When a sinner believes, he is never called a sinner again in the Bible, but a saint.
What is it then that makes a person a saint? As an answer we will use an illustration. Here are two hundred books, and a person says, “I will buy three of them.” He pays for them, and puts them to one side. He has separated them from the other books, taken them from the mass, and made them a company by themselves. The simple meaning of the word saint is separated one. When we are purchased by God through the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, we are separated from the rest of the world and we are thenceforth a separated people—saints.
Should the saint be a very holy person?
Certainly; but what makes a sinner a saint is what God does, not what the saint does.
Someone may say, “This may all be true, but I do not feel holy, or feel I am a saint.” Let us suppose a good judge of silver picking up a metal fork; it is tarnished and looks worthless to one who is not a judge, but tarnished as it is the good judge knows it to be silver. In the same way the believer may get tarnished, but he is a saint all the same, and nothing can alter that.
Does a saint ever sin?
Sadly, he does, but God says, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:99If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:9)). Sadly it is an easy thing for us after we have done wrong to sink into a cold state of soul, and then we are apt to think that we are lost sinners and that we require pardon, just as we did when we first came to God to be forgiven. We may draw a lesson from daily life as to this. A child has done wrong, but does the mother say, “Tommy is not my boy, because he has done wrong”? No; she says, “My boy is a naughty boy.” To be sure the child should not have done wrong, nor should a child of God do wrong, yet we are still God’s children, even if naughty children.
What do we expect the child to do who has done wrong?
We expect him to tell the truth about it. Those who are God’s children should say they have done wrong, and not try to cover it up or shift the responsibility to someone else. Adam tried to push his wrong-doing on Eve. If we have done wrong, do not let us put it on someone else. The only way for the believer to regain peace when he has done wrong is for him to tell God the truth about it, as His child. “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins.”
Each one has some besetting sin. What is a temptation to one perhaps is not a temptation to another. A man who has a quick temper may say, “I have lost my temper three times today, once ought to be once too often”; or it may be he has the temptation to backbite or to indulge in some thoughts he should not indulge in. At night, while he is thinking over the day as in God’s sight, he says to God, “I did that same evil thing three times today; I am bitterly ashamed of myself.” This experience is true, sadly, in everyday life. This believer is not enjoying peace when he is thus judging himself. We will allow that he knows he is a child of God, but he is not in a peaceful state of soul. Now what must he do? The only way of peace for him is what God has put before us—confess the sin.
But it gets harder and harder each time, someone will say.
The man who does not tell God what he has done slips further and further away from God in his soul, and, if this continues, it may end in open sin. We do not lose the sense of the burden of sin on our conscience until we confess to God. Sometimes a child is “grumpy” for a day or two because he has some secret naughtiness going on in his heart. Likewise we may see children of God vexed in soul for a whole week at a time. At last the child’s parent says, “If you do not change, I will spank you.” It is very much the same with us; God shakes us out of our bad state of soul by His strong arm and then we get down on our knees and confess our sin to Him. It is most sad to think of a whole week out of this short lifetime spent in coldness and deadness of soul because of unconfessed sin. Yet it is true that there are people who have fallen into a cold, dead state and have continued in it for a long year. And why? Because they have not confessed their sins.
Where there is confession there is always pardon.
When we were children, we were forgiven upon telling our parents what we had done wrong, and in like manner God our Father says of the children who confess their sins to Him, “He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins.”
God does really forgive sins.
It is a very delightful thing for the child of God to know that he is forgiven; it lifts a burden off his soul to know that all the unrighteousness is cleansed and that he has a fresh start. The way of peace, when we have done wrong, is to have it all out with God. Tell God all about it—make a true confession. We are quick to feel when any around us show, by their actions or the look on their faces, that they have something against us. How much more sensitive is the soul of the believer if there is a shadow between his soul and God? Let us be quick in self-judgment lest that which may have been at first but as a very slight cloud between us and God should grow into a mighty barrier.