I Sin - But I'm Not a Sinner
Popular teacher Joyce Meyer, who was raised in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, once stated:
I’m going to tell you something, folks, I didn’t stop sinning until I finally got it through my thick head I wasn’t a sinner anymore. And the religious world thinks that’s heresy and they want to hang you for it....All I was ever taught to say was "I, a poor, miserable sinner." I am not poor, I am not miserable and I am not a sinner. That is a lie from the pit of hell. That is what I were, and if I still was then Jesus died in vain. Amen? (From the Cross to the Throne audio tape, Life Christian Center, Saint Louis, Mo.)
On Issues, Etc. she tried to explain that statement:
I know that I sin all the time and when I say that I’m not a sinner I don’t mean that I don’t sin. I just mean that I’m not going to go around all the time identifying myself as a sinner because that gives me the mentality then that that’s all I am....if we continually think of ourselves as just poor miserable sinners we never overcome that sinful lifestyle. (Issues, Etc., KFUO AM, May 23, 2005)
Rumour has it that when he heard those statements Martin Luther not only rolled over in his grave - he tried to get out! Can you imagine someone saying he robbed banks all the time but didn't consider himself to be a bank robber? But she thinks she can sin all the time and not consider herself to be a sinner! Luther warned us of the danger in that kind of thinking. He wrote:
Now notice what I said above, that the saints at the same time as they are righteous are also sinners; righteous because they believe in Christ, whose righteousness covers them and is imputed to them, but sinners because they do not fulfill the Law, are not without concupiscence, and are like sick men under the care of a physician; they are sick in fact but healthy in hope and in the fact that they are beginning to be healthy, that is, they are "being healed." They are people for whom the worst possible thing is the presumption that they are healthy, because they suffer a worse relapse. (Luther, M. (1999, c1972). Vol. 25: Luther's works, vol. 25 : Lectures on Romans (J. J. Pelikan, H. C. Oswald & H. T. Lehmann, Ed.). Luther's Works. Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House.)
Labels: Joyce Meyer, Martin Luther
posted by Bob Hunter @ Wednesday, July 04, 2007
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