Am I still a sinner?
Am I Still A Sinner?
“For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.”
2 Corinthians 5:21 (KJV)
There's a phrase people say about themselves all the time:
"I'm just a sinner saved by grace."
Most of us say it to stay humble.
It makes sense that we do because nobody wants to be the person walking around acting like they've got it all together.
Sin is us running our own lives our own way instead of God's way. Every one of us has done it.
Grace is God handing us good we never earned and could never pay Him back for.
The phrase is telling the truth up to that point. We got rescued.
We never paid a cent toward it.
That phrase still calls you something, though:
"Sinner".
The rescue is the part God did, and sinner is the name we kept.
For a lot of us that isn't just something we say. It's what we actually believe about ourselves.
God forgave us, sure, but the drinking, or the person we kept lying to, that's the real us. The forgiveness is sitting on top of it.
Here's the question sitting underneath that phrase.
Am I still a sinner? When God looks at me, is that still what He sees?
Paul wrote this verse. He knew about a name that sticks to a man.
Before Jesus, God's own Son, stopped him on the road, he hunted Christians down and had them arrested.
This verse uses the word made twice. The first time, it's talking about Jesus.
"For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin"
2 Corinthians 5:21 (KJV)
God took everything we've ever done and laid it on a man who had never done one bit of it.
The second time, it lands somewhere else:
"that we might be made the righteousness of God in him."
2 Corinthians 5:21 (KJV)
There's made again, and this time it's talking about us.
Righteous means right with God, standing there clean with nothing held against you.
Then Paul says where that righteousness is kept, in two words: "In him".
It means the righteousness is Jesus' own. It's held in Him, not handed to us to look after.
I know the objection, because every one of us has it.
"How can God call me something I'm not? I keep making mistakes and sinning!"
Paul answers that in his letter to Rome:
"For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous."
Romans 5:19 (KJV)
This tells us that sin is an identity handed down from Adam, not something you achieved on your own.
Adam, the very first man, broke the one rule God gave him. We were born into what he did long before any of us had a say in it.
Then Paul turns the same sentence around. One man's obedience, counted to people who did nothing to earn that standing.
Making us righteous costed Him everything. God called Jesus by our name while He hung on a cross.
Every last thing we've done went onto Him. It killed Him.
We know that without faith it is impossible to please God.
It doesn't take faith to say you are a sinner. It takes a tremendous amount of faith to say you are righteous.
I'm not going to tell you that you'll stop sinning. You'll probably fail again this week.
Nothing in this verse was written on the condition that you don't.
So, no. That's not what He sees when He looks at you.
God calls you righteous because He put His own Son's standing onto you. He did it while you were still the person you're ashamed of.
That phrase gets the rescue right and the name wrong. God has made you righteous.
You go into this week already carrying that name. Nothing you do this week is you trying to earn it.
Here's how to quit answering to the old name today:
1. When what you feel about yourself and what God says about you disagree, go with God.
Some mornings you'll wake up feeling like the same person you've always been. That feeling is real and it still isn't evidence.
Faith is holding the feeling up against what He actually said and taking His word over your own read on yourself. I hope we can agree with God over our thoughts no matter how "right" they seem or feel.
2. Quit introducing yourself by the worst thing you've done.
Not to your family, and not in your own head at night when nobody else is listening.
3. When you fall this week, come to God the same day.
Don't wait until you feel decent enough to talk to Him, because that day keeps not showing up. Say the sin out loud to Him by its real name.
The actual word for it, not the polite version. Then go straight back to answering to what He calls you.
PRAYER
Righteous Father, I've been calling myself by the worst thing I do, and I've been doing it for years.
I read what You said about me, and then I go by what I feel about me instead.
Thank You that You laid every bit of it on Your Son, and that He carried it where I never could.
You call me righteous, and You settled that inside Jesus where I can't lose it.
Today I quit answering to the old name.
Help me believe You over myself, and when I fall this week, help me come to You the same day.
In Jesus' mighty name we pray. Amen.