THE NAME CHANGE
By Lee LeFebre
Again and again the Jews called the Gentiles sinners during the Old Covenant period. They even suggested Jesus was a sinner. Christ dined and talked with sinners and said he came to save sinners. The Pharisees thought Gentiles to be inferior for their failure to keep the law as the Jews did.
After Christ ascended into heaven the epistles made a distinction between believers and unbelievers.
You can see that for Paul to refer to himself as a sinner, it is likely he was referring to his pre-Christian days. At that time he says he was guilty of putting Christians in prison and voted for their death... many of the saints I shut up in prison, having received authority from the chief priests; and when they were put to death, I cast my vote against them.
And I punished them often in every synagogue and compelled them to blaspheme; and being exceedingly enraged against them, I persecuted them even to foreign cities (Acts 26:10-11). In 1 Timothy 1:13, Paul refers to himself as formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and an insolent man.
His shame apparently led him
to believe that up until his salvation, he was the chief of sinners. Praise the Lord that Paul found that the grace of our Lord was exceedingly abundant through his faith and love for Christ Jesus.
How necessary it was for us to die to the law which labels us under the former covenant!
The Theft Continues
Unfortunately, there are those who still lie to us concerning our identities. Those who mislead and deceive us are mainly confused people of God. They want us to compromise our recovered identities. They encourage us to base our identities on our behavior rather than on who we are in Christ Jesus. These false identities sound reasonable to us, but they are really lies. They sound something like this:
- Don’t call yourself a saint… that has to be earned by years of hard labor and certain con- firming miracles. Rather call yourself a forgiven sinner, or a sinner saved by grace. That is much more humble.
- Don’t call yourself righteous. That might get confused with self-righteousness, and we don’t want to sound proud.
- Forget that you have received the free gift of God’s righteousness in Christ Himself.............. if by the one man’s offense death reigned through the one, much more those who receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ (Romans 5:17).
- Above all, never quote Hebrews 10:14, For by one offering He has perfected forever those who are sanctified. Why? Because we Christians shouldn’t use the word perfection. Rather, say that you are becoming a better and better Christian sinner as you try hard, with God’s help, over an 80 year life span. In this we confuse maturity with identity. Perhaps the father of lies has deceived us in this area more than any other.
If we believe the lies, then we might as well act
as though we are still kidnapped, and try to establish a new identity through our own efforts at becoming a better and better Christian (sinner).
Next: The Solution.
