Are there any other examples other than the apostle Paul where someone in the bible is a great sinner but repents and lives a righteous life?
im struggling to get over my sin before I found Jesus so stories like Paul’s help me believe I can get over my sin.
Here's the thing, you don't get over your sin.
You're a sinner, just like I'm a sinner, just like everyone here is a sinner.
Nobody gets over their sin. In the same way that nobody gets over their own death and mortality.
Each and every single one of us is a slave to our own mortality and our own disordered passions, held as captive under the power and tyranny of sin and death.
Jesus Christ is the answer to this problem, because in Jesus God forgives us all our sin, justifies us freely before Himself by His grace, is restoring us by conforming us to the image of Christ even as we look forward, in hope, of the future resurrection of the body and the restoration of all things--the redemption and renewal of all creation.
We don't find Jesus, Jesus finds us. Jesus finds us right where we are--in our sin, in our weakness, in our ugliness, in our despair, in our hopelessness. And in Christ we are forgiven, justified.
Every Christian saint is also a Christian sinner. We Lutherans even have a saying:
Simul iustus et peccator. It's Latin and it means "Simultaneously both saint and sinner". We are saints because of the imputed righteousness of Jesus which we have received as pure unmerited gift from God, not because of any moral goodness or personal righteous of our own, of which we have none because we are--of our selves--sinners that sin and sin all the time.
The Christian life is the call and invitation to take up our cross and follow Jesus. Because this life of discipleship is a cross, that means that there's no easy way to be a Christian. The reality of our sin is something that we have to continually struggle with, and we WILL fail and fail frequently. And as we grow in our faith, we don't find ourselves becoming any less sinners today than the day before; rather we find just how deep and rooted sin is. As though sin were hiding right in our limbs, hands, finger tips, etc ready ready to strike at any given moment--the impulses of our disordered passions. The growing awareness of our own fragile weakness, properly, should drive us further to lives of repentance and contrition--but not hopelessness and despair.
Because if the Gospel is being rightly preached, the word we should be hearing--as broken, hurting, grieving sinners--the precious promises of God's love and forgiveness which are in Christ:
You are forgiven.
Such forgiveness does not become excuse to ignore our sin and its damnable effects on ourselves, others in our lives, and the world at large; but rather should drive us forward to seek being faithful. The cross of discipleship which Christ calls us to bear would be truly and totally impossible, were it not for He Himself who calls us to this cross, shall be ever with us, saying "
Come to Me every one of you who are weary and overburdened, I will give you rest; for My yolk is easy and My burden light" and also, "
With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible".
-CryptoLutheran
