• Are you a sinner because you sin?
• Or do you sin because you are a sinner?

Theologically, you sin because you are a sinner, not the other way around. Some evangelistic methods seek to get a person to admit he is a sinner by acknowledging that he has sinned. The thought goes that if they can get the unregenerate person to admit he has sinned, then he will see his need for a Savior.

In one sense, this is not a bad approach. Most certainly, if the person has sinned then he/she is in need of a Savior. But a more foundational truth presupposes our list of sins: it does not matter whether we admit we have sinned or not, because there is none righteous. (Romans 3:10-12; Isaiah 64:6)

We are all sinners regardless of whether we can recollect our sins or not. Though it is not possible for a human not to sin, owning up to our sin is not necessary in order for us to be convinced of being a sinner.

I am human = I am a sinner

Sin comes with the package, so to speak

Most certainly there is a difference in the kind and consequences of our sins, but there is no difference from one human to the next as far as being a sinner. Adolf Hitler, Ted Bundy, Rick Thomas, Barak Obama and any other person are all guilty before God regardless of the number, the kind, or the consequences of the sins they have committed. (See James 2:10) God does not see big sinners and little sinners, but sees all of us as sinners.

The only difference in the list of folks above is whether any of them have asked the Savior to regenerate them. Some of them have been regenerated and some have not.

The question is not what sins have you committed, but have you been born again, because you are a sinner in need of salvation. When it comes to regeneration, the primary issue is the sinner in need of a Savior rather than the quality or quantity of our sinning.

Application Questions

1. Are you tempted to think of yourself as better than any other Christian? (See 1 Tim. 1:15-16)
2. Are you tempted to be unkind to non-Christians for sinning as though they could do something about it apart from the saving grace of God?
3. Are you tempted to be unkind to non-Christians for sinning as though you are any better than they are apart from the saving & sustaining grace of God?

Other Articles in This Series

1. Problem: Big Sinners vs. Little Sinners – 1.0
2. Churches with Big Sinners & Little Sinners – 2.0
3. Adult Sinners with Big Problems – 3.0
4. Acknowledged Sinners with Inexpressible Gratitude – 4.0
5. Big Sinners, Little Sinners & the Worst Sinners – 5.0

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I was 19-years old, looking over my dad’s casket and not really sad about what I was looking at. My heart was full of anger and bitterness because of nearly two decades of ridicule, hate, beatings and isolation. It was about 10 years after my dad’s death before I could say the word “father” as it related to him. We never called him dad or father. We had a nickname that we used to describe him because that was more comfortable and conceivable when we thought about him.

I do not remember him ever telling me that he loved me. To say my dad’s “made in the image of God”  image was broken would be a gross understatement. He started drinking at the age of twenty-one and never stopped until the day he died at forty-two.

He told me one time that I was no child of his because I said that I might marry a person of color. I was 10-years old at the time and didn’t see the big deal about inter-racial marriage. I’m 50 now and still don’t see the big deal. But my dad, on the other hand, was a racist and my remarks about marriage did not put me in his good favor.

We were a dysfunctional family. My four brothers had a similar relationship with my father and by the time we were teenagers, four out of the five of us were rebelling and in jail. Two went to prison and both were later murdered ten years apart.

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, (Eph. 2:4)

When I was 24 someone told me about the Savior. Shortly after that introduction, Christ regenerated me. I share this story with you because many of my readers have experienced their own personal versions of hopelessness and despair. Some are in that place of darkness now. My encouragement and exhortation for you is to know that God is greater than all our sin, whether we were the ones sinning or the ones being sinned against. (More than likely, both are true.)

Please know that there is no trial that has come upon you that God does not provide a means for you to overcome. (2 Cor. 12:9) Truly, God’s grace is sufficient, even for you! If you are struggling in ways that seem to offer no light, go to your pastor or a close friend and ask for their help. Helping others is what God’s people do best. You do not have to walk that dark road alone.

It is not true that your story can trump God’s ability to restore you; no matter how hard that is for you to believe. Not only did many of the people we read about in the Scriptures overcome through Christ, but many in this day have had similar experiences. I am one of those people. It amazes me, even 25-years later, that God would regenerate me and then put me on a path of progressive maturity in Him.

If you are reading this blog post, then your reading could be part of God’s restorative work in your life, in order to bring you into a better place. You can find rest in the Savior. Things may not change today or tomorrow, but they can change to the point where you can look back on this season of despair and see how God has led you all the way.

You Can Read More of My Testimony Here:

1. I Got More Hating to Do
2. My Brother Was Murdered 12-Years Ago
3. A Reason Kid’s Rebel Against Their Parents and God
4. Overcoming Dad’s Broken Image

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Sin is not complicated, no matter how entangled our lives have become. There are never new twists to the enemy’s tactics or our responses to his tactics. Adam’s first venture into sin and his response to his sin is the prototype all of us have followed since that fateful day.

Apart from the grace of God, Adam’s template for sin is how I respond to my sin also.

If you agree that Adam’s pattern for sin, as well as mine, is your pattern also, then you are well on your way to applying God’s solutions to your problems. A person who cannot accept his/her role in sin is proud. James tells us:

God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. (See 4:6)

Keeping it Simple for the Glory of God

We really are not complicated people. No matter how unique we may want to think we are or how complex we like to see our problems are, once you scratch below the surface, we’re all the same. There are no differences at the level of the heart. In Adam we all have sinned and his first two sins, in this order, were unbelief and fear.

Unbelief is always followed by fear.

When we sin, we choose to become functional atheists in that moment by walking in unbelief. Once we take the path of unbelief, fear begins to rule our hearts. It is in that moment we have to make the right decision. Adam sinned. He then felt a sense of shame for what he had done. His response to his unbelief and the fearful sense of shame that followed was to cover, run, hide and blame.

I trust you can see yourself in Adam. I see myself in him. Notice how Adam and I are tempted to respond to sin:

• Adam sinned – Rick sins
• Adam sensed shame – Rick senses personal shame
• Adam feared – Rick fears
• Adam covered himself – Rick seeks to keep his sin hidden
• Adam ran to the bushes – Rick avoids the truth by running from the truth
• Adam blamed his wife – Rick justifies his sin in various ways

Sin Requires a Response

Your conscience requires you to respond to your sin. Sin is objective. It is real. It demands a response. It can never be ignored. When you sin, you have three basic options. You can…

1. Repent to God (and others)
2. Blame someone or something
3. Justify/rationalize your sin away

Option #1 is stepping up to the plate and taking ownership for your sin. It is God’s way to be free from sin. You confess (agree with God that what you did was wrong), ask God for forgiveness, become reconciled to God because of Christ’s work on the Cross and then layout a plan for on-going repentance as you resist the temptations of the recurring sin pattern.

Options #2 & 3 will begin a hardening process of your conscience. Your conscience has no choice but to begin a “layering process” so you can live with yourself. If you do not repent of these sinful responses, you’ll eventually come to believe your carefully edited version of your truth and the difference between this truth and the real truth will become an ever-widening chasm.

This hardening effect of sin causes self-deception that soothes your conscience so you can tolerate yourself. It is not real living as much as it is resignation, because of a prideful fear of being found out and a stubborn unwillingness to walk in humility. Fortunately God, in his mercy, pursued Adam and presented a plan for his salvation.

God’s Response to Our Sin

Only God, through the power of his Spirit and his Word, can break through your deceitfulness of sin to show you your deception and bring you into the real light of your sin.

Freeing yourself from sin is not accomplished through denial, blame-shifting, justification or other methods of spinning the truth. To be free from sin is to admit you have sinned. You confess it and accept God’s plan for repentance.

Counseling is far more difficult when you have to convince the counselee they are wrong. Self-deception is a beast. I should know. I have to fight my own self-deception daily. It is not hard for me to find accomplices for my problems.

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• I sin.
• I trust my friends will forgive my sin.
• I also hope my true friends will remember my sin.

There have been many times in my Christian experience where I have been encouraged by my friends who remember my sin. It is those friends who know me, love me, want to be around me and help me when I sin.

Imagine going to the doctor for a recurring problem and every time you see your doctor you have to rehearse again why you were there because he seemed to never remember. A helpful doctor will treat the problem. He will also remember the problem when I return. This shows his care.

Yes I know, you’re supposed to forgive and forget. I get that. But for some people whom I sin against, I want them to not only forgive, but to remember.

My Wife Remembers My Sin

My wife is the one I sin against the most. In some way or other, it seems to be a daily happening. It is immensely important to me that she remembers my sin and is ready and willing to appeal to me when I am sinning in order to help me through my sin.

It would be hard for her to serve me effectively if she had “sin amnesia” regarding me. I need for her to know my tendencies, weaknesses and temptations.

I Remember My Wife’s Sin

I have been living with my wife for a long time now. It is usually easy to tell when she is about to sin or is sinning. Recently we were running errands and she seemed to be a bit irritated (Read: anger) toward the kids. I asked her if she was sinning in her heart. I did not know if she was sinning, so I asked.

If you see someone bleeding, do you ignore or seek to help them?

She said she was sinning. She further said she was tired and thanked me for the observation. She humbled herself and repented of her sin and that was that.

Supposed I was unwilling to serve her in this moment. That would be unkind. And thankfully she does the same for me. I think one of the reasons most couples do not do this is because they have a high view of themselves and a low view of sin. This is called self-righteousness.

We need to get over ourselves and pursue one another with this kind of affection.

Faithful are the wounds of a friend;
profuse are the kisses of an enemy. -Proverbs 27:7

I need friends who are willing to step up to the plate and love me biblically. Thankfully, my wife is my best friend and God has been kind to me to bring a few others into my world who are faithful and loving enough to wound me.

Checkout these related and helpful articles

• How do I get over myself? Rethink the Gospel. Read this: Exposed by the Cross
• If you have never sinned against those you love, then read this.
• Also think about The Blessing of Being the Biggest Sinner in the Room
• Here is a personal testimony of a self-righteous man called Taking Out the Trash

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This post is making an assumption. The assumption is you will never be sinlessly perfected in this life. We will never see the day where sin will not have some hold on our lives. For more on this read my post Budget Some Sin Into Your Life.

If you believe this is true then let me suggest you think about your upcoming and inevitable future sin. I’m not advocating or endorsing an attitude that is not aggressively fighting the temptations to sin. But I am trying to state the obvious:

all have sinned and all continue to sin.

Therefore, it would be wise on our part to think through how we plan for the inevitable. One of my temptations is to hide my sin. Because of my tendencies toward self-righteousness I can be tempted not to be humble and transparent and not to disclose to others who I really am. I, like Adam in the Garden of Eden, am tempted to cover up or run and hide or justify my actions. Give me an inch and I may take a mile.

I want you to like me. And it seems counter-intuitive to tell you about my weaknesses if my desire is for you to accept me. Sin is just that self-deceptive.

I am not a sinner because I sin.

I sin because I am a sinner.

It’s an unalterable truth.

While I exhort you to be humble, honest, transparent and self-disclosing I also want to suggest you take advantage of a means of grace God has provided for us while we are sinning. This means of grace is a suggestive location for you to sin. If I’m going to sin, which I am, then I need to think through the best place to sin.

That place is the local church. What better context is there to sin?

Imagine if you had a physical problem. What better place is there to have physical issues than the hospital? Can you do better? If I’m going to be sick then let me be sick in a place where I can get help. As I type this post I’m looking out my office window at the hospital that is about 500 yards from my home. I must admit it brings some comfort to know it is there and I can get there in minutes.

The local church is our “spiritual hospital.” It is the best place on earth to sin! I have had the experience over the past few years to sin many times in the context of my friends. This has not only been helpful to me, but it blesses my wife. Lucia does not feel as alone with the sins of her husband knowing that God has given us friends to walk with us through my sin.

I can’t imagine what it would be like to sin outside the context of friends in the local church.

Can you?

In This Series

• If I Told You I Didn’t Sin How Would You Feel?
• Budget Some Sin In Your Life
• Closing the Gap On Who I Really Am and Who I Present Myself to Be
• Two Primary Reasons I Do Not Change
• Three Truths for Temptation

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From a Facebook Friend – I am interested in resources concerning “psychiatric” illnesses. I have a friend who has been diagnosed for many years. It has been a cycle of on and off meds followed by institutionalization.

I have done limited reading on this issue and I am convinced it is a sin issue and a pattern of sinful thinking. This is certainly true in my friend’s life. Any resources in that area would be great!

Thanks again.

Hello [Friend] – thanks for joining the group. I’m glad you’re here. My hope is to build a huge network of Christian counselors and/or those interested in discipleship so we can effectively serve one another. Here are a couple of things I’d start with regarding your question. And, btw, it sounds like you are spot on regarding your understanding of what your friend is going through. 

1. Read Ed Welch’s book “Blame it on the Brain.” This is an excellent book that will serve you well. 
2. Read Gary Almy’s book “Addicted to Recovery.” This is another must read. If you have read those books let me know and maybe I can think through a few other things to point you in the right direction. 

Thank you for asking. It is a joy to serve you, my friend,

Rick

• Have you ever been surprised when someone sinned against you? …ever angered?
• Have you ever been surprised when you sinned? …ever went into self-pity?
• Have you ever been surprised when you heard about another’s sin? …ever criticized them?

Sometimes when my wife or my children sin I show my surprise by becoming impatient or angry with them. In those moments I need to rethink what they did. Sinning is native to us. Sin is what we do best. To expect me or my friends not to sin is unrealistic. It’s unbiblical.

The opposite expectation to sin is perfection and there was only one who was able to accomplish that.

Many times we can complicate our lives by responding sinfully to sin. This convolutes things which inevitably adds to the original problem. I think it would be better to go ahead and budget some sin into our lives so when we do sin it won’t catch us off guard. And we won’t be tempted to get angry or act in a self-righteous manner.

It’s coming anyway. So you might as well be prepared for its daily entrance into your life. This is not an advocation to sin more, but a recognition that it’s coming whether you want it to or not.

It would serve us and our friends better if we went ahead and accepted this reality of our fallenness. Then we could focus our attention on the problem at hand rather than adding to the problem because of our self-righteous surprise. Sometimes our responses to sin are so distracting that we can hardly get back to the original problem. When I yell at my son for doing something dumb I’ve complicated the situation.

What about you? Have you ever been overly surprised or wrongly disappointed at your sin? If so, you probably have a high view of yourself. Sometimes when we pity ourselves it is because we think so well of ourselves that we become discouraged at what we just sinfully did or said.

A refocus is in order. You need to realign your thinking. Rather than being impressed with self you need to be more impressed with God. Overly fixating on your sin is proud. Here’s a suggestion: for every one look you take at your sin take 10 looks toward the Cross. Train yourself to be Cross-centered rather than self-centered.

C. J. Mahaney’s book The Cross-Centered Life is helpful here.

Also take the surprise factor out of the equation and budget some sin in. And when it comes it won’t throw you, disappoint you or tempt you to get angry at your sinful friends.

Here are some characteristics of a person who does not budget sin into their life:

• You can have bouts of self-pity
• You can be tempted to depression
• You can doubt your salvation
• You can be self-righteous (Read: gossip and/or critical toward the sinner)
• You can be tempted to blame-shift or rationalize
• You can reduce your sin categories, which makes sin acceptable to the conscience
• You can be tempted toward anger

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The Gospel explains our most obvious and basic problem—sin has separated us from God and from each other. –Dave Harvey, p. 24

In short, for the Christian Church to ignore or mute the lethal reality of sin is to cut the nerve of the gospel. For the sober truth is that without full disclosure on sin, the gospel of grace becomes impertinent, unnecessary, and finally uninteresting. –Plantinga, p. 199

As long as I am stricken with the guilt of my sins, I will be captive to them. In such cases I will often find myself re-committing the very sins about which I feel most guilty.

The gospel slays sin at this root point and, thereby, nullifies sin’s power over me. The forgiveness of God, made known to me through the Gospel, liberates me from sin’s power because it liberates me first from sin’s guilt.

The preaching of such forgiveness to myself is a very practical and real way of putting the Gospel into operation as a nullifier of sin’s power in my life.

Wow!

Have you ever gotten caught up in the recycling effect of sin and ended up walking under the cloud of guilt that your sin brings? Are you walking under that “cloud” now? Do you have a life-lingering-recurring sin pattern? What great Good News I have for you this Christmas season: Christ was born to die for your sin!

This Good News is the Gospel and the Gospel is Christ!

Yes, the Gospel is a Person. It is not a technique to live a better, freer life. The Gospel is not a method or “12 Steps” or “7 Habits”. The Gospel is a Person whom we can have a relationship with.

• The Gospel is a Person we look to.
• The Gospel is a Person we adore.
• The Gospel is a Person we express our deepest heartfelt gratitude for.
• The Gospel is a Person we worship.
• The Gospel is all about a Person.

Thank you Jesus for saving me from my sins. Thank you for helping me to repent and to live out God-glorifying obedience today. Thank you for the Gospel, the power of God. See Romans 1:16.

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