Do I Sin Because I’m a Sinner?

Or am I a sinner because I sin?

They can’t both be true from a logical basis.

One comes first and results in the other.

One leads to the other and my choice which one it is will determine the direction and quality of my life.

Option 1: Sinning makes me a sinner.

This was my default choice growing up. Let me explain.

I didn’t grow up in a formally religious family.

We didn’t know anything determinative about any God or gods, but we did love us (thankfully).

For this reason, because God didn’t necessarily exist, we didn’t know and frankly didn’t care, about the idea of sin, sinning, and sinners.

I think we would admit we made mistakes, but these weren’t tied to any eternal destination.

Instead, it was obvious that life punished mistakes.

If you didn’t pass examinations, you wouldn’t get into the university, or career choice you wanted, for example. If you ran a red light you might kill yourself and or others.

Going back to the sin/sinner question. My answer back then could only have been that sinning makes me a sinner.

This means I believed that I was what I did.

My behavior defined me.

So with this as my starting point is it possible to determine what sort of life I would end up living?

If my actions defined who I would become then my mind would have to focus on my success at the exclusion of others.

It’s a dog eat dog world.

It’s survival of the fittest.

Abortion is a logical value as is euthanasia.

Lying to get ahead makes total sense.

Materialism is not only a good thing, it’s all there is and will ever be.

What this thinking was doing to me.

As I lived longer I discovered that at my core was discontent.

I did not at the time connect this with sin because I didn’t know what was meant by the word. I didn’t have a clear definition.

I just thought that sin was a religious term used by religious people to deny themselves and others ever having a good time.

I decided back then that sin is best described as excessive fun to the point of making a few mistakes here and there.

Option 2: I sin because I am a sinner.

The idea of being a sinner was not intuitively known by me and I think is the default by most not raised in a strong strict sin-conscious, possibly obsessed, environment.

What I did feel, because I really didn’t know what it was at the time, was a deep unexplainable unhappiness and discontent.

At my core (although I would never have wanted to admit it at the time) was a disturbance, anger, and disappointment about life — its direction and limitations.

It became pretty obvious to me pretty early on that life always ended in death and there was no reversing this process.

People I loved as a child died and I learned this would continue to happen the rest of my life with the devastating result that their love would be taken from me and I would never see them again.

Eventually, this death thing would involve everyone I knew or would ever know, finally ending with my own departure.

At some point, if you relate to what I have described — the unsettled feelings and frustrations along with the apparent permanency of death — you, as did I, will begin to look around.

What I did not do was study any religions or philosophies.

Instead I found myself attracted to some people and repelled by others.

And what it was that attracted me now makes perfect sense.

I was attracted to happy people, those who lived in the same world I was living in but seemed to find a joy I couldn’t see.

Of course some, perhaps many, were in denial or strung out on one addiction or another, but a few were well adjusted, kind, calm, friendly, and hopeful. They were living life in a certain attractive way pressing toward something I couldn’t outwardly understand.

I found for the most part that they had a few things in common with one another although they usually didn’t know each other and came from all walks of life.

First they believed in God and second they seemed to have a relationship with him of some sort.

They explained what sin was to me and it was very different from my initial misconceptions.

They believed we inherit a rebellious spirit.

We don’t want to know about God.

In fact, the idea is in some ways very repellent to our spirits. It actually feels threatening.

In other words, there is something that wants to keep me from even investigating the possibility of the existence of God.

That to me was a big clue I might be on the right track.

Now the investigation is continuing even to this day but the direction is clear.

I am heading in the opposite direction from where I was going initially.

And the journey in this new direction was bringing a recovery from the misery that was growing stronger in me over time.

For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin.

For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.

Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good.

So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.

For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh.

For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out.

For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.

Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.

So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand.

For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.

Wretched man that I am!

Who will deliver me from this body of death?

Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!

So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.

Romans 7:14-25