the susie solution

Anyone who’s been around me long knows that I hold the dachshund to be the ultimately desirable dog.  I had one growing up, and, please God, will have another before I die.  There’s just something terribly cute about those short little legs on that looooong body, those big, floppy ears, and all that loose skin.  That shape and loose skin aren’t just cute, though – they’re utilitarian.  You see, doxies were bred for going after badgers.  It’s easy to see how a doxie’s shape is ideal for going into tunnels, and with all that loose skin, even if a badger bit, it likely wouldn’t get much more than a mouthful of skin.

Waaaay back when I was a kid, Disney made a movie called “The Ugly Dachsund.”  I loved it as a child, and was delighted to introduce it to my kids.  Now that they’re grown, they still love it, and I expect my grandkids will one day share our laughter.  The plot revolves around a Great Dane who, as the runt of the litter, is rejected by his own mother, but is then accepted by a doxie mom into HER litter.  Believing himself, then, to BE a doxie, as he grows, he behaves like doxie siblings.  You can see it coming, of course.  When a Dane does the same thing a doxie does, the outcome is disaster.  Run under a chair?  Hide under a table?  Squeeze through a tight spot?  Crash, boom, thud!  Not until the Dane goes through training to be in a dog show, and runs into a female Dane there, does he throw off his doxie-doodling,  realize his true identity, and go on to fulfill every inch of his Dane grandeur.

It is funny to watch the mayhem, but there is also something poignantly pathetic about that poor Dane crawling on his belly, trying to go under things when he could easily step over them.  As long as he identified himself as a dachshund, though, what else would you expect?  If you’re a doxie, you can only do what doxies do.  If you’re a Dane, you do what Danes do.  It’s that simple.  What you think you are will determine a lot of what you do.

I’ve struggled with this issue of mistaken identity.  For many, many years I thought of myself as “just the mom” – that what I wanted didn’t really matter, that what I said didn’t really matter, that I didn’t really matter.  And I acted accordingly.  When I finally sought counseling (and got on my bipolar meds), I finally changed my identity from “just the mom” to “I am THE mom.”  I started learning how to act on that identity, and to expect others to respect that identity.  I stopped being a victim and began acting in the confidence of who I really am.

The last several months, I’ve been thinking about this concept in the spiritual arena.  Who are we?

All my life, I have been taught and have believed that Christians are “saintsandsinners”.  This perspective teaches that it’s a dual package, that we are just as much the one as the other.  Maybe even more the latter than the former, because always – ALWAYS – the emphasis is on thinking of ourselves as (to borrow a phrase from a kids’ book) “terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad” sinners.  Vile, filthy worms.  We are SAVED, yes.  We are FORGIVEN, yes.  But ever and always we are to be contemplating on how far short we fall of reaching God’s best.  There seems to be a fear that if we don’t focus on how bad we are, we will somehow start taking grace for granted. 

I’ve been looking at what Jesus said in the Gospels, what Paul says in his letters, what the other writers in the New Testament have to say, and interestingly enough I find that I DON’T find that “saintsandsinners” language or perspective in it.  Throughout the New Testament, “saints” and “sinners” are referred to as two entirely different identities.  (There are only three references that might, depending on interpretation, use both.)  All of the N.T. writers speak of an “us” and a “them”.   Saints are those who have confessed Christ as Lord; sinners are those who are enemies of Christ.  Saints are those who walk according to the Spirit; sinners are those who walk according to the flesh.  Saints are those for whom there is no condemnation; sinners are those on whom God’s wrath still abides.  Saints are the children of Light; sinners are children of darkness.   Again and again, Paul emphasizes the new birth, that we are “new creations”.  There’s no split personality about who we are in Christ as far as the writers of the New Testament are concerned.  Believers are saints, not sinners.

Now, I can hear the gasps of “BUT WE STILL SIN!”  Yes, we do.  How many of you at this very moment are quoting 1 John “If we say we have no sin, the Truth is not in us….”?  Note exactly what he says though.  He doesn’t say, “If we say we are not sinners…”  To quote a new book out by my dear college prof, Roger Mohrlang (Paul and His Life-Transforming Theology, available from amazon), “There is a world of difference between thinking of oneself as fundamentally still a sinner who may occasionally do good, and thinking of oneself as God’s renewed holy person who may occasionally do wrong.”  If we think we’re a doxie, we’ll expect to do what doxies do.  If we think we’re a Dane, we’ll know we can do differently.

The most commonly quoted passage to defend the position that we are doomed to remain sinners is Romans 7.  If we accept Romans 7 as the normative description of the life of a Christian – no matter how much we want to do right, we’ll do wrong, and no matter how much we don’t want to do wrong, we’ll do it – then we will think of ourselves primarily and fundamentally as sinners, and sinning will be what we expect to end up doing.  How could we help it?  Sinners sin.   Yet if this were the case – that we are just saved-but-still-sinners – then how could God seriously ask – no, expect – of us what He does?  Is Paul telling us to “be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another… (but good luck with that.  It’s actually hopeless.  You’ll never be able to do it.)”?  “Put on the whole armor of God….. (You’ll undoubtedly lace up your boots the wrong way and hold your shield upside down, and be carried off on a stretcher, but hey, go for it anyway.)”?  Is John really saying “Little children, I write this that you may not sin…..  (yeah, right, as if you could help it.)”?  If we are still fundamentally sinners, then God must have given us those instructions, not expecting us to actually DO them, but simply to keep us in a constant state of feeling incapable, incompetent, and incorrigible.   

However, not all scholars DO accept Romans 7 as the normative description of the Christian life.  Rather, they read Romans 7 as tied to the previous two chapters on attempting to find grace through the Law, and see it as the description of Paul’s life in the flesh as he tried to live life righteously under the Law.   The final verse of chapter 7, and moving into chapter 8, then, mark a complete shift in identity as Paul describes life in the Spirit.  If we think of ourselves fundamentally as saints, as new creations, then we should recognize that we have the power of the Spirit working in us.    If we walk by the Spirit and not by the flesh, we have the power to DO those things He told us to do.  Instead of expecting to do wrong, we recognize that we can choose to do the right at any given moment.  The same grace that saved us by imputing God’s righteousness to us is the same grace by which we should be living out the new life of righteousness. 

Again, it’s not that we may not still sin.  As long as we live on this broken earth, we will face temptation because our flesh is still weak.  But sin is now a choice, not our inevitable lot.  The more we are walking in the Spirit, the more we will be putting to death the deeds of the body.  The more we are keeping in step with the Spirit, the less provision we will be making for the flesh.  The more we identify ourselves as saints, the more we will be conscious of desiring, by the Spirit’s power, to live out that identity.  We can (and should) expect, by the power of the Spirit, to see ourselves being ever more and more conformed to the image of the Son.  We remain always conscious of the state from which we were saved.  We remain aware of the sins we still commit, and repent of them, grateful for God’s ever abundant grace which He has already granted us in the finished work of Christ Jesus.  But we should not confuse our sin as an identity of being sinners. 

We are not adopted children with a hyphenated last name, still bearing the surname of the old life along with our new one.   We are not sinner-saints.  We are saints.  May we live that identity!

P.S.  If you disagree with my columns, please leave comments.  I welcome discussion of ideas, and believe that people can disagree without it being personal.  I write to explore the mixed-up solution of my own thoughts, and I make no claim to perfect understanding, to having a “lock” on the truth, or that mine is the Only Right Perspective.  Thank you.