"If I'm Saved, Why Do I Still Sin?"
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If Christ really lives in you, why do you still sin? In my last video, I said you were a temple of the Holy Spirit, that you have the fire of God's nature burning inside you. God's patience becomes your patience when your patience runs out. All that's true. I believe every word of it. The scriptures are very clear on that point. And yet, 2 days ago, I lost my temper in the car.
Not in any dangerous road rage-y kind of way, just in a way that I knew as soon as it happened was an overreaction on my part. I was driving, wasn't even in that big of a hurry, but apparently the car in front of me was and darted into the lane, cutting me off. I didn't feel like a temple of the Holy Spirit in that moment, let me tell you. And the words I said were definitely not prayerful, either. The old me, that guy I've spent this sermon series telling you died with Christ, was back again, driving my car, and saying a few choice words. Now, I can hear what you're thinking, and you're right to ask, "John, you told me in the last video that the fire never goes out. So, why does stuff like this still happen?"
Well, that's what this video is about. You've been there, you know the drill. Maybe you saw my last video and your heart swelled and embraced it all and said yes to every word. The idea of being a new creation is fantastic. I don't think any of us would disagree with that.
Then you yelled at your kids, or you had your own traffic incident, or you made a snap judgment about somebody based only on how they look, or you doom scrolled for hours because you were anxious rather than talking to God about it. You see, that's the gap. That's the gap between who God says you are and what actually happens on a given Tuesday.
That gap is responsible for a a of people's loss of faith. It's not arguments over evolution or the problem of evil in the world. Those things Those things are what people reach for after they've already lost their faith, but it's the gap between what we've been told we are and how we still behave that makes people give it up to begin with. Here's what usually happens. Some people become hypocrite. They pretend like there isn't a gap. They become like the whitewashed graves Jesus called the Pharisees out for being.
Outwardly beautiful, that's the show they put on, the performance of their faith, but inwardly rotten. Other people become cynical. They claim it's all hype and delusion, that there are no real results. They were supposedly saved, but they still make mistakes, so it must all be a lie. Look, I get it. I was born in a cult. I was in it for 40 years.
I know all about performing faith and dead men's bones buried beneath whitewashed graves, let me tell you. And I also know the cynic, because that was me in my 7 years of wandering the wilderness. When I saw those bones beneath that whitewashed grave and lost my faith that I'd held my whole life, for a while I stopped believing anything was real. But there is a third option here. Paul gives it to us in one sentence, the most misunderstood sentence he ever wrote, where he reaches for a Greek word used by the Gospels for one blinding moment in Christ's life. There's also a monk from the 300s who answered the question, "When do I finally arrive?" And his answer's going to surprise you and make you breathe a sigh of relief.
The whole thing ends with a charcoal fire on a beach involving a man who failed far worse than you ever have. Let's start with the part nobody ever told me, because nobody was taught it in the cult I grew up in. When you come to Christ, two different things start happening, and those things run on very different timelines. The first thing happens instantly. The judge lowers the gavel, and the charges against you are dropped. Your debt is paid, the verdict isn't just that you've been pardoned, but that you're righteous. You'll never be more forgiven than in that moment, because you're forgiven completely.
It's done. God doesn't forgive you in installments. There's no payment plan here, no bill coming in the mail. The Bible calls that justification, and it's over the moment it happens.
The second thing though, the second thing is different. It starts in the same moment that justification starts, but it's ongoing. That's the renovation, where you remake your habits, reactions, reflexes, those words you shouldn't have said when that thing happened in traffic, your temper. The Bible's word for that one is sanctification, and sanctification takes the rest of your life.
If you believe both those things should happen instantly, you're going to wreck your faith. The verdict was instant, and if you expect the renovation to be too, you'll think something went wrong, or it was all a hoax. Then you'll reach for things like evolution, or the problem of evil, to convince yourself that it was a hoax. But nothing actually went wrong. You just confused justification with sanctification. The verdict is not the renovation.
Hebrews 10:14 says this, "For by one sacrifice, he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy." See what's happening there? He has made perfect. That's past tense, already happened. Those who are being made holy. Present tense, ongoing. It's not a contradiction.
The court already cleared your name. You're perfect in that regard. And like Hebrews says, you're made perfect forever. You'll never be tried for that again. But you're still on the bench in the workshop. There's still work to do. So, you're being forgiven.
Happened in an instant. But becoming like him, that takes a lifetime. The Bible never said those two things were the same thing. >> [snorts] >> There's a great analogy for this. In my last video, I talked about iron in a furnace. But for this one, I want you to think about the sunrise.
When the sun cracks the horizon, night is over. Nobody looks at the sun peaking out and says, "It's mostly still night and partly morning." Nope. Darkness lost. The light won. That's the already part. But it isn't noon yet.
The tree still casts long shadows over the yard when you look out the window. It's still cold when you step outside. The heat and full brightness of the day haven't arrived. That's the not yet part. Theologians use that phrase, the already and the not yet, when describing how this works. And it's a good way to put it. It's the honest answer to the question, "Why do I still and then pick your poison in that with?"
>> [snorts] >> We're living in the sunrise of our own soul. In Christ, the sun is indeed up. He hath risen, as the saying goes. But in our habits, how we react to things, it's not high noon, not yet. Proverbs 4:18 puts it well. The path of the righteous is like the dawning light that shines more and more until the perfect day.
Look at the language that he's using there. More and more, he says, "until the perfect day." This is a process. It's not a light switch, it's a sunrise.
It doesn't mean the sun never rose because I lost my temper in traffic. It doesn't mean you're not a new creation when you yell at your kid over something that warranted a softer response. When we do those things, that's just the shadows of the morning falling on us. Light hasn't reached that corner of the yard yet, but it will. This, by the way, is why the New Testament talks the way it does. It tells us that we are a thing and then commands us to become that thing. Look at Ephesians 5:8.
You are the light in the world. Walk as children of light. You're already the light, it says, but you got to act like it. That's not a contradiction, it's the sunrise being told to keep rising.
Okay, John, I'm with you so far, but if God is doing the renovating here, what's my part? Do I just sit here and wait for noon or what? Good question, and no, you don't. This is no time to rest on your laurels. You've been forgiven, but Paul tells us we still have a part to play. This verse trips up all kinds of people, so let's talk about it. Philippians 2:12 and 13.
Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you both to will and to work for his good pleasure. First, let's talk about what people get wrong here. This isn't saying you earn anything. Salvation was a gift. You're not doing this work to attain it, you already have it. Paul didn't say that you work for your salvation, he says you work it out. The Greek word used there is katar gad zomai, which I'm sure I'm saying incorrectly.
It means to carry something through all the the to the end. For example, when the ancient geographer Strabo described the silver mines of Roman Spain, he used the noun form of the same word to describe the business of turning raw ore into silver. You have to work out the silver from the ore. Nobody in the mines was creating silver, it was already in the ground. The people in the mines were working to get it out. What Paul is saying is the same thing. The treasure is already in you.
God put it there. Some of it's buried though, or under rock, but it's in there. Your job isn't to create it, it's to get it out. You're not working for something you don't have, you're working out something you already do. Now, before you wipe your eyes in stress and wonder how you're going to be able to do that, Paul tells you where the power comes from. For it is God who works in you. God works it in, we work it out, but with his power.
The part where Paul says we do that with fear and trembling is also commonly misunderstood. Think of it like transporting an extremely valuable object, a gift you've been given that's precious to you. You don't handle that like you'd handle a paper plate. You don't just fling it around and drop it on the table. You hold it firmly but carefully. You walk more slowly. You set it down softly.
The trembling isn't terror of punishment, it's you being careful with something that's irreplaceable. Paul is not saying be afraid of God here. He's saying what's inside you is priceless, handle with care. So, God supplies the treasure and the power. You supply the shovel and the showing up. Let's go back to the mirror analogy that I use in a lot of my videos and that my book The Broken Mirror is based on. Imagine have a beautiful, priceless silver mirror.
It's precious and designed to reflect, but you live in the days before air conditioning, so you got to keep your windows open. What happens to stuff inside a house when the windows are open? It gets dusty. The world is a dusty place. You got the pollen of pride, the smog of anger, the dirt of cynicism. All of that blows in through the window and settles on the mirror, on you. All those altercations, the traffic incidents, those times when your kid isn't listening and you overreact, the resentment, the anxious scrolling on your phone, all of it.
But the silver doesn't become something else just because it's dusty. It's still silver. It's still just as precious and just as valuable as it's always been, and it's still designed to reflect, too. Dust doesn't change any of that. What dust does is change how well that mirror reflects. That film on the mirror prevents the light from reflecting very well. The image in it gets hazy and dim.
The mirror hasn't changed, it just needs to be cleaned. But the problem isn't just outside. In Matthew 15, Jesus told us it's inside, too. Out of the heart come evil thoughts. If what comes from outside is the dust, what happens inside is the tarnish. The metal's own surface reacting with the air of a fallen world. Dust settles on it from outside, but the tarnish rises up from the inside.
Don't worry, you're in luck. Well, not really, you're in God's mercy. Because that same cloth treats both of these problems. First John puts it this way. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us the sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
Cleanse. That's mirror language right there. When the mirror is cleansed, the dust is wiped away and the tarnish is polished off at the same time.
This isn't a judge rehearing your case. Like I said, that's already been settled. You're forgiven. It's the father wiping his child's face after a fall. It's fellowship, not standing.
People who think the dawn of forgiveness should instantly bring the heat and sunlight of noon time are going to throw the mirror out when it gets dusty or tarnished. But you don't put a priceless silver mirror at the curb to be picked up with the garbage. You don't buy a new one or scream at it for being bad. You get a cloth, wipe it off, and polish it. That's what spiritual practice is. Prayer, silence, scripture, fasting, worship, gathering with other believers. These aren't things you do to pay God back.
It's not the check you write for a debt you're trying to pay off. The debt is paid. You're forgiven and righteous. Those things are the polishing cloths. They're how you wipe the dust of the day off your soul so the image of Christ is clearly reflected through you again. As Christians, we tend to get this backward. We think, "If I pray for an hour, God will forgive me and love me more."
Or, if I read the Bible every morning, God will give me a blessing for doing that. But that's not how it works. That's a transaction. That's the false self trying to negotiate with God, trying to turn a polishing cloth into currency to pay the bill. What the true self says is different. I'm a mirror. I'm precious to God.
That's already been settled. But today I feel dusty, so I'm going to sit with him for 20 minutes and wipe the the off so I can see the sun again. You see the difference? The first is slavery. You owe a debt. The other is maintenance. You taking care of a precious gift that you've been given.
If you have a gift made of fine silver, you polish it. The cloth doesn't make it silver. It's already silver. You polish it because you value it and you want it to shine and be beautiful like it's meant to. I can hear you now. But, Shawn, last week you said to stop trying, to just receive it. You said, and I wrote this part down, you can polish that iron forever and it'll stay cold.
Now you're handing me a cloth and telling me to get to work. Which is it? That's a fair objection. The best question you could ask, really. So, let me answer it. Polishing never creates anything, ever. That's the difference here.
The cloth isn't what makes the silver valuable. The cloth can't turn tin into silver. It doesn't matter how hard you work to clean it, it's not going to change forms like that. And cloth can't make iron glow with heat, either. That was the point I was making in the last video. You can't generate the light, life, fire, or nature of God. That's all God's work, his gift to you, his presence in your life.
But, there is something you can do. You can let the dust keep piling up until it's so thick that the priceless mirror doesn't reflect hardly anything at all. The silver is his gift to you. The dust is yours and needs to be removed. But, he gives you the tools to remove it. He gives you the cloth. Prayer, Bible reading, and the other spiritual practices, those things don't manufacture holiness.
You're already holy. What they do is remove what blocks that holiness from shining out into the world. That's why Peter follows the verse of 2 Peter 1:4 where he says we're partakers of the divine nature with verse 5 where he says to make every effort. You don't manufacture it. You just make the effort to keep it clean and polished. Last week's principle was to stop trying to be the fire. This week's is to stop letting the dust bury it.
Real quick, if this is landing for you, hit subscribe. And tell me in the comments, where does your old self keep showing up? In traffic, with the kids, that one annoying relative you have to put up with? And if you want to deep dive into the subject further, check out my book The Broken Mirror: Rediscovering Our True Nature in Christ. One review called it encouraging and inspiring. Another said that they predict it will become a classic for group Bible study for the lone seeker of deeper truth. That was very humbling to read that.
Anyway, the link is in the pinned comment and video description if you want to check it out. The book actually has a whole chapter on what I'm talking about in this video. All right. So, if our spiritual practices like prayer and Bible reading wipe the dust off, what actually changes the mirror? Where does that transformation come from? 2 Corinthians 3:18. But we all with unveiled face, seeing the glory of the Lord as in a mirror, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord the spirit.
It's all in there. The mirror, beholding, transformation. It gives us the direction, too. From glory to glory.
Now, here's the interesting part. Scholars argue over one of the words in that verse. The Greek can mean beholding as in a mirror, that's you looking at his glory, or it can mean reflecting like a mirror, that's his glory bouncing off of you. I don't think we have to decide which one's right though. Both readings are true. You behold him by turning toward him, and in turning toward the light, you as a mirror reflect that light. You have to look to reflect.
Then there's the word translated transformed, metamorphootha, which again I'm probably mispronouncing, but you can hear the English word in there, metamorphosis. That word only appears four times in the whole New Testament. Two of those times it's Paul describing what's happening to you in the verse we just read in Romans 12 where he says to be transformed by the renewing of your mind. The two other times are in the Gospels. Both Matthew and Mark use it in their accounts of the transfiguration. He was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun.
Let that sink in. Paul chose the same word the Gospels used to describe Jesus' transfiguration to describe what is happening in you. The blazing light, the shining face, the clothes being whiter than light. Paul points to that glory and says, "That's happening in you slowly from the inside out." And also notice that we're transformed by beholding, not striving or straining, not by white knuckling our way through faith or scrubbing the mirror really hard to keep it clean. We just turn and look at him, and in doing that, we reflect his light. His fire burns the dust and grime away.
That's what cleans the mirror. Prayer, Bible reading, all those things are what turn us toward him so that can happen. And this is common sense when you think about it. If you doom scroll through outrage videos on your phone for 2 hours every night, how are you going to feel the next morning? Peaceful and calm or angry and irritated? You're going to behold something. So, make sure that something is cleaning the mirror rather than making it dirty.
The bottom line here is that you don't scrub yourself shiny, you turn and look at him until you shine. Now, that phrase at the end of the verse from glory to glory, one of the early church fathers built his whole understanding of Christian life on that. Gregory of Nyssa, not the same Gregory from my last video, it was just a common name at the time. This Gregory asked the question that might have gone through your mind while listening to all this. When does this process finish? When do I finally arrive? Well, Gregory of Nyssa said, "You don't, and that's the good news."
The word he used for it was epectasis. He took it from what Paul said in Philippians 3, "Straining toward what is ahead." It describes perpetual stretching. Here's what he said about it. "This is truly perfection, never to stop growing towards what is better, and never placing any limit on perfection." For a creature growing into an infinite God, perfection isn't some line you cross and say you're finished. That line doesn't exist because he is infinite.
The perfection is the growing, the stretching, the becoming. Now, hold on there, you might be thinking. Are you saying noon never comes? No, it does come. John promises that when we see him, we shall be like him. The courtroom perfection is done, and that perfect day Solomon promises really does arrive. The point Gregory of Nyssa's making is that even then, the glory keeps unfolding because God is inexhaustible.
There's always more of him. It's glory to glory to glory forever. Noon wasn't the line we eventually reach. It's a threshold. You'll never run out of dawn.
That completely changes how we look at ourselves as Christians. We stop saying, "I'm not finished yet." out of shame for not having arrived yet. And we start seeing that as our job description. We're not behind. We're mid-sunrise.
That's been true of every Christian you've ever admired. I'm going to prove that to you in a bit with a man who fell on his face worse than any of us ever have while beside a fire and with what Jesus had already done about it before it even happened. But first, let's get practical. I promised you a polishing cloth for this week, so here it is. I call it the temple scan. Paul said we're transformed by beholding the Lord's glory. Well, where's one of the main places his glory wants to be seen?
In the people around you, all made in the imago dei, the image of God. If they also belong to Christ, that means they're a temple he lives in, too. I covered that in the last video. When I got upset in traffic, what was I seeing in that moment? An obstacle, an annoyance, something that was in my way. And what do we become? That which we see, right?
Because I was beholding annoyance, I reflected annoyance. The mirror fogged up instantly. Now, what if, instead of annoyance, I wiped the glass and actually looked at what was in the other car? That person was made in the image of God. They might be a broken mirror or one covered in decades of dust, but there's silver under there, and Christ died for them, too. That's why after something negative goes through my head in traffic because let's be real people sometimes do stupid things. I try and remember to tell myself that there's silver under there.
They may have done something stupid in traffic, but they might be a very nice person or funny or generous or struggling with something that's temporarily caused them to misbehave. Or maybe, here's a thought, it was an accident and they just weren't paying attention. And here's the thing, and looking at it that way, I'm not making that person a different person. Maybe they really are a dust-covered jerk most of the time. Who knows? I'm not changing what they are. I'm changing what I become in that moment.
I turn to Christ. I reflect the light and the heat burns away that moment of dust that came off the tires of that car and landed on my mirror. It works because you can't behold anger in the same space as you behold the image of God in somebody else. The two won't share the same space. Looking at people for who they are underneath the dust and tarnish polishes your soul. This applies to everything. When your spouse is grumpy or your kids won't listen or your boss is coming down on you for something that's not your fault, remember that's their dust.
Underneath that is priceless silver. And when you choose to see the silver, something amazing happens. Your patience with them, guess what? That becomes a polishing cloth for their mirror. They are beholding in you the light you're reflecting from God, and that burns away a little of their own dust. That's why Jesus said, "You are the light of the world." So here's your practice for this week.
When you feel irritation or annoyance rising at another person, doesn't matter if it's a stranger, your family in the car, in the kitchen, pause, take one breath, and say to yourself, "That is an image bearer. What they did is just dust. I'm going to reflect God's light toward them and burn some of that dust off." At first, it's going to feel awkward, probably even fake. That's fine, because you're not faking it. You're building a reflex, and that takes time and practice just like anything. Eventually, it'll become second nature.
You'll have moments where you forget due to stress or it coming out of left field, but the more often you practice it, the more often you'll stop and see the silver in that guy who cut you off on the road. >> [snorts] >> Now, let me show you why I know this works. The night before the cross, Jesus turned to Simon Peter and said, "Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift all of you as wheat, but I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers." "When you have turned back." Not if, when. Jesus prayed for Peter's comeback before he'd ever even fell.
He saw the failure coming, and he preloaded the restoration. A few hours later, Peter's standing in the high priest's courtyard. He's cold. He's scared. He's warming his hands on the fire, and he denies even knowing Jesus. Three times he denies him. Now, this is interesting.
John, who was there at the time, remembers an oddly specific detail. Peter was standing at a charcoal fire. Flash forward, the resurrection has happened, Peter's gone back to fishing. I mean, if you denied Jesus three times, and then he gets resurrected just like he said he would, and you should have known better, but you didn't. What would you do? Would you stick around believing you were still a disciple, or would you go back to your day job cuz you figured you disqualified yourself? Well, dawn comes, and the risen Christ is standing on the beach cooking breakfast on, here it is again, a charcoal fire.
That word charcoal fire, it only appears twice in the New Testament. The fire where Peter failed, and the fire where Jesus restored him. Isn't that interesting?
Peter denied Jesus three times in that courtyard, and Jesus asks him three times on that beach, "Do you love me?" And also three times he says, "Feed my sheep." He never asks Peter to explain himself or prove that it'll never happen again. "No, I still have work for you to do," he says. And you know how the story ends. 30 years later, an old man picks up a pen to write a last letter, and he writes the sentence I built my last video around, that you may become partakers of the divine nature. The man who failed in the worst way wrote the biggest promise, and we can trust his words just like Jesus trusted him to feed his sheep.
Peter's denials didn't end his transformation. The sun kept rising, and it reached that corner of darkness in Peter. It'll reach yours, too, and mine. So, when you get upset or make a mistake, don't think you need a new identity or that your faith is a hoax. Just pull out the polishing cloth, turn your mirror to him. He'll do the rest. You're not a failure because you're not finished.
You're a masterpiece in the making. The one who began that good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ. That's Philippians 1:6. It's not a pep talk, it's a promise from the only person whose promises never fail.
So, when you inevitably blow it this week, and you will, so will I, pay attention to which voice speaks next. Your conviction will say, "That's just dust on the silver." It points at the spot, hands you the cloth, and after wiping off the spot, it's finished. It doesn't mire you in guilt. That voice is the Holy Spirit. On the other hand, your shame will say, "You were never silver, and this mistake proves it." It doesn't point at the spot of dust, it points at you.
It doesn't hand you a cloth, it gives you a verdict. That same old lie, the one that got overturned when you were forgiven. That isn't God's voice. It's not the Holy Spirit. Remember 2 Corinthians 7:10. Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death. Your conviction leaves no regret.
You feel bad in the moment, but you turn toward the light, and the dust is wiped away, and you move on. Your shame only leads to stress and anxiety. I'm sure you've heard of cortisol. It's nickname is the stress hormone. Chronic levels of cortisol are associated with early death. Paul wasn't just giving you good spiritual advice there in 2 Corinthians. He was telling you a truth that will give you a longer life, because it will reduce your stress.
So, don't spiral into shame and guilt. Shame doesn't clean anything, it's just more dust on the mirror. Grab the cloth instead. Just confess it openly, the second you see what you did. Lord, that was me. I did that, and it's not who you made me to be. Cleanse the dust off the silver.
He will. He promised to. Just realign with the light and watch the dust burn away.
There's one more thing I need to say before we close with a prayer. Some of you have been confessing the same sin for 20 years, maybe a lot longer. Some of what's on your mirror isn't just a thin film of dust. It's decades of deep tarnish. It's not something you can claw off alone, but that's not proof the silver's gone. The fulfillment of what Jesus said about Peter, "When you have turned back." That didn't happen over one breakfast over a charcoal fire.
It took time, even for the Apostle Peter. You're not different from him. It'll take time, but it will happen. And when your dust lands on somebody else, your spouse, your kids, your friends, or even a co-worker, polishing that out includes going to that person and making it right. The cloth includes confession.
Just remember, you're not back at square one. You're just dusty in that one spot. There's one more piece of the story coming. I told you last week about the afternoon Jesus said something so bold about ordinary people that the men listening picked up stones to kill him. And how his answer was to quote a Psalm at them. That video is still coming on this channel, I promise. And everything we've covered today is part of why he could say it.
If this one helped you, send it to somebody who's given up on themselves. Not somebody who needs a lecture, somebody who started to believe the dust is who they are. And if this is the first video of mine that you've ever seen, the one this whole video is answering is called Jesus didn't die to get you into heaven. The link to that is in the pinned comment.
Now, let this be our prayer. Abba Father, thank you for the reality of the already. We are yours, fully loved, forgiven, and completely accepted. We didn't have to earn it, and we don't have to pay it back. You already paid for it with the cross. And thank you for the grace of the not yet. We confess that we get discouraged and frustrated.
We want to reflect you perfectly, and we often don't. Thank you that Jesus prayed for our comeback before we ever even fell. Help us remember to pick up the polishing claws of your grace, to turn to you when we start to see the people around us as obstacles, rather than image bearers. There's silver under their dust, just like there is under ours. Continue the good work you began in us. Transform us. Polish us from glory to glory, until we reflect you with unveiled faces.
In Jesus' name, amen.
