Are Christians Sinners, or are they not Sinners?

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Concluding Remarks 

So here we are with these two poles.  Each extraordinarily important to the practice of the Christian life, to your own self-image, to your own sense of yourself and to your own understanding of your life.

We are and continue to be great sinners, and that should make us penitent and humble and grateful people before God and others.

But we are at the same time saints, new creatures in Christ, people in whom the power of sin has been broken.  People for whom sin is no longer the defining characteristic.  And we are to live in the confidence of that fact. 

The Lord has done more for you, than simply to forgive your sins.  He has given you a new, a righteous life to live and you are living it.

Africa needs humble saints.  Africa needs Christians who know very well that they are sinners saved by grace; who know it so well that anybody who comes in contact with you can tell almost immediately that you give all glory to God for His mercy, His love, for His forgiveness and for his work in your life.

But Africa also needs Christians who are confident that they are new creatures in Christ, that they have a different life to live, they will do what is good.  They expect to be different in dramatic ways from the unbelievers around them.  If they are not different, if our lives are not different, then Christ has made little or no difference in us, and we can't possibly believe that.

Sinners, and righteous; humble, and confident; disobedient, and obedient -- at one and the same time.  Even if we didn't know this ahead of time, given the Bible's way of communicating the truth, hearing that sinners were sinners still, we can almost guarantee that somewhere else in the Bible, we were going to hear that we are not sinners anymore.

Psalm 26 is important because it reminds us so daringly, startlingly, that this is our life.  We are tempted to think that we are failures, when in fact we are youngsters, learning how to live a holy life better and better.

You are not ready for the life of heaven, but you are getting ready.  The unbeliever is not. But you are. What an extraordinary difference between two human beings!

It is precisely David's confidence, his assurance, his knowledge that he is in covenant with God and living out the life as a covenant keeper that all who trust in the Lord are supposed to have as well. We are not to think of our Christian lives as perhaps something, but as really genuinely something.

We are to take the same encouragement, the same confidence, the same assurance, the same boldness away from this Psalm that David had when he wrote it.  And a false understanding of the gospel, too much emphasis on one pole and too little emphasis on the other can take that confidence away from us and leave us feeling as if we are failures!

Of course, you are a screw-up. Whoever learned to play the piano or the clarinet without making mistakes by the thousands?  But you are also a saint whose mistakes and whose trips around the altar and whose dips in the laver are forming the Lord Jesus Christ's life in you.  That too is the work of Lord Jesus Christ.  That too is His salvation.

In fact, Robert Murray Mccheyne, the saintly Scottish pastor said that he thought sanctification was the better half of salvation, as wonderful as justification (the forgiveness of your sins) is; the transformation of your life is more wonderful still.

You are a sinner, alas; but you are not a sinner. Praise the Lord.  It is a privilege for me to be with you. I don't know you personally, but I know fully well that there are aspects in your life, in your behaviour that do not reflect well on you.  You know that as well as I know that about myself.  You have much to confess to God, much to ask forgiveness for; but I also know, here in this room at this moment, I am among a group of saints, of holy ones.

The world has powerful people, or very wealthy people, or very talented people; It has celebrities, movie stars, and famous athletes; but it has no saints, no righteous people and no blameless people.  The world has no people who could say to God, "I have lived in integrity".  But you can.

The fact that God should forgive our sins is surprisingly wonderful, but that God should have transformed us into saints, is, I think, more wonderful still. Amen.

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