Sinner Saved by Grace

Let me start with a question that sounds simple but is not. Who is a sinner? Is it someone who commits a sin, or someone who carries within them a nature bent toward sin? Put another way: is it the sin that makes you a sinner, or is it the sinner in you that produces the sin?

Most of us, thinking it through, land in the same place. It is the nature that comes first. It is not our wrong actions that make us wrong on the inside; it is the wrongness already inside us that expresses itself in our actions. Scripture calls that inward reality the flesh, the sinful nature. And that raises the real question of the Christian life: when we are born again, what happens to that nature?

What the Cross Did, and What It Did Not Do

There are two ways people tend to answer. One says that when we came to Christ, that old nature was simply erased and replaced with a brand new one that has no desire to sin. But if that were the whole story, why would the New Testament keep commanding us to put off the flesh, to crucify it daily, to keep watch over it? You do not have to fight a thing that no longer exists.

The clearer view is this: on the cross, the power of that nature was broken. It is still present, but the thing that made it the ruling principle of your life has been removed. Its grip was killed. So positionally, in Christ, your flesh has already been dealt with. It is a defeated enemy. And now, in your day to day experience, you are invited to live out what is already true of you.

That is who we are: sinners who have been saved by grace. In Christ, God calls us saints, not because we never sin, but because in Christ we have been washed, sanctified, and made pure. Outside of Christ, we are no different from anyone else walking down the street. Inside of Christ, our flesh has been crucified, and the daily work of the Christian life is simply to bring our present experience into line with what has already happened to us in Him.

Quit Sinning Because You Are Washed

Watch how Paul reasons with the early believers. Even though you still have the capacity to lie, to cheat, to give in to lust, he says, do not do it, because that is not who you are in Christ. Notice the order. He does not say, stop being a sinner so that God will finally wash you. He says the opposite: because God has already washed you, because you are no longer liable or condemned for your sin, therefore quit the sin.

We carry the old capacity around in our natural selves. But in our spirit, in Christ, we are completely and totally cleansed. And so we keep pressing forward, gaining ground over this flesh, this part of us that wants to act independently of God, shaping our spirit, soul, and body more and more into the likeness of the Son of God. We will not reach sinless perfection here on earth, even though in Christ we are already counted perfect. But we will see real, progressive victory.

We struggle with the phrase sinner saved by grace only when we forget that it is not sin that makes us sinners; it is our being sinners that makes us sin.

Think of it this way. It is not the wicked actions that make a person wicked; it is because the wickedness is already there that the actions follow. But in Christ, you are washed and cleansed, so that the sins you have committed no longer stand against you. Nowhere, though, does Scripture claim that the nature which produces sin has been entirely removed. In Christ it is destroyed; in our natural self it still lingers. That is why we stay humble, and why we stay watchful.

How God Broke the Power of Sin

So how, exactly, did God give us victory over a nature we still carry? Here is the surprising answer: He removed the law. For those who are in Christ, the requirement to keep the law as the basis of their acceptance has been lifted. And that changes the whole battle.

The law, strange as it sounds, is what gave indwelling sin its power. When there was a command, the rebel in us rose up against it; the very thing God said not to do became the thing we found ourselves craving. But once acceptance before God no longer depends on our law keeping, sin loses its leverage. As Scripture says, Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes. Acceptance now comes by faith in Jesus, not by our performance.

And there is more. God gives you His Holy Spirit, who awakens the very nature of God within you, the desire to do good for goodness' sake, not to earn anything, but simply because you have already been accepted. Sanctification, then, is the progressive victory over the pull of sin in your natural self. You learn to say to the flesh, I know what you want, but I will not, not because God will reject me if I fail, but because God has already accepted me, and I do not need this thing in my life anymore.

Saint by Whose Reckoning?

But if we still sin, why does the Bible call Christians saints? Because we are saints positionally, legally, in the sight of God. In our actual experience, we are still striving toward it. The Bible calls us healed, too, and yet we know the capacity to fall ill remains; we simply stand in faith for what God has promised. So the real question is always: from whose vantage point are you looking?

When another person looks at you, they see a sinner, someone with a nature that produces sin. When God looks at you, He sees a saint, one without a single sin held against him, because every one of them has been washed away in Jesus. God does not see your sin, because it is hidden in Christ. A saint is not a person with no sin. A saint is a sinner whom the Lord has saved by grace, so that even with his sin he is washed, cleansed, and counted pure in the eyes of God.

This is the most powerful truth I know, and if you will accept and believe it, it will free you from the tyranny of sin and humble you at the very same time. You can say, with Paul, that in my flesh dwells no good thing, that I am the chief of sinners, that there is none good, no not one. And in the same breath you can say: and yet I am fully accepted, fully loved, fully washed, fully delivered. Therefore sin shall not have dominion over me.

This is why the truth keeps us in the trenches rather than on the couch. It makes us watchful, because we know the old nature is always looking for an unguarded moment to creep up and ensnare us. It keeps us fighting the good fight, refusing to let sin rule our mortal bodies. Grace is not passive. It is the confidence that fuels the daily battle, because a soldier who already knows the war is won fights with a completely different spirit than one who fears defeat at every turn.

Understand this well: grace does not hand you a license to sin. It frees you not to. It keeps you humble, alert to the old nature creeping up to ensnare you, and it keeps you in the daily fight to not let sin rule your body. If you have never come to Jesus to receive this kind of washing, you can come today, just as you are, a sinner, and walk away a saint, saved by grace. That is the whole of it, and it is enough.