consequence.

I pray you are, likewise, positively integrating toward experiential execution today!

Until Next Time… And who knows, there could be a fourth in this series… I am kinda hoping! #JustSaying

For the Fame of His Name