We all err at times. That doesn’t alter our identity. Remember, stumblings are temporary, but identity is who we are. Do you really think God is a half-full or half-empty cup sort? If half-empty, then explain the whole Jesus coming to earth thing. Do you think He’d rather think of us as sinners or saints, given the price He paid to transform us from the former into the latter? Would He rather we surrender to the righteous or unrighteous forces at play in our lives?
The book of Romans is full of references to us being dead to sin and freed to live as those alive unto Christ. Our loving God filled the Bible with descriptions of what we should embrace. Or we can listen to the voice of one the Bible calls “the accuser of the brethren” (Rev. 12),who tells us what miserable losers we are, how we’ll never be good enough, and how we can’t possibly call ourselves children of God when he or the antagonist within gets the better of us.
Everything depends upon the answer that answers all other questions: which kingdom we wish to embrace. That will determine which voice we hear and which identity we assume.
The bottom line is this: we can either let our sin define us, in which case we’re letting our flesh define us. Or we can let our God define us, which is letting our spirit, in tune with His Spirit, define us. Jesus came to redefine the Father’s relationship with us, and ours with Him, from an external covenant where “He did not care for us” to an internal, transformative one where He would “write His laws upon our hearts” and abide in us, and we in Him (Heb. 8).
God does not abide in the hearts of sinners who cannot continue in His covenant. That was the problem before Jesus came to earth. We dare not let that continue, or we imply He came and died for nothing.
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