Simul iustus et peccator

[emulator]

As Martin Luther tediously pondered the issue of salvation he was greatly troubled in his mind. I'm sure that many of you already know about how he agonized over his continuance in sin; while he was yet dedicated to righteousness.
I heard something today from R.C. Sprole that really moved me and helped me to understand what I have been told many times, but never really comprehended on an intellectual level. Every time in the past that I have come out of a back slide I was quickly dismayed to note that as much as I wanted to be perfect I could not .. although I had almost certainly been admonished to be so by Christ himself:

Mat 5:48 Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.

So being a perfectionist I despaired in much the way that Luther did. I was as encouraged, as he was converted by the following excerpt derived from an obscure manuscript written by St. Augustine more than a millenium prior to the protestant reformation.

"Simul iustus et peccator"
This is definitely the most powerful observation that a christian like me could ever come to grips with. It means: simultaneously righteous and sinner (in Latin)
We live as christians rent with this disease we call flesh and yet are fully embraced and counted righteous by the blood of Christ.... I really enjoy how Paul put it:

Romans 7:18-25
For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but [how] to perform that which is good I find not.
For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do.
Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.
I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me.
For I delight in the law of God after the inward man:
But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.
O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?
I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.

In any case I hope that this has been enlightening for some or all of you. My love is with you, have fun.