A Sinner's Guide to Holiness: Learning to Live with a Gracious God

A lot of Christians don't like to be called sinners or to think of themselves as sinners. I can understand this. They have good reasons. There's nothing helpful about defeatism. But a lot depends on how you define the word sinner. In this book, I define a sinner as someone who has sinned in the past, who knows how to sin, and could sin in the future. That's it. No condemnation and no expectation of future defeat. This is a book about victory over sin. That victory, however, comes with a realistic understanding of what you're capable of. Victory won't happen if you pretend to be someone your not. Victory can happen, though, no matter what the sin is. The freedom of holiness is available in abundance to every Christian. That's what this book is about. What Does It Mean to Be Married to Jesus?Romans 7 tells us that believers have been married to Jesus Christ. This is where we will begin, with a close look at the marriage metaphor that Paul uses in Romans 7:1-6. We will also look at the beginning of Romans 8, where we are told that the law of the Spirit of life in Christ has set us free from the law of sin and death. Before we do that, however, we will look at the Old Testament book of Esther. There is a lesson there that will help us understand Paul's language about the flesh and the Spirit, especially as he uses it in Romans 8. The Work that Was Finished for You and the Work that Continues Within YouWe are not perfect in the way that Jesus was perfect when He walked this earth. We are not as much like Jesus as we could be. We all have room to grow. The good news is that where there is room to grow, God gives the power to grow. This growth comes from paying attention to Jesus, and to the perfect, finished work that He accomplished for us. We get better at living a holy life as we receive the gift of grace that comes through Jesus. As we walk in that grace, we learn that "getting better" is really a matter of dying and living again.