It is theologically impossible to be both a sinner and to be saved. What are we saved from? We are saved from sin and the punishment for sin. If they are not a new person, then they are not saved. Yet when a person is saved, all things are new. This person is not a sinner anymore because they have been washed clean by the blood of Jesus Christ.
There is no place I am aware of where the church, the people of God, are collectively called “sinners.” Moreover, an argument can be made that there is no instance in the New Testament where a believer is referred to as a “sinner.” The closest is Paul’s well-known reference to himself as the “foremost” (or “chief”) of sinners in 1 Tim 1:15. But the context makes it plain that Paul is using this terminology to refer to his old life as a persecutor of the church. He says, “formerly I was a blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent opponent” (1:13).
Illustration:
After a meal you wash the dishes. Why do you wash the dishes? Because they are dirty dishes.
You wash the dishes in dishwasher and soap.
Afterward are the dishes clean or dirty?
Do you say, “My spoon is a dirty spoon washed with Dawn”?
No, that doesn’t make sense. If we wash it, it is no longer dirty.
Then why do people say, “I am a sinner (dirty) saved (washed in Christ’s blood) by grace?
If we don’t identify the washed spoon as dirty how much cleaner are we who are washed in his blood?
The New Testament NEVER calls a believer “sinner.”
1 Tim 1:15 Paul shows he was a sinner in the past because he fought against Christians. He says, “formerly I was a blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent opponent” (1:13).
We are NOT sinners saved by grace. We should think of ourselves in connection with our new natures created with the blood of Christ. We should not identify with our old nature of sin. We are who we are in Christ we are not identified as a sinner, but we are called, “elect” (1 Peter 1:1), “faithful brothers” (Colossians 1:2), “beloved” (1 John 2:7), “children of God” (1 John 3:2), a “holy nation” (1 Peter 2:9), and “saints.”
It is possible for a Christian to sin. But that is not our new natures. That is our old nature that must be crucified daily.
Because we have been created a new in Christ our sin, is even more wrong because it is being committed by us. We now have the new nature, the ability to choose, and a new identity.
John 14:6
Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.”
Our old nature is such a slave to sin we cannot even choose God until Christ comes to us.
In Heaven, there will be no sinners. Only those who are like Christ.
Notice how God responds to the first human sin in Genesis 3.
God came to them. He confronted them. He gave the promise of deliverance through the seed of the woman who would crush the head of the serpent.
Within this same conversation God gives a curse in response to sin.
So, God’s response to sin is a curse and a cure.
It’s our choice. Do you want the curse or the cure?
Do you realize that everything cursed will die?
The cure against the curse is the blood of Christ.
The sinner is cursed until s/he accepts Christ. At the moment of acceptance of Christ s/he dies with Christ and becomes a new creation with Christ in his resurrection, see Roman 6.
God responds to sin by giving a curse (Genies 3).
Christ became a curse to free us from the curse of sin (Galatians 3:13).
In the Kingdom of God there will not be a curse (Revelation 22:3).
Notice Jesus says in John 8:34 Jesus answered them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, whoever commits sin is a slave of sin.
And a slave does not abide in the house forever, but a son abides forever. Therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed.
Colossians 2:13-15
And you, being dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He has made alive together with Him, having forgiven you all trespass, having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us. And He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. Having disarmed principalities and powers, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it.
Jesus has set us free. He destroyed our debt to sin. He nailed the debt of sin to his cross. How can we continue to identify ourself as a sinner?
