he who has eyes...

 ”Yea, once, Immanuel’s orphaned cry His universe hath shaken–
It went up single, echoless, ‘My God, I am forsaken!’” [Robert Browning, On Cowper's Grave]

Now, there’s a choice here. It’s not just that Jesus did this atoning act and now all are cool with God. There is still a guilt of sin on us unless we have acknowledged the cross. If we still claim responsibility for the sin we are subject to, then we are still accountable to it. But, if we acknowledge that what Christ did actually mattered, then we are absolutely free from it.

Those who are still living in their sin, referred to as “sinners”, who refuse to acknowledge Christ, they are still sinners. But, while they are sinners, Christ died for them. As I said earlier, Jesus didn’t see their sin as their identity.

He saw it as a burden from which they could be set free.

The following is from my good friend Bob Kuo, who will most likely start contributing on this website more often. He’s a fellow math nerd, so I’ve tried to give links to try to explain some of his mathematical analogies. We do, in fact, talk this way to one another all the time.

I’ll let him describe his take on this topic, because I simply can’t put it better. I’ve just edited it to take away the structure of a “rant” (as he puts it).

———

One good way to define these possibilities is that forgiveness is possible for all but only effective for those who believe, which is not necessarily the best distinction for us to be making (because anyone who dares to go farther and start to Venn Diagram who is “in” and who is not “in” is probably heretical).

Remember, God’s sovereign judgment is a non-communicable attribute.

The Bible makes the case that the over-arching story, the fall of humanity, is essentially a case of stolen identity. To continue to recognize ourselves as sinners is to believe a lie. Here’s how I see the breakdown.

Let’s say you’re a Christian.  Then you have accepted Jesus, you’re conscious has been “quickened” and so has your soul. Remember that according to Romans, we are “constituted” sinners [Romans 5:12-21], that is: we (those born of Adam) are sinners, therefore, we sin. Our identity does not flow the other way; that is to say, if we sin, we are not necessarily “sinners”. The main point is that Paul declares the “Old Man”, the “Flesh”, our “Old Nature” (in Greek, the word is sarx) was crucified with Christ, and that act happened almost 2,000 years ago. In 2 Corinthians 5:17, we see that if anyone is in Christ, he or she is a new creation, the old has passed away. There are numerous verses that point to our new identity, which is not that of sinner but of saint. The biblical use for the word saint includes all who believe.

I would recommend the identity that we are saints who sin, or saints who forget who we are (or who our Father is) and get into all kinds of amnesic trouble.

Now, let’s say you’re not a Christian. Then the category of “sinner” doesn’t exist! Non-Christians are said to be “dead in their sin” and to be “blinded” and to be under the authority of “the ruler of this world” i.e. the devil. This category cannot exist because, while people may believe that individual acts they do are wrong (the “countably infinite”, more on this analogy later) they do not believe that they are “bad” or “evil” or “sinners” because they cannot! God has not broken through their hard hearts to shine his light, and so they cannot possibly know. (This type of reasoning was used to make sure I hadn’t “blasphemed the Holy Spirit” or done the “unforgivable sin” — knowledge of sin can only come from the work of God’s Holy Spirit [John 16:8] so my concern over the matter is evidence of the presence, not the absence, of the Spirit.)

So the irony is that our belief that we can even identify (the word ‘hailed’ or ‘interpellated’ is often used in philosophical literature to describe the way the community forms the identity of an individual) a person as a sinner is a lie! I mean, to call an unbeliever a sinner is like saying that water is wet – not only a tautology but to be expected! And to call a Christian a sinner is to contradict God’s word.

Which is a favorite pastime of the Devil.

You can see this (particularly satanic) lie play out in the difference between guilt and shame. We are guilty of certain sins and we feel guilt for them that should lead to repentance (because the alternative is to harden our hearts). Shame attacks our identity, saying we’re not worth something, that we don’t deserve forgiveness or that something is too embarrassing because it reflects our character. Now, one comes from God and one comes from somewhere else…

Shame doesn’t come from God because the primary purpose of shame is to tear down and to immobilize; the primary purpose of guilt is to enlighten (that we are guilty) and for a response (to seek Godliness in repentance and thus be “built up”). If we do feel shame, John says that God is greater than our hearts [1 John 3:20].

But the matter at hand is that we believe a lie, that Jesus can’t redeem our whole person. Sure, he’s wiped the slate clean but he hasn’t taken care of “Sin” as a principal in my life. That is, he’s taken care of sins (plural, lower case s, the “countably infinite”) but he can’t (or didn’t) take care of Sin (singular, upper case s, the “uncountably infinite”) in my life, which is to imply that He didn’t take care of it in anyone’s life. This is a lie.

To call someone a “sinner” is to say that either this person doesn’t know Christ – which is a natural consequence as God separates himself from what is unholy – or that this person is not perfect in Christ.

And don’t even get me started on the value judgment attached to “sinner”: it sets up a hierarchy where one person is better than another one. Let’s just neglect the fact that Jesus came to serve, and not to be served; that he lived a life of downward mobility (he descended from the perfect community of the Trinity to come to humankind in the flesh, then he came as a baby, then in a poor country under occupation, then into a poor area in that poor country, to a family that was poor, and appeared to be born out of wedlock); that he, at one point, bore the full weight of sin so that we won’t have to.

What enormous audacity to call someone a sinner for whom Christ died.

How dare we identify someone in a manner that our Lord did not?