Presented to River Street Cafe, 18 August 2017
In this letter, in our verse for today, 2
Corinthians 5:17, Paul writes, “Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new
creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” “Therefore if anyone is in
Christ…”: This phrase refers to anyone who is a Christian or as the New
Testament more commonly refers to us, saints. We know what a saint is, right?
The Greek word ‘saint’ in our Bibles is derived from the same word as
‘holiness’. In the New Testament ‘saint’, simply put, just means ‘Christian’. A
Christian saint is contrasted with a ‘sinner’. So in the apostolic letters in
the New Testament there really are just two choices in this regard. You can be
either a Christian saint or you can be a sinner. As Paul’s letter reads
‘if anyone is in Christ’ it is saying that for all of us saints, for all of us
Christians, we are a new creation – the old is gone, the new has come for all
of us! This is exciting. When we hand our lives over to the Lord, it is like a
changing of the guard; a new, fresh set of eyes now guards the prize. Paul is
saying, like with the changing of the page on the calendar; so when we each
turn the page on our life, giving it to Christ, we are holy (cf. Leviticus
19:2, 1 Peter 1:16).We are saints. We are renewed (cf. Isaiah 42:9,
43:19-20).The old has gone. The new has come.
Now does that mean that we never sin? We were
reminded yesterday by Wendy that if we say we've never sinned we make God out
to be a liar for all have sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God. This is
important. We have all sinned. One key in John's writing, I think, is the
identity statement. We have all sinned. We don't want to sin and God can keep
us from sinning. A key is how we see ourselves: are we a sinner who sometimes
does not sin or are we a saint (a Christian) who sometimes might sin and who
can then turn to God ask for forgiveness, hopefully be delivered from sins and
definitely continue on as a saint until the end. It is not a matter of how bad
we sin or how much we sin (as Monica has reminded us, just because your sin is
different from my sin, it doesn't mean that I -or you - have not sinned or that
my sin is better or worse than yours). What matters, as far as sinners and Christian
saints is concerned, is whether we identify ourselves as those who sin (and give
ourselves licence to continue on sinning) or whether we identify
ourselves as Christian saints who ask God to continue to free us from our sins
and everything else that is plaguing us.
Posts
