Sin is a fundamental relationship; it is not wrong doing, it is wrong being; deliberate and emphatic independence of God. The first thing Jesus Christ faced in men was the heredity of sin (Adam’s fall), and it is because we have ignored this in our presentation of the Gospel that the message of the Gospel has lost its sting and its blasting power. God made his own Son to be sin that He might make the sinner a saint…He deliberately took upon His own shoulders, and bore in His own Person, the whole massed sin of the human race – “He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin,” and by so doing He put the whole human race on the basis of redemption. Jesus Christ, rehabilitated the human race; He put it back to where God designed it to be, and anyone can enter into union with God on the ground of what our Lord has done on the Cross. (Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest).
Hall Powell Asks, “Saint or Sinner?”
For a sinner to become a saint, a person must be spiritually, transformed, or as the Bible puts it, must be born again, returned to the original life source of God’s Spirit. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory (God’s manifest presence) of God (Romans 3:23). Very simply, when Adam disobeyed God and chose to make his own decisions about what was good and evil, his life source changed from God’s to the tempter who was the author of evil, the (evil) spirit who works in the lives of everyone who was born to Adam and his heirs (all mankind). This is documented in Genesis 5:1-3: This is the book of the genealogy of Adam. In the day that God created man, He made him in the likeness of God. He created them male and female, and blessed them and called them Mankind in the day they were created. And Adam lived one hundred and thirty years, and begot a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth. Don’t miss this. Look again: “…in his (Adam’s) own likeness. God created two people in His own likeness: Adam and Eve. Because of their disobedience to God’s command to not eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; to not seek to be like God Who determines what is good and evil, they “fell” from their union with Him and took on the image of the devil as the source of life for their spirits, souls, and bodies. Only two people could say that they were born as “Children of God.” Adam and Eve. Everyone else has been born in the image of Adam and Eve. This why Jesus said that unless one is born again, born of the Spirit, he cannot see the Kingdom of God, because, what is born of the flesh (Adam) is flesh, and one who is born of the Spirit (God) is Spirit (John 3:1-6). Those who are born of the Spirit of God are referred to in the Bible as saints. They are people who have been redeemed, restored by God through the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. All of Mankind was redeemed by the sacrifice of Jesus. But God is so rich in mercy, and He loved us so much, that even though we were dead because of our sins, He gave us Life when He raised Christ from the dead (Ephesians 2:4,5). But it is by individual choice that redemption to be experienced. To as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become the children of God (John 1:12); No, we are not all “God’s children” unless we, by faith, receive the Son of God, Jesus Christ, as our Lord and Savior.
Saint or sinner? How do you refer to yourself? If you are a true Christian, one who has received Christ Jesus as lord and Savior, the Bible says that you are a saint. Note the number of times in the New Testament that believers are addressed as “saints’ (e.g. Romans 1:7; 1 Corinthians 1:2; Ephesians 1:18, 4:12; and many more) because they are the redeemed. Being a saint doesn’t mean that you don’t make mistakes, missteps, doing or saying wrong things, what we refer to as “sins.” All true followers of Christ are saints who still sin in the sense of waring with (and sometimes losing to) the temptations of the “flesh.” That is why the Bible refers to the purpose of the Apostles and other spiritual leaders of Christians as being for “the perfecting of the saints” (Ephesians 4:11-13). The process of becoming Christlike will be ongoing until we are with him and then we will be like Him and we will see Him as He is (1 John 3:2,3). Meanwhile, we are saints being perfected.
A lack of understanding that the Cross of Christ redeemed us and put us back in union with Him has morphed throughout the past two-thousand years in the Church into a belief that even though we are “saved,” we are still sinners because we still “sin.” That is a clever work of the devil who is the deceiver. We have been deceived into believing that we are sinners and not saints. Why? Because what you identify with is what you will act like. If you say, “I am a just a sinner,” you will act like a sinner. It also sounds pious and humble to say that. However, if you identify as a “saint,” you will not be destined to fail and live less than of the abundant life that Jesus came to give us in our union with Himself. He said, “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly” (John 10:10), He was referring to His own life, His own union with the believer. John further states, “And this is the record. That God has given to us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He that has the Son has life, and he that has not the Son of God has not life. These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life” (1 John 5: 12,13).
If you are a true believer; if you have truly received the life of Christ because He is your Savior, and have been redeemed by His shed blood on the Cross, you are a saint. You are a saint because in union with Christ (Colossians 1:27) you have His life in you; eternal life. That is the only reason that the Father can look upon you. He cannot fellowship with sinners. Father God, Abba, sees us in His Son because we are in union with Him.
Hall Powell Asks, “Saint or Sinner?” was first posted at HallPowell.org
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