QUESTION

Under grace, are we still ‘sinners’? Is confessing sin a denial of grace? What about saying “the Lord’s Prayer,” which asks God to forgive our sins? Some grace teachers regard the Lord’s Prayer as Old Covenant since Jesus taught it before the Cross and at the Cross, all sins were already forgiven. What’s your take on this?

RESPONSES

These questions are loaded with a backstory, for sure. I can hear the wounds of shame in how the words “sin” and “sinner” were used as bludgeons on sensitive hearts. And believe me, I can relate. As long as these are still associated with the old pangs of religious shaming, it will be hard to use them at all. What the New Testament describes is not what they came to mean for so many of us. But let’s try to work it out together.

The Foundations of Grace

Before anything else, let’s get the foundations of grace and our theology of the Cross firmly beneath our feet:

1. The Incarnation of Christ established God’s union with humanity at the conception of Jesus Christ, from the moment the divine Word assumed human flesh. This means the redemption project began, not at the Cross, but in the womb of the Virgin.
2. The Ministry of Christ proclaimed that the New Covenant Jubilee had already arrived, not at the Cross, but from the moment the Lord announced that the kingdom of God had come in him and from the beginning, he said, “TODAY this is fulfilled in your midst.”
3. The Cross of Christ (which includes his death AND resurrection) was the apex of his Incarnation and Ministry,when his Incarnation and Ministry are made absolute and universal by “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” and the power of death is defeated.
4. “It is finished” means “it is accomplished.” Was there more to do? Of course! Christ still had to plunder hades, rise from the dead, ascend to the right hand of the Father, pour out his Spirit and continue rescuing lost sheep. “If I am lifted up, I will draw all people to myself” is the ongoing ministry that flows from the Cross.

Our New Identity in Christ / the Truth of our Being

With due credit to C. Baxter Kruger, the “truth of our being” (our ‘ontology,’ a fancy word for ‘being’) is “in Christ.” By faith, I identify myself as a beloved child of our Abba. That was established, not at my conversion, but already on the Cross, when I was yet “powerless,” still a “sinner” and his “enemy” (Romans 5:6, 8, 10). Already at the Cross, Paul says Christ died for us, forgave us and reconciled us to God (Romans 5:9-11). Forgiven, justified and reconciled-a child of God-that is the truth of my being, my new identity.

That said, the indwelling grace of Father, Son and Spirit in us is at work in me, transforming me so that the truth of my being becomes “the way of my being” (my real-life existence). The truth of my being in Christ (my identity) will impact the way of my being (my life) by the Grace of God. Our role is not through self-will and religious performance but by surrender to God’s Grace (2 Cor. 3:18).

Our New Life in Christ / the Way of our Being

God’s transforming Grace (the Holy Spirit) empowers our “new life in Christ.” They aren’t to be divorced. In an email exchange with Wm. Paul Young, we co-wrote the following:

• Our true identity in Christ emerges from within our real humanity, rooted in encounter, union and community. At its heart, the truth it knows, experiences and lives is that you are not alone. 
• There is another version of “our identity in Christ” that is a disembodied, dissociated, abstracted ideal, usually imagined in a separated “heavenly realm” (a kingdom elsewhere, not truly ‘in you’ and therefore, not truly ‘in Christ’). This idealized identity is a two-dimensional avatar that the self-deceived self assumes, and ultimately another delusion as disconnected from reality as Adam in his turning.

What we’re getting at is that identity (the truth of our being) doesn’t ignore or negate reality (the way of our being). It transforms it. And that includes the real struggles of our lives. And that struggle, we sometimes call “sin.”