Yep, there it is. I am a sinner. And by the way, you are a sinner as well. We all are. Nobody escapes that label.
But try telling a secularist that. They will bristle with the "righteous indignation" that anyone would ever stick that label upon them. "How dare they?" Even though they don't know what that really means, they would rather deny it than to embrace it as the corruption of who we are that it is.
"But Rick, didn't you just say that we are sinners? Not that we sin, but that a sinner is what we are?"
Yes and no. It is understandable that what you heard was that in calling myself and everyone else a sinner would be the same as saying, "You have been, are, and always been, a sinner. You cannot escape it. It is your destiny!"
It is understandable that one might think that, given the climate among churches and secularist today. But it is also so very wrong. That's because I was reminded at my church's Pre-Lenten retreat back in February or March of 2022, by the speaker, Dr. Peter Bouteneff, who reminded us at the retreat that sin isn't some absolutes that he has laid down--as if one time before creating us and our world, He thought to himself, "Hum, i wonder what prohibitions I can put upon these people so they don't have too much fun?" Rather, as I've said before, His law is based upon His purposes, or His will if you prefer that language, so that sin is defined by that which violates and corrupts God's purposes. Or, to put it another way, sin is that which violates God's design specs. And folks, we will violate His purposes nearly everyday of our lives.
That is what the Law is about: to detail what his purpose is in creating us, and how we can best avoid doing that in our lives. Which is exactly why Jesus said that not one letter or "jot" would invalidate the Law of God. Righteousness is defined not by how closely we follow the "letter of the Law"--as St. Paul states it in Galatians--but in how our relationship with him goes in a life-long journey into God.
Do we truly love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and body? I recently asked myself, "How do we do that? What does that love look like?" Well, as Jesus told the man who asked the question, "What must I do to be saved?" Or more literally, "What must I do to be healed and whole?"--He asked the man, "What does the Law say?" To put it bluntly, that is a line that few, if any Protestants would ever use. I can hear the cries now if anyone else but Jesus had said those words, "Heretic! That is a works-based message. There is nothing that the Law can offer to save a person. That was the whole point Paul was making in Galatians!" But, is it really? What if most Protestants read the Bible through the filter of Juridical Atonement so completely--despite the fact that such a view of the atonement is totally alien to the Bible--that they think when Paul said in Gal. 2:16:
Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the Law but my faith in Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, that we might be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law; for by the works of the law no flesh shall be justified.
That he was pitting the Law against Faith in how one was saved, and not merely how one was justified. For those on the juridical atonement viewpoint, can only see "justification" in juridical terms. So the point of justification is to justify us in relation to the Law. So the Law, therefore, is still the basis of our salvation in that view. Because as any one of those who view it thus would tend to say, that if anyone could fulfill the Law perfectly, that such a person would be saved. But since no one, as the Bible tells us, is free of sin save Christ himself, that option is out the window.
So then, we have to go to plan B, which is that the only person who has fulfilled the Law perfectly, Jesus Christ, has to die in order to appease God's justice, so that we can be forgiven and therefore, be justified or to be saved. Or to put it more simply, in the juridical view of the atonement, it is inherent in its theology that the "works of the Law," in the end, must be fulfilled in order for anyone to be saved--either fulfilled by the person, or by Christ and then imputed to us.
I'm sorry, but that is exactly the opposite of the point that Paul was making. He wasn't saying that there were two roads to being justified, but that there was only one road, faith in the person of Jesus Christ. That even if someone else could fulfill the Law perfectly their entire life, that person would not be saved, that is, would not be justified. For it isn't the law that we are being justified to, but to a person: God. That is why Paul puts it so dramatically, "For by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified."
Later on in the book, Paul tells us why the law was written: to be the means whereby we are pointed to how much of a sinner we actually are, and to the route of our healing. The law's purpose in our salvation and justification is only and purely that reality. It cannot be nor ever purposed to be how we get justified, because justification has nothing to do with the law and everything to do with the person of Jesus Christ. We are justified to a relationship with God, not the Law.
That is why I am still a sinner. Has nothing to do with my salvation save in as much as it directs me to repentance and doing my best to not sin. Not because I think that fulfilling the law or "doing good" will save me. Rather because I love God and desire to do his will, because I have faith, that is I trust that Jesus Christ and everything He has said, is the route that will best fulfill me because I'll be (mostly) operating within God's design specs.
That's because the only thing I can be sure about is God's love and mercy for me. And if I believe it, I will act accordingly. So I am a sinner because that is the reality as long as I live in this world. But I'm a repenting sinner. And that makes all the difference in the world as it regards my salvation--for it is truly a faith-based-in-Jesus-Christ salvation.
