Both Saint & Sinner

It happened again today.

I found myself wondering if the trials I experience, the struggles in my life are God’s punishment for my sins. Maybe you’ve wondered the same thing about your sin. You know the one I’m talking about, the one you can’t seem to shake. It might get better for a while, then something comes along and all of a sudden it’s rearing its ugly head again. It’s that area in your life that feels like a constant one step forward, two steps backward situation. You’ve confessed it so many times you feel like a broken record. Could be you’ve stopped confessing it because you feel that pressure of “I should be better by now,” and so you bury it. In the dark. Where sin loves to grow and feed and thrive.

Maybe you’re uncomfortable now. That’s ok. So am I.

We aren’t quite sure what to do with these sins. They riddle us with shame and guilt and fear and doubt, and the more we focus on them, the more we judge our spiritual state by them, the more the Christian life becomes a heavy burden of dread rather than a light yoke of rest and joy. We mistakenly place our hope in what we are doing for Christ rather than in what Christ has done for us, and so on the days when we fail (and there are many), we’re left feeling helpless and hopeless.

I believe the reason so many of us find ourselves in this sort of “schizophrenic” Christian lifestyle is because we’ve failed to comprehend the nature of what we are, of what makes a Christian a Christian. We think our lives as regenerate men and women ought to be one way, but when our expectations run headlong into a reality that doesn’t quite accord with them, we’re left scratching our heads and wondering what happened. Thankfully, someone else dealt with this exact same predicament and blazed a trail for us to follow. That trail is known as the Reformation, and that someone else was Martin Luther.

Now wait a minute, you might be thinking. Why should I care about some old dead guy? Or the Reformation, for that matter? That’s in the past. True. But our God is a God of history who works in actual time through actual people and actual events, and to ignore the ways He has worked in the past to correct the course of His church will doom us to repeat those same mistakes in the present.

In light of that, I hope you’re ready for a mini history lesson. Don’t worry, you won’t be tested or anything. Feel free to do what I did in History class and doodle in the margins.

Martin Luther was a zealous monk who had devoted himself to finding acceptance with God through works. He often visited the confessional for hours at a time, tortured himself with long vigils and freezing temperatures, and once climbed the Scala Sancta (Holy Stairs) in Rome on his knees believing it earned him forgiveness. Of this time in his life he later said, “I lost touch with Christ the Savior and Comforter, and made of him the jailer and hangman of my poor soul.” No matter how much Luther did, he looked within and saw that it was never enough. The theology of Roman Catholicism left him despairing of his soul; he was utterly wrecked by his sin, and no amount of personal holiness could soothe his conscience.

It was at this point in the history of the church that God graciously opened Luther’s eyes through Romans 1:17: “The righteous shall live by faith.” Martin Luther understood something in that moment about the Christian nature that would later come to be known as the simul. It goes something like this: simul justus et peccator. Latin aside, this simply means we are at the same time both saint and sinner. Why is this important? Because our understanding of the Christian nature shapes the way we do church, the way we pastor, the way we think of ourselves and of this life. It is important because we often have a hard time believing and living in light of the truth of the Gospel. It is important because our default, natural inclination tells us it is entirely reasonable to think that God is not a God who justifies the ungodly, but one who waits for you to get godly. And it is important because, at the end of the day, we all still sin and are still inclined towards all evil.

So, what does it mean to be a Christian?

The Christian nature flows from justification. In other words, a Christian is someone who has been made right with God. This is called being “righteous.” Where Rome and Martin Luther differed is what kind of righteousness makes us right before God. Rome taught and believed in a type of “infused” righteousness, something that is worked out, produced by, and inherent to the believer. The problem they ran into, funnily enough, was that people kept sinning. This is the origin of Purgatory, of indulgences, of all the extra Sacraments and of last rites. Basically, your best bet for entering Heaven was for a priest to, on your deathbed, clear your slate one final time (preferably immediately prior to taking your last breath), or you could always have your family pay your way in (if you were lucky enough to have money, that is). The problem with this (ya know, the whole “bribing God” thing aside) is that with infused righteousness you can only be one thing. If you sin, you’re a sinner. If you practice righteousness, you’re righteous.

Better cross your fingers and hope you go on the right day.

But the type of righteousness Martin Luther discovered in Paul’s words is known as “imputed” righteousness. It is given by faith—by accepting, receiving, resting and trusting in Christ’s work on your behalf. Faith is the instrument that brings us into that mystical, life-giving union with Christ in which our records are exchanged, my sin is counted as His, and His righteousness is counted as mine. Imputed righteousness is not in you; it is outside of you. “To the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness” (Romans 4:5). Imputed righteousness allows the Christian to be two things at once: a sinner in every sense of the word, and a saint set apart unto God by the work of Jesus Christ. This is what Paul meant when he said we are a “new creation” (2 Corinthians 5:17). The old has passed away, meaning our sin nature was nailed to the cross with Christ. We consider ourselves dead to sin and alive to God through Him (Romans 6:11). And the new has come, meaning we carry within us the seed of the new man: the very spirit of God. Nothing like us has ever existed before, or will ever exist again.

Where we get confused is in thinking that the Christian life is some sort of fluctuating pie chart we can look at and say, “Hey, I’m doing pretty good today! Eighty percent saint, twenty percent sinner.” No. We are 100% sinner every day. There is no sin that is beyond us, no sin that we are not in danger of committing. Even on our best days we are never without sin, but, beloved, even on our worst days we are never without justification. We are also 100% saint, every day, no matter what. Here’s how God’s math works: saint + sinner = dependence + rest. Remove one or the other from the equation, and you end up with either legalistic despair (no rest), or antinomian pride (no dependence). Both rest and dependence are vital to the Christian life, and we will have no peace without them. Clarity on this is critical to our assurance, and therefore our effectiveness, as God’s children. If we aren’t clear on the saint/sinner reality, if our posture is one of over-realized eschatological expectation, then we will inevitably find ourselves in a sort of “spiritual prosperity gospel” situation: If I do A, B, and C the right way, then I will become so spiritually strong that I won’t struggle anymore. I’ll just hover above the battle, impervious to trial and temptation.

I’m not sure how to write the sound for the WRONG! buzzer, but you can go ahead and imagine it…

Do you see what’s happened now? Now there’s an expectation that Christians either don’t sin (that’s a problem), or don’t sin in certain ways (which sins are acceptable for Christians to struggle with, and which aren’t?), or will always be consistently improving (how much is enough?), or at the very least the battle against sin will get easier (…and if it doesn’t?). Then, when those things don’t happen, when the addiction resurfaces, when lust catches us off guard, when the anger bubbles up, when we struggle day after day, year after year with the same old sins and it’s just as hard if not harder than it was ten years ago, we hide. And nothing gives sin more power in our lives than when we try to cover it up. If we want real, deep, heart level, recesses-of-our-soul sanctification, then we need to realize that the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit does not make the flesh holy. We will carry the corpse of the old man with us until we die, but inwardly we are being renewed day by day (2 Corinthians 4:16). We must realize that our’s is an alien righteousness—it does not belong to us, and therefore we can neither improve upon it nor take away from it. And when we realize these things, we are freed to face our sin, confess it, mourn it, then stand firm with our brothers and sisters in Christ, running boldly to the throne of grace to receive mercy and find help in our time of need (Hebrews 4:16).

There is a war going on, beloved, and the battleground lies within you. The fight is continual; the conflict irreconcilable. It is the battle of flesh versus spirit: “For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do” (Galatians 5:17). The saint in you agrees with God about your sin, about His Law, about what is good and righteous and true, but there is something else within you, something real and terrible that rebels against these things and causes you to stumble: the sinner. Of this ceaseless battle Paul writes:

So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin. (Romans 7:21–25)

To think that a Christian will not struggle with habitual sin is to misunderstand the nature of sin. Sin is habitual: There are inclinations within you, warps in your frame, so to speak, that you will fight until the bitter end. This isn’t fatalistic; it’s honest. Make no mistake: There will be grace. There will be sanctification. But the fight is real. It is normal to get up and groan, because while God does indeed promise sanctification, He does not promise to do it in a particular way or at a particular time. God, in His infinite wisdom, sanctifies us in the way that is best for us and most glorifying to Him. Oh, and by the way … the fight? It’s a good thing. Yes, it is wearying. Yes, it is disheartening. But it only exists because you are a saint! When a soldier is injured in battle, his commanding officer doesn’t denounce him as a traitor. He brings him in and treats his wounds. He cares for him so that he might go back out into the trenches and fight again. So it is with Christ. When you stumble, when you fall, when the sinner within wounds you, Jesus lifts you up and carries you. He binds your wounds and whispers, “I know the fight is hard. I know you’re tired and hurting, but I will keep you. Do not despair—My victory is yours! Keep fighting, and I will bring you home.”

A Christian fights sin every single day. He will wrestle mightily with the corruption of the flesh, but the battle does not equal failure! It is the evidence of the saint/sinner reality within, and it is designed by God for our ultimate good. Unlike the world’s definition of maturity, Christian maturity does not mean independence and self-reliance. Christian maturity means dependence and self-despair. The most important thing in the Christian life is not to gradually become morally “better,” but to increasingly become more and more dependent upon Christ, to rest and trust more and more in Him and His work, to despair more and more of self and cast ourselves wholly and utterly on Him. The saint/sinner reality does not allow us to forget this. In fact, it fosters it. It forges in us a kind of humble confidence that can say as Martin Luther did, “When Satan tells me I am a sinner he comforts me immeasurably, since Christ died for sinners.”

When you stumble, there is grace. When the flesh roars and the battle rages, there is grace. When your sin causes you to doubt, to falter, to hide, Jesus draws you with cords of lovingkindness and offers grace to sustain you, to keep you, and to strengthen you for the fight. For now, the Christian nature is twofold and the Christian life is a battle, but one day when we pass from this life into glory, we will no longer be two things, but one. Every last remnant of sin will be swept away and the struggle will end. Sanctification shall yield to glorification, and we shall finally be made perfect. Until then, beloved, lift your eyes from yourself and fix them on Christ—the founder and finisher of your faith, the source of your righteousness, the Solace of the saints and the Savior of sinners.