[This is part 3 in an article series on Sin, Repentance, and Revival. See part one, two, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve]

In a previous article, we explained how modern Christians have made the sins and rebellion against God into a vague and general idea in a way that would necessarily work to permit them to continue in such specific and express sins as idolatry for the kingdoms of the world and the covetous practices of receiving the benefits of so-called “public goods” like socialist welfare or socialist policing or militaries that are funded by taking a bite out of their neighbor’s backs. 

One common response we encounter when rebuking statists for their idolatry and calling men to repent—aside from the usual “only God can judge me” or “God knows my heart”—is to say that “we’re all sinners,” and therefore all equally, and actively, responsible for whatever judgment or bondage has come upon us. In practice, this serves as little more than a deflection by those who want to widen the narrow road of God’s Kingdom so they can wander off course while still claiming to walk it. Such excuses are used to make the very narrow road of repenting from one’s worldly statist ideology and seeking God’s anarchistic Kingdom exclusively into a wide road that welcomes any and every unrepentant man who has not decisively repented and turned back from his prostitution with the Egypts and Romes of the world but wants to count himself as a Christian anyway and dodge any direct and ongoing responsibility for the bondage that has come upon us. It mixes genuine biblical ideas (all have sinned) with unbiblical ones (all are unrepentant and active idolaters) in order to dismiss the man rebuking sin as prophets are called to do and make him appear proud or arrogant, as though we are claiming exemption from the human race when we attempt to correct them and call for their repentance.

These dodgy excuses of men are but the attempts to deny that they are currently practicing sinners who don’t need to repent from their statist whoredom. To shrug one’s shoulders at a rebuke for specific sins like idolatry by saying “we’re all sinners” is but the conviction of the person who was given correction but who still refuses to repent. If they heard the words against them and received them, they wouldn’t need to make up excuses like these and could accept it and change their ways. The last recourse of an unrepentant idolater upon being rebuked for his statism and love of the world is to charge that all men are sinners and that you are just like him. Though it would seem that an admission that “we’re all sinners” is actually some true and general confession of sin, the irony is that it dodges repenting from the specific sins connected to the statist systems of the world that these men still support.

The irony of statists acting like repentant men for giving some false confession that “all have sinned” which doesn’t acknowledge specific sins is that they are the ones denying their own sin or acting proudly. As much as it may seem they are repenting because they say they are and admit to some general and vague sins of humanity, they are actually the people who refuse to fess-up to their idolatry and bloodshed which they have in connection with human government being sin, just as the people in the Bible who were in the same denial before the Lord for these same attempts to whore themselves out to human rulers and their political systems. 

“Your skirts are stained with the blood of the innocent poor, though you did not find them breaking in. But in spite of all these things you say, ‘I am innocent. Surely His anger will turn from me.’ Behold, I will judge you, because you say, ‘I have not sinned.’ How impulsive you are, constantly changing your ways! You will be disappointed by Egypt just as you were by Assyria. Moreover, you will leave that place with your hands on your head, for the LORD has rejected those you trust; you will not prosper by their help” (Jeremiah 2:34-37). 

Here we see God make an interesting remark, which goes against the typical attempt by idolaters to paint all men as sinners, so that they don’t have to repent for any certain sins they still practice (namely, their wicked support for human civil government). God says their problem is not so much that they have sinned, than that they are in denial for their whoredom with human governments, human rulers, and armies. Ironically, those men who try to say that “all men are sinners” to excuse their blatant idolatry are actually men who won’t confess their own and specific sins at all. Though it seems as if they are doing this by confessing to some vague, unspecified “sins,” they are actually just dodging the charge. Rather than admit to their love affair with human rulers that represents mankind’s great betrayal of the Lord as their only King, they dodge repentance by saying “we’re all sinners” and thereby avoiding any specific charges. They are like rebellious children who, upon being rightly accused of actively hitting their brother, retort that the brother had hit him before too years ago, back before he changed his ways. 

Aren’t we all sinners? 

It is easy to see why idolaters of human government would wish to make the concept of sin vague and unspecific as well as to cite “all have sinned” upon being called out as overt, ongoing, and unrepentant sinners for these beliefs and acts. Since statists are in a position of active rebellion against God, they must seek passages of scripture that can be used to justify their sin. This is why they gravitate to passages like Romans 13, which they believe provides a justification for a wicked and worldly ideology that preceded their attempt to learn from God’s word, rather than work the other way and be corrected by it. It’s no surprise then that the passage describing men who have all fallen short of the glory of God is thus used to justify their own willful failure to seek the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and remain in support of the kingdoms of the world: those who use it this way are all statists looking to justify their sin. For many, “we’re all sinners” sadly becomes the excuse to remain in sin, rather than repent. 

There is no trouble in conceding, with scripture, that all men have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). Yet unrepentant statists — those who actively support the wicked kingdoms of the world even after being rebuked — use this line to excuse their own willful and continued idolatry. Rather than repent, they work to drag everyone down to their state of unrepentance instead. They are like thieves and murderers—literally, in their support for human government—who, upon committing their ongoing crimes, defend their actions by saying that “we’ve all got a little bit of theft and murder in us.” 

So where do we draw the line? We cannot deny that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, that all men must repent, and that all men need a savior. Yet we cannot concede that all men are still whoring themselves out to Egypt, have not yet confessed these sins to the Lord, and do not need to turn from any certain wicked and worldly ways and deeds.

The distinction is not so much as between sinners and non-sinners (as those who feel a subconscious conviction for the sin of statism would like to make it out to be) as it is between repentant sinners and unrepentant sinners, or respectively, between those anarchists who have turned away from the kingdoms of the world and seek God’s Kingdom alone, and those men who remain statist idolaters and claim they don’t need to confess this sin. There is a difference between “we all fall short of the glory of God” and the persistent and overt sin of chasing after systems of human government, especially after God has sent a prophet your way to teach you otherwise. It does not follow from “all have sinned” that “we must keep sinning.” To seek the kingdoms of the world or not is a choice; repentant men turn away from it and sinners keep pursuing it in their idolatry. “All have sinned” does not make the case that statists think they have found for arguing that everyone partakes in the statist practices of the world like them. Again, this is but a weak attempt to draw everyone into their own willful sin so as to deny any need for repentance on their part. The idea that “we’re all sinners” does not provide an excuse for the people who choose to remain idolaters who “stand behind the troops” or “back the blue.”

To be sure, we are not attempting to argue that none of us have sinned. As scripture says, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1:8). The distinction is between those who have repented and turned away from these sins, and those who remain in a state of unrepentant sin and still choose to partake in the evils of the world. “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:8-9).

However, we also read that “anyone born of God does not keep on sinning” (1 John 5:18). Statists are in a state of unrepentant sin. They are a people who have not yet turned from their evils and asked the Lord to wash them and make them clean and whole again. They are a people who have not turned back to righteousness, but who still pursue all the evils of the world, namely to partake in the politics and ideology of Egypt and merely claim the Lord’s name while not walking in His ways. 

We do not deny that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God or that all men need to repent. There is a reason we call for those in bondage to “repent with us” today; this is an acknowledgment that we too have contributed to the sins that have led to our bondage. What we do contend is that statists (i.e., those men who ideologically support or serve human governments) are overt and unrepentant sinners and need to turn from their wicked ways and back to the Way of the Lord. It is not that some of us have not sinned, are not in bondage, and have not contributed to our own captivity, but that some of us are repentant, born again, and seeking the Kingdom of God. 

Yet those who we call to turn away from sin are often so convicted that they look for any excuse to drag us down to their level of overt unrepentance. Hence the common reply, “So you don’t pay taxes?” Rather than actually repent with us — a repentance of which would lead to divine liberation from tax bondage — they take us to be men who, like them, are revolting against the consequences of sin rather than repenting for the causes. We know we have messed up and have been sold into bondage since our birth. We know that sin leads to bondage. But we acknowledge this reality, confess these sins, seek another Kingdom, and pray to God for liberation from the kingdoms of this world, as opposed to refusing correction and fleeing from our responsibility to evangelize, call others to repent, and gather men in the cause of building God’s Kingdom. The problem with many others is they can’t even confess this and turn another way. They’re more interested in making “look who’s talking” arguments than repenting themselves.

Whatever attempt statist idolaters may make to lump repentant men in with their own overt and willful sin, scripture makes a distinction between saints and sinners, between men who are actively turning back to the Lord and men who choose to remain in rebellion to God and His Kingdom though their statist harlotry. Though these men like to say “we’re all sinners” as an excuse to remain in their sin, they will have to grapple with various scriptures that explicitly say that God will destroy sinners. “Behold, the Day of the LORD is coming—cruel, with fury and burning anger—to make the earth a desolation and to destroy the sinners within it” (Isaiah 13:9). Is God going to destroy everyone?

The Bible makes a distinction between the righteous and the wicked that makes unrepentant sinners uncomfortable, to the point that they have to paint all men as being in the camp of some inherent sinner who basically can’t repent. It makes a distinction between men who once were lost but now are found, who once walked in the statist ways of the world but now have become a Christarchist who opposes human archism. It makes a distinction between the righteous and wicked, which respectively will be protected or eliminated.

“For the LORD loves justice and will not forsake His saints. They are preserved forever, but the offspring of the wicked will be cut off” (Psalm 37:28).

The new spirit is anti-statist 

What statist idolaters—the actively and unrepentant men who support human governments—show when they lean on the excuse that “we’re all sinners” is that they are men who are not Born Again and have not had God’s Law written on their hearts, which is why they never receive our correction no matter how much we hold their hands to the truth and keep trying to reason with them as they kick and scream along the way. 

As much as the idea that we’re all seemingly living in a permanent state of sin and can never turn around is more or less the popular teaching in modern Christianity, one may be surprised to find that Scripture speaks of men becoming a new creation when they have made Jesus the Christ their Lord and Savior. “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (2 Corinthians 5:17, KJV). 

Though the wicked — that is those who remain in the statist practices of the world — will not inherit the Kingdom of God, scripture speaks of those who are in Christ as being “washed,” “sanctified,” and “justified, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Corinthians 6:11). This sense of the sins of the old men is in a past tense. Scripture speaks of those who have turned away from the darkness, such as that inherent to the demonic kingdoms of the world, as a cleansed people. “But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin” (1 John 1:17). 

Those who continue to apologize for the statist kingdoms of the devil under the excuse that “we’re all sinners” only show that they are a people who have not yet sought the Lord’s ways and had His Law written on their hearts. Because God has shown what He will do for those who turn back to Him, which means to repent from their sins of idolatry and seek out the Lord’s ways. 

“I will also sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean. I will cleanse you from all your impurities and all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes and to carefully observe My ordinances” (Ezekiel 36:25-27). 

Anyone still partaking in the sins of worldly governments, such as voting for human rulers, serving these systems with boots and badges, or otherwise apologizing for their existence, show that they are a people who have not yet cried out to the Lord to “wash me clean of my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin” (Psalm 51:2). 

As much as it may ultimately be the work of the Holy Spirit to convert the man, scripture also shows that it is on people themselves to repent and change, i.e., to turn away from their wicked ideas and practices that they once held before they truly knew the Lord as their means of avoiding the judgment that God brings upon all sinners like these.

“Cast away from yourselves all the transgressions you have committed, and fashion for yourselves a new heart and a new spirit. Why should you die, O house of Israel?” (Ezekiel 18:31).

In the following articles, we will look at some of the words typically used in scripture to express a concept similar to what we generalize as “sin” today and show how they are often used in direct connection to mankind’s ideological and physical support for the kingdoms of the world as opposed to seeking the Kingdom of God at their expense.