Sinners Who Know They Are Saints

By Rev. David Petersen

The Sacrament of Holy Baptism IV. What Baptism Indicates:

What does such baptizing with water indicate? It indicates that the Old Adam in us should by daily contrition and repentance be drowned and die with all sins and evil desires, and that a new man should daily emerge and arise to live before God in righteousness and purity forever.

Where is this written? St. Paul writes in Romans chapter six: “We were therefore buried with Him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.” [Rom. 6:4]

The Sacrament of Holy Baptism. Luther's Small Catechism. © 1986 Concordia Publishing House. www.cph.org. Used with permission.

The most profound things tend to be the most simple. The wisdom of Socrates is no exception. It can be boiled down to this: anyone who thinks himself wise is a fool while all the truly wise know they are fools.

We can also apply this formula to virtues other than wisdom. Those who imagine themselves humble are proud while those who are truly humble know they are proud. It even works for courage and patience, for courage and patience are never held by fallen men apart from fear and frustration. Anyone who truly holds a virtue knows also his vice. To be ignorant of the vice, to think yourself good, is to be utterly without the virtue. Socrates discerned that all men are fools, even the wise, and that the only advantage one fool might have over another, in the realm of wisdom, is to know he is a fool. That knowledge doesn’t stop them from being fools. But it delivers them, in part, from trusting in themselves or in their own common sense or from the worst of being a fool.

What is true, on this side of glory, of wisdom is also true of holiness and faith. No one who thinks himself holy is holy for to think oneself holy is worse than being a fool who thinks himself wise. The self-righteousness of Hitler and his so-called final solution or of the terrorists who believe they are doing the will of God are good examples of how thinking oneself holy leads to terrible crimes. Criminals who know they are criminals are never so violent as criminals who imagine they have a divine right to inflict their will on others. So anyone who thinks he is a saint is a sinner. The only actual saints are those who know they are sinners.

Socrates’ wisdom turns out to be more true of holiness than it is of wisdom. A saint is not someone who is holy, but, rather, is someone declared to be holy. You can’t be a saint unless you are a sinner. You can’t be forgiven and declared holy unless you have something of which to be forgiven. The Lord Jesus Christ is not a saint. He is not a saint because He is holy and is not a sinner. He cannot be declared holy or forgiven because He has no sins. And, yet, in order to declare sinners holy, the Lord Jesus Christ was declared a sinner, a worm, a curse. He was declared to be what He was not in order to declare us to be what He is. I think this would make perfect sense to Socrates.

There is an important difference between the saints declared holy by Christ and Christ declared a sinner on the cross. The declared holiness of the saints endures forever. The saints do not stop being holy, but they will stop being sinners. From the perspective of time, however, there was a time when the Lord Jesus Christ was declared a sinner on the cross, yet even then He was holy, but that declared sinfulness is now gone. It is finished. It is no more. He is no longer a sinner or a curse. He is and remains holy as He has always been.

Is this confusing? Consider this: there is no such thing as evil in itself. Evil has no substance and no creativity. It is the absence of good. Injustice is the absence of justice. Hatred is the absence of love. Violence is the absence of bodily aid. Since God is love and perfectly fills the Law, He is the only one who is, who has substance, in whom all things that are have their being.The Lord Jesus Christ takes all evil, all sin into Himself, makes full atonement and payment, reconciles all humanity to His Father, and walks away seemingly unscathed. He died, but He lives. He is undiminished. Hell has taken nothing from Him. He suffered and died, but He is no less. He is unchanged. Thus, He was declared a sinner but is no longer a sinner. He is the stronger man and has overcome death. He is and remains holy, and so also do all those whom He declares to be holy.

The declaration is true now. But the consummation has not yet come. Our guilt has been removed. We are forgiven and holy in the sight of God. But while we live in this living death, sin abides in us. We suffer with temptation and consequences. This hardly feels like a mere absence of good. It feels like a strong man, fully equipped in the ways and armor of the world, pressing down upon us, like an irresistible pull, like it is our fate to do evil. When we examine ourselves, we find that we have actively sinned. We have chosen evil. We are not simply passive, weak creatures of habit. We are actually evil people who return again and again to selfish and stupid ways. The more we grow in grace, the stronger our faith, the more aware of this we become. Strong faith never feels strong. It feels weak. And it is weak. Because the strongest faith, the greatest sanctification, is dependence upon God’s grace in Christ Jesus and is, in itself, nothing. And thus, we are saints who know we are sinners

Socrates’ wisdom will fail. His wisdom, at best, is only wisdom for fallen men. It will not endure. On the Last Day, our sin will be completely removed. We will be sealed in bliss like the holy angels. The wisdom of Socrates will no longer be true. When the good work begun in you is complete, the wise won’t be fools and the saints won’t be sinners. What a blessed day that will be!

Rev. David Petersen is pastor of Redeemer Lutheran Church in Fort Wayne, Indiana. His e-mail address is prdhpetersen@gmail.com.