Hebrews 10:17, “And their sins and iniquities will I remember no more.”
If God Himself chooses not to remember our sins, then who are we to remember something that God Himself has chosen to forget?
Philippians 3:13, “Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before,”
A saint is somebody who is holy, and we have been made holy with the righteousness of God through the blood shed by Christ Jesus! 2 Corinthians 5:21, “For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.”
1 Corinthians 1:2, “Unto the church of God which is at Corinth, to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, with all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours:” This passage tells us that the letters Paul wrote to Corinth, were geared towards all who call upon the name of the Lord, and later on He refers to the believers reading these letters as saints in 1 Corinthians 6:2.
Just after Paul got done chewing out the saints at Corinth for rejoicing over the man who was having incest with his mother, Paul turns right around and refers to them as saints in 1 Corinthians 6:2, “Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world? and if the world shall be judged by you, are ye unworthy to judge the smallest matters?”
If Paul still referred to them as saints, then I think it becomes clear that a saint is not somebody who is perfect by the things they did, but somebody who’s been made perfect through the blood of Jesus!
As you know, a forgiven sinner would be somebody who was forgiven, but is still in bondage to sin. God’s Word makes it clear that we not only have had our sins forgiven, but we have also been set free from the power of sin. A saint is a person who is holy, and we are given the righteousness of God through the work Jesus did on the cross:
2 Corinthians 5:21, “For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.”
Unlike forgiven sinners, we have not only been forgiven our sins, but also set free from the bondage of sin:
Romans 6:18, “Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness.”
John 8:36, “If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.”
As I said before, if you look up the word “sinners” in the NT Greek, it gives us this interpretation:
1) devoted to sin, a sinner
Would you consider yourself a “Forgiven person who is devoted to sin”?
a) not free from sin
Would you consider yourself somebody who is forgiven, but not freed from sin? (Romans 6:18, “Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness.”)
b) pre-eminently sinful, especially wicked
Would you consider yourself somebody who is forgiven but especially wicked?
1) all wicked men
Would you consider yourself a forgiven wicked person?
2a) tax collectors, heathen
Would you consider yourself a forgiven heathen?
Basically, a forgiven sinner is somebody who has been forgiven, but they are not freed from the power of sin.
Jesus didn’t just die to forgive us of our sins, but also to deliver us from the power of sin! If He only came to forgive us, then we could use the term ‘forgiven sinner’.
I don’t know about you, but the old ‘sinner’ in me died (Romans 6:11), and was buried with Christ (Romans 6:2, 4), and I am a new creation in Christ Jesus (2 Corinthians 5:17)!
If you look up the word sinner in the NT Greek, you’ll find the Greek word hamartolos, which means:
1) devoted to sin, a sinner
a) not free from sin
b) pre-eminently sinful, especially wicked
1) all wicked men
2) specifically of men stained with certain definite vices or crimes
a) tax collectors, heathen
This means that a forgiven sinner is a person who has been forgiven, but is STILL in bondage to sin! Are we in bondage to sin? In John 8:31-36 Jesus speaks of believers who were in bondage to sin due to ignorance, but we don’t have to be! In verse 36, Jesus tells us that, “If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.” We are legally freed from the power of sin, but we can remain in bondage to sin due to our own ignorance of the truth!
This is an important question to ask yourself. Are you merely a sinner saved by grace? Or are you a saint? What does the Bible say about you as a child of God? If you see yourself as a dirty old sinner who’s just been forgiven, it’s going to hinder you from coming into all that God’s given you as His child! If Prince Charles thought he was a street bum, he could be living off the street and sleeping in the park, when he’s actually entitled to live in a castle! That’s how important it is for us to know who we are, as children of God!! The Bible didn’t even call the church at Corinth forgiven sinners, but Paul referred to them as saints, and that was the most sinful church in the early church… they gloated over a man having incest with his mother! Yet they were still known as saints according to God’s Word! God’s Word is clear that our old sinful man has died (Romans 6:11) and was buried with Christ (Romans 6:2, 4), and we are new creatures in Christ Jesus (2 Corinthians 5:17).
Whatever you think about throughout the day, will affect your whole personality and mood. If you spend your day thinking about golf, you will become a golf fanatic. If you spend your time thinking about traveling, you’ll want to always be going somewhere or doing something… you will spend your day daydreaming about being somewhere on vacation.
If you spend your day thinking about the negative things around you and things you can complain about, you will develop a pessimistic personality. It will pull you down, and since pessimism and optimism are opposites, whichever one you allow to feed your mind will eventually push the other one farther and farther away.
One of the vital steps to developing a thankful personality, is to meditate (that is to think about often) the things that you have in your life to be thankful for. Make a list of the things God has done for you, and keep those things on your mind throughout the day. It may take a little more work at first, especially if your mind is programmed to think negatively. This process is the tearing down of strongholds and the renewing of your mind as God’s Word tells us:
Romans 12:2, “And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.”
How do we renew our minds? Do we renew them by sitting in church, daydreaming about other things? No, we renew our minds by feeding and meditating on uplifting things (blessings in our lives) and the truth in God’s Word. A pastor can help feed us the truth is he or she is preaching the Word of God as the Word was meant to be preached, but it is upto us to take what we hear and allow our minds to feast upon it. Philippines tells us what we are to set our minds upon… which includes the things that are uplifting, lovely, of good report, etc.
Philippines 4:8, “Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.”
Those who are thankful for the good things that God has given them will take good care of those things, whether it be their mind, car, body, spouse, children, job, etc. Taking good care of the things which God has given us shows Him that those things mean something to us and we are thankful for them. Not that we ever should worship the things God gives us, but we should take good care of them.
All of these symptoms should not be found in our lives, but if they exist (and I doubt many of us are immune!), there is something we can do about it. Develop a thankful heart! So the next question is….
This is an obvious sign of an unthankful heart. Greed is a sin that causes us to become unthankful for the things that God has blessed us with. When we become greedy, we are thinking about things we don’t have, rather than things we do have.
God’s Word tells us that we have been created in the very image of God, and knit together by the hands of God in our mother’s womb, and when we see ourselves as failures, we are in turn being unthankful for the person that God has made us. If we see ourselves as ugly, then we are claiming that God’s creation (our bodies) are ugly. Would you walk upto God and dare tell Him that something He made was ugly? I should hope not! But that’s what we do everytime we look at ourselves in the mirror and see ourselves as ugly. The same is true with our minds and intelligence. Despite the vast amount of technology we have today, to create a computer processor chip that will do millions of transactions in mere seconds, yet weighs no more than a quarter, there’s nothing that man has created that will even come close to the complexity of the human brain. Far too often, we take lightly the wonderful and dynamic gift that God has given us when we consider ourselves dumb or less than brilliant! Each one of us were created in the very image of God, and gifted in many ways, and it is a crying shame when we refer to ourselves as anything less than downright amazing!
Persecution Live 