Sinners and Saints

For all have fallen short of the glory of God Romans 3:23

We often put ourselves into categories, man and women, adult and child, good and bad, or even sinner and saint. We  identify men and women based on their bodies, adult and child with age, but when it comes to good and bad or sinners and saints it seems there is no distinction nor do we distinguish them the same. I have once heard a guy ask what is wrong with lying if it doesn’t hurt anyone, my question to that is how do they know it won’t hurt someone, and if they keep it would it hurt them more? To this, they had no response, but how can we identify sinners and saints?

For this, we first have to define these terms, a sinner in its simplest form is someone who chooses to  continue in wrongdoing, which we are all guilty of. This then begs the question: what is wrongdoing? This is where the problem lies because many of us don’t completely agree on what is good and bad but most all of us have general rules that our culture and society has made the norm and we accept, like murder being wrong. For us, the believer, the line of goodness and wrongness rely heavily on biblical commandments, for the purposes of this writing we’ll focus on the famous ten commandments. Now that we have defined who a sinner is, what is a saint?

A saint we often think of a dead martyr who stayed faithful by going through a difficult trial, but that means saints will take years in the making. Is that what it really means? The Webster dictionary defines it as ‘one officially recognized especially through canonization as preeminent for holiness ’. When I read this I thought ok, so how does someone become holy? That’s when I remembered the verse 1 Corinthians 6:19 

“Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God?”

If this is true then holiness is already within us, those who have invited God into our hearts, and truly believe in our hearts that Jesus died for us. We always say Jesus died for us but did you ever take a moment to think Jesus died for me? Here I am raised in the church most if not all my life realizing I never let this truth sink in. We all like to be invited (included) and we’re freely given the choice to accept or decline the invitation. God already chose you, and paid the price with His blood to make sure you know you’re invited to partner with Him in this life. The question is do you choose Him? Will you accept His invitation?

If you want to accept Him and truly believe He did die for you ask him in, become part of his temple it’s a beautiful place, and there is room for you, there is peace and rest even in this chaotic world.

Written by Jay Sea of Untable Talk