If you always meditate on sin, "I am a sinner, I am a sinner," actually you will become a sinner. The psychological approach is, you should forget it - even if you are a sinner, you should think, "I am the son of a Great Father, I am the daughter of a Great Father." Thus you are meditating on the Great Father, and a day is sure to come when you will become one with your Great Father.
What are you to do? You are always to remember that you are the child of a Great Father. You must not think that you are a sinner, that you are a degraded person. If you think that you are a sinner, it means you are meditating on sin! When sin has become the object of your meditation, you will become a sinner, because a person becomes just like the object of his or her ideation. We become the object of our meditation.
To think, "I am a sinner, oh Father, save me," is a defective approach! You should say, "I am your son, I am your daughter, oh Father, take me on your lap, I am your child." This will be the approach. You should forget what you do not want.
Sannyas is celebration of life, and sin is natural: natural in the sense that you are unconscious - what else can you do? In unconsciousness, sin is bound to happen. Sin simply means that you don't know what you are doing, you are unaware, so whatsoever you do goes wrong. But to recognize that "I am a sinner" is the beginning of a great pilgrimage. To recognize that "I am a sinner" is the beginning of real virtue. To see that "I am ignorant" is the first glimpse of wisdom.
The fool who repeats again and again: "I am bound, I am bound," remains in bondage. He who repeats day and night: "I am a sinner, I am a sinner," becomes a sinner indeed.
I do not know what might be the most fitting description.... I am a sinner. This is the most accurate definition. It is not a figure of speech, a literary genre. I am a sinner. And this is what I said when they asked me if I would accept my election as pontiff: I am a sinner, but I trust in the infinite mercy and patience of our Lord Jesus Christ, and I accept in a spirit of penance.
So, who in the media is without sin among us? I am in the media and I am a major league sinner. I don't know anyone except my wife who isn't a big time sinner.
I am a sinner. This is the most accurate definition. It is not a figure of speech, a literary genre. I am a sinner.
My hope lives not because I am not a sinner, but because I am a sinner for whom Christ died; my trust is not that I am holy, but that being unholy, HE is my righteousness. My faith rests not upon what I am or shall be or feel or know, but in what Christ is, in what He has done, and in what He is now doing for me. Hallelujah!
Whoever with fear of God corrects and directs a sinner gains virtue for himself, that of opposition to sin. But whoever insults a sinner with rancor and without good will falls, according to a spiritual law, into the same passion with the sinner.
No age has been more prone to confuse the sin with the sinner, not by hating the sinner along with the sin but by loving the sin along with the sinner. We often use "compassion" as an equivalent for moral relativism.
Guilt simply says that you are a sinner. And the feeling of shame simply shows you that you need not be a sinner, that you are meant to be a saint. If you are a sinner it is only because of your unconsciousness; you are not a sinner because the society follows a certain morality and you are not following it.
Since I am a great sinner, I cannot reject those who have been, provided they have good will.
I am a great Sinner and God is a great Savior
Although my memory's fading, I remember two things very clearly: I am a great sinner and Christ is a great Savior.
My hope lives not because I am not a sinner, but because I am a sinner for whom Christ died.
The cliché, God hates the sin but love the sinner, is false on the face of it and should be abandoned. Fourteen times in the first fifty Psalms alone, we are told that God hates the sinner, His wrath is on the liar, and so forth. In the Bible, the wrath of God rests both on the sin (Romans 1:18ff) and on the sinner (John 3:36).