In an attempt to be transparent and humble I’ve often heard well-meaning Christians and well-meaning Bible teachers explain why they still sin by saying something like, “Well that’s just who I am, but if I’ll only remember to depend on Jesus in moments of temptation then he will overcome my natural tendency to sin.” There is truth in a statement like that, and the fact is that as long as we are abiding in Christ, He does deliver us from the pull of temptation, but the dangerous error in a statement like that is the belief that the true self is a sinner. The Bible says that I am a partaker of the divine nature and that because I’m in union with Christ and His righteousness by identity is that I am a saint and not a sinner. New creations in Christ sin by choice and not by nature, and therefore it is so crucial that you don’t allow your sin to define you. Your sin doesn’t reveal who you are; it simply reveals what you are capable of when you forget who you truly are. If you embrace the lie that the sin of unforgiveness, our pride, or lust, etc., apart from the grace of God defines who you are, and you will make up all kinds of excuses for abnormal behavior. We seem to have formed a theology at times that treats grace like some outside force that acts on me to keep me from sinning. The truth is that I am in union with the grace that is in Christ Jesus, and that union identifies the true me. Paul said in 1 Corinthians 15:10, “by the grace of God I am what I am.” He didn’t say that by the grace of God, he was From doing the bad things he really wanted to do; instead, he said the grace of God in Christ totally changed his identity. Your sin doesn’t define you, but sometimes you have to look below the surface of your actions to rediscover who you really are. “For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” Colossians 3:3
Your life is hidden with Christ and the very next verse says that Christ is your life. Therefore your true identity may be hidden from you by the accusations of the enemy when you sin, but that is when you have to diligently look beyond the surface of your behavior and rediscover the true self in Christ. It is true that by God’s grace we do not sin, but grace is not an outside force that influences us. Grace is an interior reality who we are in union with. I use the pronoun “who” because grace is a person. Grace has a face and that face is Jesus. Living from the inside out.