Why Do Christians Still Sin? | Theocast Clips

The Christian as Both Saint and Sinner

We hold Christ out to all people, and our word to people, sinners, crushed by the law, is to trust Christ. I don't think that's controversial.

I think some other areas that are going to be helpful, Justin, that we're going to talk about here, just real quick, we're going to hit this high level, but it will affect the way in which we preach, the way in which we counsel, the ways we shepherd our congregations, but we do hold a very old and reformed biblical view of something as clear as the nature of the human as both saint and sinner.

The nature of the Christian.

Sorry, thank you. The nature of a Christian. And this specifically comes from our confession. It talks about it. You can look at the chapter 5 .5, right? In Tinctification.

Yeah, chapter 17.

But we're going to talk a little bit about Romans 7 and how this is a very important understanding. Take a couple of 30 seconds here and explain to people why we would want to put this on our documentation and what it is that we're trying to prevent from.

Happening.

So in our document, Affirmations and Denials, we have Romans 7 as a bullet.

Point.

GRN Church has affirmed that Romans 7 is written by Paul as a Christian and that it therefore applies to Christians. In other words, is Romans 7 the normative experience of the believer? Our answer to that is yes, as a network.

Paul is writing this as a saint who is justified in the Lord Jesus Christ and who battles against the corruption of his flesh. And I think anyone who has read Romans 7 as a Christian reads words written there and says to himself or herself, truer words have never been written.

It is our experience, man. We have been born again. We've been brought from death to life. We have been justified. We've been forgiven. We've been absolved of our guilt, and we now delight in God's law and our inner man.

We've been delivered from the tyranny of sin. We've now become obedient from the heart, Romans 6, 17. We've been united to Christ, Romans 6, one and the following. All that's true for us, and so we are, on the one hand, we are saints in that regard, but then at the same time, we have not been fully sanctified yet.

So we fight against the corruption of our flesh, Galatians 5, 17. The spirit and the flesh are opposed to each other and that reality keeps us from doing what we want to do. So when we want to do good, we often fail.

Evil lies close at hand, and the evil things we want to refrain from, we often find ourselves doing, which is what leads Paul to say, Wretched man that I am, who's going to deliver me? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord, and there is therefore now no condemnation for all those who are in Christ Jesus.

We affirm all of that. And yeah, amen.

Amen.

That's good.

Great.

That's good. A couple other things that you're going to start to see, they all connect together. So Romans 7, covenant theology, understanding, I mean, we're Calvinists. We didn't even have to put that in there, but we affirm the five points of Calvinism as historically understood from the canons of Dort.

But there is a confusion that has happened, we would say a resurfacing of a theology where one must do something in order to come to Christ. And so we put this in our document, Coming to Christ. During churches affirm that the answer to the question, must one forsake sin in order to come to Christ?

And the answer to that might shock some people because the question can be confusing is no, one must not forsake sin because here's the reason. One cannot forsake sin. One cannot do anything. The way that Paul describes it in Ephesians is that we are dead in our trespasses and sins.

He makes us alive. And we've recently did a podcast on this. You can go back and listen to it called, You Need to Repent of Your Repentance. Meaning that one repents because they have been brought to life.

It's a fruit of our regeneration. And this is really referencing a whole, I believe this is later in the document, but dealing with the whole Christ from Sinclair Ferguson.

Justin Perdue Yeah.

I mean, so effectively this piece for us, must one forsake sin in order to come to Christ? Answer is no. This question is effectively what sparked the marrow controversy in the church of Scotland in the 18th century.

It's a question that I think even Thomas Boston acknowledged is not worded super well, but we have to answer it in the negative. Because if we need to do anything in order to come to Christ, we will not come to Christ.

And so what this also means is that we preach the gospel indiscriminately to all people and we hold Christ out to all people and our word to people, sinners crushed by the law is trust Christ. I don't think that's controversial, but it's sad that I think we've reasoned ourselves into a corner.

And there's reasons for this culturally and theologically where that is a controversial statement.

And it does erode, erodes a lot of things.

Justin Perdue. But we're affirming the free offer of the gospel.

Justin Perdue. That's right.

Justin Perdue. Effectively.

It erodes assurance, a rest in Christ. I think it really confuses the order of salvation.