Are flawed and sinful synonymous? If so, would admitting our faults to one another be the same as confessing our sins, and would doing so make us more wise, compassionate, understanding, humble, and united with one another?
The Holy Spirit enters and resides inside a person who accepts Jesus Christ as their Savior and Lord (Ephesians 1:13). That person is now liberated to carry out God’s will and to serve Him, no longer a slave to sin. God uses every situation in life to further accentuate how much we resemble Jesus (Romans 8:28–29). The characteristics of a life guided by the Spirit are evident in the new life in Christ, including love, joy, peace, patience, compassion, and so forth (Galatians 5:22). The new has arrived, and the old has passed away (Galatians 5:19–21; 2 Corinthians 5: 17).
There is only one perfect person
But even virtuous Christians have flaws since Jesus Christ is the only flawless person in the universe. It is still possible to battle negative attitudes, poor habits, and short fused tempers. These behaviors can be classified as sins since they require confession and an invitation to the Holy Spirit to act in a Christian’s heart when they occur.
Sinful and imperfect cannot be equated
However, sinful and imperfect cannot be equated as such. A sinful life implies a life in which sin has free rein. It would be a life as described in Galatians 5: 19-21. An imperfect life, on the other hand, can be a life of a godly person who fights against vestiges of sin with the help of the Holy Spirit. For instance, a person who commits adultery, is drunken every other night, lies to people all the time and abuses his children, clearly leads a sinful life. But another person who is faithful to his wife, works hard for his family, tries to obey God but sometimes loses his temper or struggles with temptations, is a godly man who leads an imperfect life. While living on this earth Christians will always have to deal with imperfections. Only in heaven will all sins disappear from our lives and will we be able to worship God in a perfect, sin-free way.
If we say we have no sin…
We are taught in 1 John 1:8–10 that when we claim to be sinless, we are lying to ourselves and to God! Thank goodness, we can repent of our sins and begin again (1 John 1:9). This does not, however, imply that we should give up on trying to emulate Jesus and rid our lives of sin wherever possible. Since God is holy, we ought to always seek to be holy as well (1 Peter 1:13–16).
Imperfection should help us to be humble and understanding
It is true that being imperfect should help us to be humble and understanding with each other. We should always be ready to forgive others (Colossians 3:12-13). Paul exhorts believers to bear with one another in love, which clearly implies that we are all imperfect people. In his letter to the Philippians, Paul urges the brothers and sisters to count others more significant than oneself, in humility (Philippians 2:3). If there is one quality that really pleases the Lord, it would be humility. This, of course, does not mean that we should be content to be imperfect. But we do good to realize that we are imperfect, and we should give the Holy Spirit as much room as possible to mold us where He sees fit, because if we continue walking in sinful ways and are indifferent to the Spirit’s voice, we grieve Him (Ephesians 4:30).
