Everyone Sins, But Not Everyone is a Sinner

The Bible says, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Everyone sins, but not everyone is a sinner. When I ask people to define a sinner, they typically answer, “Someone who sins.” While this seems to make sense, the Bible teaches otherwise. The popular phrase that a Christian is a sinner saved by grace, is an oxymoron. For a believer to think that way would be like a wife describing herself as a single, married person. You can’t be single and married at the same time, and you can’t be a sinner and saved at the same time. One negates the other. The truth is we were all born in Adam, separated from God, spiritually dead sinners. We became sinners by birth, not behavior. Jesus drove this point home in His conversation with Nicodemus in John 3. Jesus told “the teacher of Israel” (quite an accomplishment), that “you must be born again”. Apparently, with all that Nicodemus had done, it did nothing to close the gap between death and life. He was still separated from God.  He needed to be born again. He needed a new birth. This new birth comes with a new identity…saint. The moment you place your faith in Jesus, you are born again and made a new creation, a holy child of God. A saint is not in Adam but in Christ. Identity is not about our doing by behavior, but our being by birth. Dear saint, you are a new creation that is joined to Jesus, alive to God, and given a new heart. Knowing who you are because of Whose you are changes everything! It’s His gift by grace, and while your behavior could not cause it and cannot change it, now your behavior can express it! 

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Ephesians 1:18 I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you will know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints

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