I lost a few of you over the gun rail with my last blog entry so I’m going to swing the boat around and attempt to bring you back on board before hoisting sails and leaving you to toss around in the waves of changing doctrines.

If someone asked for the time and I said, “It’s a quarter to twelve” and you said, “It’s eleven forty five,” that would be a difference of ‘semantics.’ We are giving the same answer using different words. But if you said, “It’s eleven forty five” and I said “It’s ten o’clock,” that’s not ‘just semantics.’ We aren’t saying the same thing.

Now, in order to save you the embarrassment of admitting your watch is broken, I give a winsome smile and say, “Don’t feel bad! My watch says 11:45 sometimes too! I’m not better than you!”

That is what you’re doing when you tell pagans, “I’m a sinner too!” You’re announcing what time it used to be. You’re talking about the past as if it matters in the present. It doesn’t.

(Philippians 3:12) “Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”

When you tell a lost person that you are a sinner—they will believe you. Pagans think religion is the source of all evil in the world. They already believe (with all their heart, mind and strength) that Christians hate poor people, abuse children, oppress women, and discriminate against everyone who is different from them. Pagans have no problem calling you a sinner. They have a big problem calling themselves sinners.

This is not ‘just semantics.’ People who do not belong to God do not comprehend what Philippians 3 says. Telling a pagan that you still sin is like telling a blind person your sweater is green. It is incomprehensible. (Scripture calls it ‘foolishness to them who are perishing.’)

If you don’t know how our culture understands the word ‘sinner,’ then stop trying to share your faith. Find another area of service in the Kingdom. Stack chairs. Sweep floors. Drive the church bus. Rake leaves for the elderly. Hand out Bibles on the street. Whatever you do, be quiet.

Christians are saints who sometimes sin. We are NOT sinners who sometimes do things right. The difference between those statements is NOT ‘just semantics.’