For you are still fleshly. For since there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not fleshly, and are you not walking like mere men?
1 Corinthians 3:3, LSB
“Are you calling me a sinner?” I can still hear these words ring in my ears from years ago from a parishioner. It came when I heard protests about seeking as a Church to help another family financially in a time of need, and I explained how sin causes us to look inward instead of outward. The reality is that we are all still sinful and in need of forgiveness. The title, “Sinner,” fits us all until the final day we breathe our last. The issue isn’t the sin itself but how often we try to justify our sin instead of confessing it. God desires to sanctify us, and Jesus’ death on the Cross is proof of that work, yet when we try to justify and explain away our sin as being another’s fault, we reject the gift of forgiveness our Lord gives us. It is when we accept our failure and ask for our Lord to forgive us and take away not only the sin but the desire that it brings that our hearts change and become transformed. It is the renewing of our minds that occurs each and every day. We hold nothing back from God and seek to do and be all He desires of us. Freed from sin and bound in Christ on the last day, we fully wear the title, “Redeemed.”
Let us pray. I thank you, my heavenly Father, through Jesus Christ, your dear Son, that you have kept me this night from all harm and danger, and I ask you to protect me this day also from sin and every evil, that in all I do today, I may please you. For into your hands, I commend myself, my body and soul, and all that is mine. Let your holy angel watch over me, that the wicked foe have no power over me. Amen.