There is a group of Christians on the streets and colleges today who believe something that sounds, at first, like the highest form of holiness: they believe a true Christian does not sin. Not “shouldn’t.” Not “is being conformed away from.” Does not.
If you have never run into someone from this group, you might. And if you do, don’t make the mistake I’ve seen too many well-meaning believers make — assuming these folks are obviously wacky, obviously unread, obviously easy to correct. They know their Bibles. They have verses ready. If you are not prepared, they will out-argue you in front of a crowd, and you will be the one who looks like you don’t know your own faith.
I’ve stood on enough street corners and campus squares to know that the sharpest error is rarely the one that looks foolish. It’s the one that looks like devotion.
So here is the question this book exists to answer honestly, from the Scriptures, without flinching in either direction: Do Christians sin? And if they do, what is sin, where does it come from, and what — if anything —
can be done about it?
I want to say plainly, before we go one page further: this book is not an argument for sin. I am not writing to give anyone permission to sin, comfort in sin, or an excuse for sin.
I am writing because I have watched two errors do damage on opposite sides of this issue — one group redefining sin so narrowly that they’ve convinced themselves they’ve outgrown it, and another group defining the Christian life so hopelessly that they’ve stopped expecting real victory at all. Both errors are dangerous. Both misrepresent Scripture. And both, in the end, hurt the people sitting under them.
My identity before God is that I am a saint, not a sinner. That’s not sentiment — that’s Scripture (1 Corinthians 1:2, Ephesians 1:1). The question this book wrestles with is not whether I’m a saint. It’s whether a saint can sin, and remain a saint while personal holiness catches up to positional truth.
We’ll look at:
- Whether Christians sin, and whether they have to
- What sin actually is — not one definition, but three, each catching what the others miss
- Where sin comes from, and why free will sits underneath every biblical definition of it
- What continued after the Fall, what didn’t,
and what that means for the believer today
- Why “you can’t go a minute without sinning”
is not what Scripture teaches — and why that
matters more than it sounds
Professor Ed Goodrick once said he would rather be comfortable with his Bible and uncomfortable with his theology, than comfortable with his theology and uncomfortable with his Bible. That’s the pledge of this book. Wherever plain reading of Scripture disagrees with a tradition — mine or anyone else’s — Scripture wins.
