Is the believer in Christ a saint or a sinner?
On the one hand, Paul calls the redeemed in Christ "saints" in several of his epistles: "All the saints salute you" (2 Cor. 13:13). Christ alone is the Holy One who can share his righteousness with his church by giving his life into death for her sins and taking it up again for her justification. Martin Luther comments on the name "saint" in 2 Corinthians 13:13, "Here [Paul] plainly calls all Christians by their name: 'saints.' So, when Christendom began, the custom of calling one another 'saints' continued for a long time. This should still be the practice" (What Luther Says). In his explanation of John 17:19, Luther notes the holiness of the saints is not a holiness or righteousness of their own, but an alien righteousness in Christ: "But [the saints] become holy through a foreign holiness, namely, through that of the Lord Christ, which is given them by faith and thus becomes their own."
On the other hand, Paul also describes the saints as sinners. The Old Adam died in baptism (Rom. 6:3-10), but the Old Adam swims well: "Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned…." (Rom. 5:12). The disease which seized our first parents has grasped our own bodies and souls: "death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who had not sinned according to the likeness of the transgression of Adam, who is a type of him who was to come" (Rom. 5:14). Paul is a saint, but he still struggles with his identity as a sinner: "For what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I [the saint] will to do, that I [the sinner] do not practice; but what I [the saint] hate, that I [the sinner] do" (Rom. 7:15). Similarly, Luther notes that even the baptized still contend with their sin: "For as long as we live, sin still clings to our flesh; there remains a law in our flesh and members at war with the law of our mind and making us captive to the law of sin"(Luther's Works).
Taken together, our holiness in Christ and our total depravity make us one hundred percent saint and one hundred percent sinner at the same time. Commenting on Romans 7:18 ("I know that in me, that is, in my flesh nothing good dwells"), Luther says, "Here the Apostle ascribes the flesh to himself as a part of himself, just as he says: 'I am carnal.' He is carnal and evil on account of his carnal nature" (Commentary on the Epistles to the Romans). The "I" in Romans 7 refers not just to the Apostle Paul as a person in general, but specifically to Paul the saint or to Paul the sinner. Luther notes, "The words 'I will' and 'I hate' refer to his spiritual nature; but the words 'I do' and 'I am carnal' refer to his fleshly nature." In Romans 7:19, the "I" (Paul) is caught in this storm between saint and sinner: "For the good that I [the saint] will to do, I [the sinner] do not do; the evil I [the saint] will not to do, that I [the sinner] practice." Paul does not resolve the saint-sinner dichotomy, but leaves this tension in theology: "So then, with the mind I myself [the saint] serve the law of God, but the flesh [I the sinner] the law of sin" (Rom. 7:25). Luther summarizes: "These two things are diametrically opposed: that a Christian is righteous and beloved by God, and yet that he is a sinner at the same time."
What do surveys have to do with the saint-sinner theme? I would propose we answer the question through a quick tour of one influential church growth book in light of the saint-sinner dichotomy: George Barna's Church Marketing: Breaking Ground for the Harvest. The front cover entices the potential reader with promises on how to implement successful marketing strategies and how to run the business side of your church. The back cover politely informs us that the Bible offers four examples of good marketers: Solomon, Joshua, Nehemiah, and Paul. Two sample surveys (305-324) used in real-life congregations ask the consumer the following questions: Why do you attend any given service: the worship style, the style of music, or the learning center/youth ministry? Should communion be celebrated more or less often? Should the music be louder or quieter? Should the music be more traditional or more contemporary? Should the amount of musical accompaniment be increased or decreased? Should the preaching focus on biblical teaching more or less? If your unchurched friends attended the seeker service, would they like or dislike the music, content of the teaching, style of teaching, atmosphere of worship, and friendliness? If you could change one thing about our congregation, what would it be? The back cover of the book then invites us to consider the ultimate question: Can you afford not to market?
By the rule of love, I appreciate Barna's sensitivity to people and his lip service to evangelization. But by the rule of faith, his surveys of radically privatized likes and dislikes shatter at the foot of the cross. It is difficult to imagine Jesus asking his disciples the following questions during Holy Week: Do you like Jesus' style of entering Jerusalem on a donkey? Do you like his style of cleansing the temple or do you think Jesus needs to work on his people skills? Do you think the Passover meal should be served more or less often? Do you enjoy the bitter herbs? Do you think the Psalms should be sung louder or softer, more contemporary or traditional? Do you think Jesus' farewell discourse should focus more on the Bible and its teaching? Do you think Jesus should die the death of a criminal? If your unchurched friends attended the crucifixion, would they like or dislike the jeering of the crowd, shedding of blood, buzzing of flies, breaking of legs, and rumbling of the earthquake? If you could change one thing about the crucifixion of the Son of God, what would it be?
Surveys bypass our identity as saints and sinners. Each question regarding the atonement can be answered two different ways: as sinner or as saint. Sinners prefer glory over suffering, majesty over shame, and entertainment over the cross. Saints will take the suffering and shame of the cross for the sake of forgiveness, life, and salvation. As goes the cross, so goes the church in her life under the cross. Should communion be served more or less often? The sinner says "less," the saint says "more." Should the preaching focus on the Bible and its teaching? The sinner says 'no,' the saint says "yes." If your unchurched friends attended the service, would they like it? The sinner cannot stand to be in God's presence. The saint longs for the house of the Lord.
Whatever else may be said on the subject-and that is a great deal-the one thing we must know about people in our evangelistic efforts is their identity in the saint-sinner dichotomy. Reality suggests many visitors already believe in Christ and are simply looking for a home church. They are fully saint and fully sinner at the same time. By contrast, the unbeliever is one hundred percent sinner and zero percent saint and must be converted through the preached word of law and gospel. This is not to reject other information about the unchurched. As a church body, we will naturally be interested in their faith story and maybe even their demographic status. But the Church of the Reformation must approach evangelization through the filter of their identity as saints and/or sinners, not the latest survey. For sin and grace are the only concerns of our Chief Surgeon as he prepares to operate with the scalpel of the law and then to apply the healing balm of the gospel.
As saints and sinners, we need the ongoing pattern of death and resurrection in Christ. Our sin cannot be reformed into an innocent house pet, swept under the carpet of political correctness, or cured through a band-aid of self-esteem. Sin must be killed through the violent drowning of baptism. But where there is the death of sin, there is the resurrection of new life in Christ. The font is at once our grave and our mother: a grave where sins are buried in Jesus' tomb and a mother where we are born into the family of God. Since saints are also sinners, the preaching of the law must expose our ongoing sin that it may be crucified through repentance. Where there is repentance, there is the Apostolic preaching of the cross to give exactly what it says: the entire Christ, forgiveness of sins, and eternal salvation. In the Lord's Supper, Jesus gives us the same body and blood offered on the cross yet risen from the dead and now fed the people of God-for us, for salvation. So from baptism to the preached gospel to the Lord's Supper, sinners are killed and saints are raised to new life in Christ.
In C. S. Lewis' novel The Pilgrim's Regress, a pilgrim named John walks through a land called The Sin of Adam. He is unable to find the answers to eternal salvation among the false gods and fabricated solutions of this world. In good baby-boomer fashion, John wanders through this world on a quest for spirituality. Someone directs John to visit the mysterious Mother Kirk, a beggarly old woman who lives in a catacomb next to a deep pool of water. She has no tinsel-town McDisneyland Mass. But this old woman is able to rehearse the entire story of the land, including the history of creation and the fall. Mother Kirk invites John to strip off his old clothes and dive deep into her magical pool until he dies and is raised to new life. John plunges into Mother Kirk's pool for death and resurrection. He still lives in this world of sin, but now he understands the purpose of his journey and his final destination. For he has met the pathetic looking Mother Kirk, he has heard her preaching, and he has submitted to her magical waters of death and life.
Mother Kirk is Holy Mother Church (Kirche). John is the unchurched individual. Mother Kirk's history is the redemptive-historical story of salvation in Christ. And her pool is the water of baptism, where there is death and new life at one and the same time for sinners like John. If we are to reach the lost without losing the reached; if we are to have a strong presence of the right theology in the midst of our culture; if we are to achieve a reformation for our modern times; then I would suggest baptism into Jesus' death and resurrection should be the first thing on the genuinely evangelical mind, not salesmanship bravado. We are Mother Kirk, with no consumer-oriented impresarios to generate the collective animal heat of a large crowd. But we have the one thing needful which infinitely transcends the trophies of this age: the entire Christ and all his gifts. Missiology is making Christ present: Christ in baptism, Christ in the preached gospel, and Christ in the Lord's Supper. And it is only through these divinely appointed means that the crucified and risen One will draw all men to himself in the lively promulgation of the gospel.
