Ragamuffin, Instagramer, sinner and saint

Still, he admitted, it was sinful.

"We cannot be a church where anyone is above the Scriptures and above the high heavenly call into Christ Jesus," Chandler said. "The Word of God holds me to a certain standard. And I fell short."

When this happens, when Christians are caught in sin or make public their private sin before they're caught, it should surprise no one.

Disappoint? Of course. But surprise? No.

However, it does surprise us time and time again. It surprises us when we ourselves sin.

Again, it shouldn't.

Of all my well-worn, marked-up, dog-eared books on my shelf, the most beaten up are those written by the late Brennan Manning, the former Catholic priest and self-confessed recovering- failing-and-recovering-again alcoholic.

Manning understood the profound grace of Christ for those who wrestle with the awareness of being at the same time both sinner and saint.

He freely and openly called himself a liar and a drunk and a beloved child of a holy God.

He wrote in "The Ragamuffin Gospel," "When I get honest, I admit I am a bundle of paradoxes. I believe and I doubt, I hope and get discouraged, I love and I hate, I feel bad about feeling good, I feel guilty about not feeling guilty, I am trusting and suspicious.

"I am honest and I still play games ... I am an angel with an incredible capacity for beer."

I've heard it said that there are only two types of people: sinners and Jesus.

Christians are sinners who have run to Jesus for grace and mercy. We wear his righteousness, not our own.

That said, as Christians, we're not merely sinners. Sinner is no longer our central identity.

In Christ, we are new creations, "the old is gone, the new has come" (2 Corinthians 5:17).

The Bible calls us "saints," which doesn't mean we no longer sin. It means when we do sin, we have the assurance that sin's penalty has been paid by Jesus. Our sin, past, present and future, was forgiven at the Cross.

What makes a person a saint is knowing that he or she is by nature far from "saintly" and has no way of ever achieving sainthood by his or her own merit. It's sola fide (faith alone) and sola gratia (grace alone).

That's the only way the worst among us can ever call ourselves saints.

I've long admired Texas pastor Matt Chandler for the way he makes the gospel of grace simple and straightforward.

"The litmus test of whether or not you understand the gospel is what you do when you fail," he writes in "The Explicit Gospel." "Do you run from Him and go clean yourself up a little bit before you come back into the throne room? Or do you approach the throne of grace with confidence? If you don't approach the throne of grace with confidence, you don't understand the gospel ... When you blow it, God still celebrates His Son in you."

When we stumble, when we sin, when we think we've gone too far, fallen too deep, when we think God will never welcome us back, he already has.

Or as Brennan Manning writes: "We see our darkness as a prized possession because it drives us into the heart of God ... For Ragamuffins, God's name is Mercy."

Nancy Kennedy can be reached at 352-564-2927 or by email at nkennedy@chronicleonline.com.