I happened to read a small 32-paged booklet published by the Radio Bible Class of Grand Rapids, Michigan in the USA.  It is part of their Discovery Series and it is a published excerpt or digest of a book written by J. Kirk Johnston entitled When Christians Sin: Restoring Wayward Christians. I read it because I liked his differentiation of ways in which “Christians” sin.

Author J.I. Packer said in his book Knowing God that “True Christians are people who acknowledge and live under the Word of God.  They submit without reserve to the word of God written in the “Book of Truth” …believing the teaching, trusting the promises, following the commands.  Their eyes are upon the God of the Bible as their Father and the Christ of the Bible as their Savior. But this is not the sense that the booklet’s author uses the word “Christian.”

When I read the RBC booklet, I noted that when the word “Christian” was used, it was used to refer to those people who profess to believe in Jesus Christ but who may or may not be actively engaged in a spiritual relationship with God through Jesus Christ and who may or may not belong to any denomination.  I was not surprised because the author is an American and he was writing for a basically “evangelical” population in the United States of America.  And this is precisely why I found his definitions intriguing.

First, he says, there may be “christians” who are false professors. These are people who think themselves saved but cannot account for why they believe themselves to be saved.  They may belong to a church and are active church-goers but their profession of salvation is based on a misconception: they may not believe that they are lost sinners in need of a Savior; or they may not trust Christ alone to save them trusting instead on good works or church membership also to save them; they may not have completely or correctly understood the gospel message.

Second, he says, there may be “apostates.” These are those who claimed to have known Christ and trusted him as their Savior in the past but later on, they denied Christ and walked away from their faith and rebelled from the truth.

Third, he says, there are “doubters.” These people are continuously doubting whether or not they are saved at all.  They doubt God’s love for them, they live in disappointment with God or with the Christian life or with fellow Christians and they struggle with trusting God on a daily basis.

Fourth, he says, there are those who are “uncommitted to Christ.” These are sure that they are saved but are “living consciously and willfully sinful lives.”  They may or may not regularly attend church and yet, they are living lives without a commitment to Christ and are thus not living lives that are pleasing to God.

Fifth, he says, there are those who are “overtaken by sin.” He got this from Galatians 6:1.  These are ensnared and overpowered by sin because they are weak, they do not regularly feed on the Word of God, they are unaware of the promises of victory over the dominion of sin, and those who cannot escape the clutches of sinful habits and sinful life patterns without any help.

Lastly, he says, there are those who have “lost interest.” They are disillusioned or disappointed or even offended, hurt or angry with God or with the Christian life or with fellow believers or all of the above.  They are living consciously sinful lives and they have no interest in escaping sin.  They refuse to admit that they are sinning or are displeasing God.

The problem is not new. Straying christians is an old problem in the church. Apostle Paul laments that his co-worker Demas “has forsaken me; having loved this present world.”  Even the booklet’s author quotes Hannah Whitall Smith who in 1875 said “The standard of practical holy living has been so low among Christians that very often the person who tries to practice spiritual disciplines in everyday life is looked upon with disapproval by a large portion of the church.  And for the most part, the followers of Jesus Christ are satisfied with a life so conformed to the world, and so like it in almost every respect, that to a casual observer there is no difference between the Christian and the pagan.”

It crossed my mind that most people enter the Christian life and try to live the Christian life thoughtlessly.  For one, they do not understand the nature of sin.  They do not understand what Christ did for them when they got saved and what Christ did with their sin when they got saved.

For most Christians, immediately after their conversion, they are so delighted with their new relationship with Christ, they are at an emotional and spiritual “high.” But then when they find themselves suffering from a suddenly-sensitive conscience, they recoil from the painful realization that they have sinned, they have repeated the awfully shameful sinful patterns of life from before their conversion which they thought was done away with never to come back only to find that they have repeated them and they are stunned.

They are momentarily confused but then they are told that they merely need to confess their sins and they will be forgiven by God and their relationship wonderfully restored.  They genuinely confess their sins and find relief in forgiveness.  But they find themselves enormously frustrated to find that they still sin often: the temptation to sin is so acute,  they are confused and in turmoil.  It is then that they conclude that there must be something wrong with them, they doubt their salvation or they even doubt the truthfulness of the Word of God and its promises. They long for the purity of the first days of their conversion but that joy eludes them. They are trapped in the pattern of sin and confession and they are unable to find rest.

If these Christians have spent a lot of time around Christians in a church while going through this spiritual crisis, they will soon be angry at the hypocrisy of it all because everyone is just like that, all struggling with sin, all dismally failing to conquer sin and yet, they put up a facade of gaiety and fervor. Everyone wants to be holy, everyone professes to believe that they can be holy, but none of them are.  Those christians are then filled with suspicion about other christians and they conclude that christianity is like a broken promise.

If those christians do not turn their back on their faith, they  may remain but they are apathetic, joyless and at times, bitter.  They are limping through the Christian life.

Sounds familiar?  Yes, it does.  Perhaps it may help to know that:

1.All have sinned. But what is that one sin that all humans have in common?  It is the sin of Adam, that sinful nature in us all that makes us choose against God.  It is the sin of unbelief.  This is the sin that we are saved from when we are converted.  This is the sin from which all other sins flow.  Adam and Even chose to believe the serpent instead of believing God.  That was unbelief.  That was their original sin.  All their other sins: taking of the fruit, eating of the fruit, sharing the fruit together, hiding from God, fearing God, ignoring and defying God, sewing up leaves to hide their sin were all “sins” that came from that one “original” sin of UNBELIEF.  This is the sin that we inherited from Adam, the sin of unbelief, that tendency in all humans to refuse and fail to believe God.

2. It is the sin of unbelief that dooms us to spiritual death.  It is that sin that confirms our ticket to hell.  It is also that sin of unbelief that we ask forgiveness for when we get saved.  It is not the small sins we do everyday that we ask forgiveness for to get saved  because we cannot logically ask forgiveness for “sins” which we may do but have not yet done.  Unbelief , the mother-lode of all sin in the human person and its penalty of death and hell is that sin which God cancels when we get saved.  And God cancels our sin not for any reason but that His Son Jesus Christ had already paid the penalty for that sin of unbelief and all other sins on the cross of Calvary.

3. Sin not only has a penalty but sin has power.  My favorite pastor, Dr. Adrian Rogers tells it best when he preaches that when God said to Adam “in the day that though eatest thereof thou shalt surely die” God was not lying but Adam did not immediately fall down dead after he ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  Dr. Rogers preached that in the day Adam ate of the fruit, Adam IMMEDIATELY died in his SPIRIT, from then on Adam PROGRESSIVELY died everyday little by little in his SOUL and one day, Adam EVENTUALLY died in his BODY.

4. When a person is saved, however, the reverse happens: a sinner, when he believes that Jesus Christ died in on the cross in his place is IMMEDIATELY JUSTIFIED in his SPIRIT.  It is as though he had never sinned at all in the sight of God. He is PROGRESSIVELY SANCTIFIED in his soul and he will EVENTUALLY be GLORIFIED in his body.

5. This illustrates the PENALTY of sin which was pardoned when we got saved.  It also illustrates the POWER of sin in our everyday life that God deals with as he engineers the circumstances and events of our lives to make us more and more Christ-like, and one day, when Jesus Christ appears in the clouds to come for us, our bodies will be changed into glorified bodies, thus, forever ridding us of the PRESENCE of sin.

6.Even the great Apostle Paul, after his conversion, had occasion to lament his frustrating human propensity to sin in Romans chapter 7.  We are not alone in our frustration and helplessness struggling against the power of sin in our everyday lives after we have become Christians.  Think about it, if you are not a Christian, in fact, before you became a Christian, did you ever struggle against sin?  Not really because only Christians worry over the fact that they have sinned.  Your distress at the presence and power of sin in your life is proof positive that you are saved.  Your horror at displeasing the Christ who died in your place, your shame in sinning all that are proof that you are in a relationship with Christ that it distresses you that anything may come between you.

7.What can we do in the meantime that Jesus Christ has not yet taken away the presence of sin in our life because we are still in this life, in this body of sin?  Romans 6 is helpful.  Again, I thank Dr. Adrian Rogers for teaching me this truth.  There are three things a Christian must learn:  he must learn to KNOW, to RECKON and to YIELD to the Holy Spirit to overcome the power of daily sin.

A Christian must KNOW that when Christ died, he took with him in his death the penalty of our sin.  We are no longer in jeopardy of death.  We are to RECKON daily that because our sin was crucified with Christ on the cross, our sin was also buried with him.  Sin has no dominance over us, sin and the devil cannot order us around anymore because Christ now has dominion over us because He alone paid for the penalty of our sin. We used to be slaves to sin, now we are servants of Jesus Christ. We reckon everyday that we are his and we therefore do not need to sin, we do not need to obey sin.  And lastly, everyday, we are to YIELD to the Holy Spirit who dwells in us, daily choosing to trust and obey Christ instead of obeying sin.

Yes, christians are sinners.  But christians are saved sinners.  Christians are sinners but they do not need to remain in their sin because Christ rose from the dead.  Our sin was crucified and buried with Christ but when Christ rose from the dead, he rose victorious over sin.  It is this victory of Jesus Christ that we claim everyday against sin.  We who are christians were saved by Christ’s death on the cross.  We who are christians are sanctified and made holy before God everyday by Christ’s resurrection.

My favorite hymn says it most eloquently: “My sin, oh the joy of this glorious thought: my sin, not in part, but the whole, is nailed to the cross and I bear it no more, praise the Lord, praise the Lord, oh, my soul.  It is well with my soul….”

Is it well with your soul?