Why do I still Sin?

We can see our salvation as presented in the Bible in three ways. We see that at the cross, our sin and its punishment are nailed and dealt with. God sees that the price of our sins has been paid. We are judicially taken care of, our sin debt is satisfied. We call this aspect of our salvation, justification. At salvation we are saved and made new, we are a new person of spirit but still contending with our old body of flesh. We now know what is right and have the ability, but we have the temptation to still do what is wrong. The continual growth, this continually being saved of ours, is a process we call sanctification. This is how we will spend the rest of our lives as we become more and more like Christ. In Heaven we see the last aspect of salvation, where we have sinless perfect bodies. We call this glorification. In salvation we can think of it as—we are saved, we are being saved, and we will be saved.

At the cross Jesus has paid my debt of sin. He has cleansed me. At the moment I turn to Jesus, I am new. I am no longer going to spend eternity away from God, but I will spend eternity with Him. Jesus did not just pay my debt at the cross, but He also bought me. God has not only made me, but He has now redeemed me too. When we come to Christ, we are not just looking to Him as we have already discussed as Lord, but also as savior. As Lord He moves into our life. That is why sanctification can happen. He calls our bodies, His temple. And the kind of worship He wants is one untainted by sin. When He moves into this house of worship, the Carpenter starts His repairs. You may have heard this analogy, but it really helped me understand sin and conviction in the life of a Christian. As Jesus repairs, we are changed. We find that the sins in our life are now more abhorrent than ever. We find new sins revealed in our life, and continue to change. This is not just our first 10 minutes as a Christian, or our first year as a Christian. This is our whole life. Jesus moves in and fixes one room and moves to the next. We may say, not this closet Lord, but He reminds us that the closet, like the whole house, is only His. I have been a Christian for a while now. I look back on my life before Christ and cannot believe I used to live as such. I also look at my first year of following Christ and think of just how much grace God had for me during that time. Unfortunately, I am sure that in a decade from now I will look back on this very moment thinking of how much love and grace God had for me. I am not the same man I used to be, but I am not yet the man I will be. That is sanctification. Sin still exists in our lives, and as God comes on those closets, He will reveal new sin that needs to be broken. Having sin is not a sign of not being a Christian, but embracing sin is a sign of not knowing the savior.

“The Christian does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us.”

- C.S. Lewis