Hundreds of years ago, 1521 to be precise, Martin Luther wrote a letter that included a phrase that has been hotly debated ever since. He wrote, “God does not save those who are only imaginary sinners. Be a sinner, and sin boldly, but trust and rejoice in Christ more boldly still.” If you are unfamiliar with this quote, let me assure you that many people in the church then and now have taken great delight in criticizing this statement. What kind of man of God – monk, priest, theologian, Reformer – tells churchgoers to sin? And not just to sin, but to sin boldly?!
Martin Luther wasn’t giving anyone a pass. None of us can wake up in the morning and say, “alright, today I will be sinless.” It won’t work no matter how hard we try. We’re human; we’re imperfect. God knows that and loves us all the same. The problem comes when we sin and then try to run from it. We hide, we cover it up, we won’t admit that we could have done what we did. When we don’t freely and openly own our wrongdoing, we add fuel to the fire and make it bigger and bigger. To borrow Luther’s phrase, we are not imaginary sinners. We do not theoretically do wrong sometimes. We are people who mess up all the time and that’s okay. If we sin boldly, we can trust in the forgiveness of God in Christ and repent just as boldly, pray just as boldly. Ironically, the best way out of sinning is to own up to it, to lay our cards on the table and interrupt the vicious cycle. This is what it means to sin boldly. If we cannot admit to our sins – If we are so intimidated by them that we won’t confess that we are doing them, then we get sucked in deeper and deeper to the distortion that our sin presents. …
Most of the people who quote Martin Luther leave it at “sin boldly” for the shock effect. But Luther’s letter goes on to tell us that God, in Christ Jesus does offer us forgiveness… This is not to advocate endless sinning, but to say that no sin is beyond the reach of the love of God.1
[1] https://theologyandchurch.com/2017/02/16/sin-boldly/