I made a strange statement last week that I’d like to expand on a bit. I claimed that no one was going to stand before God sinless. I was asked “What about Christians?” Well, what about them?

Being a Christian doesn’t make you sinless. It does mean a lot of other things, though. A Christian is one who has, at one point in their lives, put on Christ. They have been born again by the waters of baptism, and are striving to live in obedience to God’s will. It doesn’t matter if they work at it 10 years or only 10 minutes, once they have risen to walk in newness of life they are a new creature, and anything less is not a Christian. Their relationship has changed forever with their creator. They can be one who has fallen away or one who is faithful unto death, but there is no going back to being an “un-Christian”.

So being a Christian is creating a relationship with God, as the bible describes a family relationship. Christ is our brother and joint-heir, God the father is our father. Those in the world may be created in his image but they do not share the joys (and responsibilities!) of this bond until they enter into it.

But that doesn’t mean we can’t sin. What it does mean is that we now have the opportunity for even GREATER sin. Yee-haw! Knowing God and his word, we can no longer claim ignorance, not that it would help us to anyway. Sin is like poison, and if I eat it my body will die regardless if I am aware of it or not – and sin will cause our soul to perish in the same manner. No we can’t claim ignorance but we can use our knowledge to deliberately sin against God. Again, like poison, if I really really want to kill myself I once I know how things work I can choose a really effective poison. It seems people who know about God seek out the most extreme ways to annoy him in their arrogance. They might even say, “I know what the bible says, but I want to do things this way.” Yikes!

So what can we do? As people in this world, we try to avoid poison. We try to do whatever we can to stay healthy. In the end, though, we will die. In a spiritual sense, this is also true. Yes, we try to avoid sin. We try to repent of everything. We try to learn about everything God has to say, so we don’t have secret sins or sins we do out of ignorance. We try so hard. But in the end, we cannot be perfect. We die. All of us.

Now here is where you interject that baptism washes away sins, and repentance gets rid of that ring around the collar. Absolutely! But we go right on sinning, and we go right on repenting. This is what makes some people very depressed, even some Christians. They feel no matter how hard they try, they just can’t do it. They always end up sinning in one way or another. Yes, you do. Guess what, we all do. But trying proclaims Christ!

When our faith only friends want to say obedience is not important, that grace saves us, they are mostly right. But like rat poison, which is also mostly good, that little bit of poison will still get you. When you stand before God, and they stand before God, one of us will get that grace. You can see it: regardless of anyone else there you are and you have lived a good life before God yet sinned in the end. You can’t do it alone – obedience can’t save you. Or can it? Because the son of God will claim you, will speak for you, will redeem you through grace. And you will get this grace – only if you obey his words. His sheep am I. But if you stand there and say “here I am, I never obeyed you but save me anyway” well, you’ve got some problems, goat boy.

And if you stand there after knowing full well what the bible says yet actively working against it – blasphemy against the Holy Spirit – the judgment you get shouldn’t be a strange statement at all.

Randy