Righteous and a Sinner at Once

There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. ROMANS 8:1

The first of Luther’s ninety-five theses is not about indulgences at all. When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, Repent, Luther wrote in effect, He meant the whole life of believers to be one of repentance. It is a quiet sentence, easy to pass over. But it contains a conviction that runs through all his teaching and that he summed up, in his Latin lectures, in a short and startling phrase: simul iustus et peccator. The Christian is at the same time righteous and a sinner.

Two things true at once

What did he mean? Not that the Christian is half righteous and half sinful, as though the two were mixed in a jar and grace were slowly increasing its share. He meant that each is wholly true, from a different point of view. In Christ, before God, the believer is wholly righteous, clothed with Christ’s perfect righteousness, forgiven and accepted. In himself, in his own nature, he is still a sinner, with a heart that remains bent, desires that remain disordered, and a daily need of forgiveness.

If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 1 JOHN 1:8–9

Luther came to this partly through wrestling with the seventh chapter of Romans in his lectures of 1515 and 1516. He became convinced that Paul’s cry — the good that I would I do not — was not the voice of an unbeliever, but of the mature apostle himself, describing the Christian’s lifelong conflict between the Spirit and the flesh.

For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do. ROMANS 7:19

For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other. GALATIANS 5:17

Still sinners, already healed

Luther’s sermons return to this again and again, often with homely illustrations. In his Pentecost sermon he warns against thinking that anyone who has received the Holy Spirit must be perfect and strong, and says that the Spirit has begun His work but not finished it. Then he offers a picture:

“Our case must be like that of a sick man who is in the hands of the physician; presently he will be better.”

The sick man is truly ill, and truly under the physician’s care; the cure has begun, and it is certain, but it is not yet complete. So with the Christian. He is not yet well. But he is in good hands.

His Easter sermon is blunter. Asking why, if Christ has conquered sin, believers still feel sin stirring in them, Luther answers with a farmyard image that his first hearers would never forget:

“You may tie a hog ever so well, but you cannot prevent it from grunting.”

The old nature is bound and doomed, but it still makes itself heard. Only death, he says, will finally silence it; until then no one is a finished Christian. In the meantime, the sins that remain serve to drive us back to faith, so that faith may grow from day to day.

O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. ROMANS 7:24–25

Growth is real

This does not mean that Luther thought the Christian stands still. The same Easter sermon compares the work of grace to leaven hidden in the dough, which must slowly work through the whole lump until everything is leavened. And his sermon on the appearing of the grace of God says that although faith frees at once from all guilt, evil desires cling to body and soul like the smell and sickness of a dungeon, and must be purged. He concludes:

“Until death our lives should be nothing but purification.”

He compares it to Lazarus, raised by a single word, yet still needing the grave-clothes unwound; and to the wounded man in the parable, rescued by the Samaritan yet left in the inn to be nursed back to health. Justification is complete; sanctification is a lifelong recovery.

Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus. PHILIPPIANS 3:12

Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ. PHILIPPIANS 1:6

Why it matters

This teaching brings enormous freedom. It frees the Christian from despair when he discovers, yet again, how much sin remains in him. Such discoveries do not mean he is not a Christian; they mean he is a Christian in the middle of the cure. It frees him from pretending, from the exhausting effort to appear more holy than he is. And it frees him from judging others harshly, since he knows that he too is a sinner saved only by grace.

It also explains Luther himself. He could write the gentlest pages on grace and the harshest pages against his enemies; he could comfort the dying and curse the peasants. We should not excuse his sins because of his teaching. But his teaching helps us understand how a man truly justified by faith could still sin so grievously, and it warns every one of us that the same is possible in our own lives.

An honest caution

Like every truth, this one can be misused. If the Christian is always a sinner, he may be tempted to shrug at his sin and make no effort to change: I am simul iustus et peccator, so what can you expect? That is not Luther’s teaching. He never said that sin does not matter, only that it does not condemn. Later traditions, especially those that followed John Wesley, pressed harder than Luther on the hope of real victory over sin in this life, and they were right to guard against complacency. Luther’s own words about lifelong purification show that he would agree. The right response to remaining sin is neither despair nor indifference, but repentance, faith and the daily fight.

And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner. LUKE 18:13

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. When you next discover sin in yourself that you thought was gone, do not despair. Confess it, and say, “I am still in the Physician’s hands.”

2. Read Romans 7:14–8:4 in one sitting, and notice how the cry of chapter 7 leads into the freedom of chapter 8.

3. Name one area where you have excused sin on the grounds that everyone is a sinner. Take one concrete step against it this week.

4. Consider someone whose faults irritate you. Remember that you are both sinners in the process of being healed, and pray for them.

5. Begin each day this week with the publican’s prayer, and end it with Romans 8:1.

A PRAYER

Merciful Father, in Christ You count me righteous, and in myself I am still a sinner.

Thank You that there is no condemnation for those who are in Him, and that my standing with You does not rise and fall with my progress.

Keep me from despair when I find sin in me, and from indifference when I would excuse it.

Finish the good work You have begun, until the day when the old self is silenced for ever and I am wholly Yours. Amen.