long post
Below is a paper I wrote to some of my friends. It applies only to people who have received Jesus as their savior.
Savior from what?
To be saved from the consequences of sin. Sin is missing the mark, doing something wrong or breaking God’s law.
Romans 3:23 says,
for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God
We have all sinned. It only takes on sin to become imperfect. It only takes one time of lying, stealing, lusting ect for a person to not be good enough to go to heaven or to relate to God.
John 8:34
Jesus replied, "I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin.”
Since we have all sinned, we realize that that has made us slaves to sin.
Romans 6:23,24
For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
That means that Jesus has made a way for us to be freed from the wages or consequences of our sin.
John 3:36
Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God's wrath remains on him.
But we have to believe in the Son being Jesus. If we reject Him, we are where we started. Meaning we are sinful and slaves to sin and must pay the consequences and are excluded from heaven and a relationship with God.
John 3:16-18
"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son.
Jesus came to the world to save us, to be our savior. By perish here it means to go to hell instead of eternal life, being heaven.
To receive Jesus as his or her savior anyone only has to ask. Say something like.
Jesus, I know that I have sinned and need a savior. Please be mine. I believe that you are God and that you are good. Thank you that you paid the price for my sin so I wouldn’t have to pay for it myself. I love you God. Thank you.
If you prayed that you are now a follower of Jesus and the rest of this paper applies to you. And I want to encourage you to get a hold of a bible and read through the book of Mark and John, they tell about Jesus while He was on earth and it will help explain things.
(NIV)
Romans 3:23
John 8:34
Romans 6:23,24
John 3:36
John 3:16-18
I want to explain better why I do not see myself as a sinner anymore. I believe that I once was a sinner and in need of a Savior, but through God’s grace and forgiveness, He has changed who I was and made me new. This is not to imply that I will never sin again, I know that I will (unfortunately), but I do not see myself as a sinner any longer.
Romans 5:7-11
Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since we have now been justified by His blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through Him! For if, when we were God’s enemies we were reconciled to Him through the death of His Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved though His life! Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through out Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.
It says here that we were sinners. To me that sounds like we are no longer sinners because it is in the past tense. It also says in verse 9, that we have now been justified by His blood. In my dictionary it describes justify, among other things, as to prove or show to be just or right; to be absolved. Given this is only a dictionary, but I think we can use it to paraphrase the verse as, we were sinners, but now we are shown just and right because of Christ’s blood.
Romans 5:19
For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.
In Romans 5: 12 and on it lets us know that the disobedience of the one man is talking about Adam, and that the obedience of the one man is talking about Jesus. The way that I interpret this verse is that we are made righteous when we accept Christ, and that we do not have to wait until we die and go to heaven, before we become righteous. If this is true, than we are currently righteous, and I do not think it makes sense that we would still be sinners if we were made righteous through Christ.
Romans 6
What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Or don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.
If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection. For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin- because anyone who has died has been freed from sin.
Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.
In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness. For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace.
What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! Don't you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey-whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted. You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.
I put this in human terms because you are weak in your natural selves. Just as you used to offer the parts of your body in slavery to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer them in slavery to righteousness leading to holiness. When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death! But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
I see the word sinner as someone who is controlled by sin, as someone who lives in sin, and has a habit of sinning, as a slave of sin. It says in verse 2 that we have died to sin. In verse 4 it says we live a new life, and in verse 5 it says, that our old self was crucified with Jesus so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin- because anyone who has died has been freed from sin. Before I received Christ I was a sinner, I was a slave to sin and I lived in sin. But after I received Christ’s forgiveness, I died to sin, I no longer lived in it. The old self, the sinner, was crucified with Christ so that my body of sin is done away with and I am no longer a slave to sin.
In verse 5 it says, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. I consider myself dead to sin and alive in Christ in that I am no longer a sinner. Yes, I still sin, but I don’t see myself as a sinner. I do not enjoy that I sin, sin can be fun, but I do not enjoy that I do it. When I do sin, I repent of the sins that I do, knowing that my sins are wrong. I also try to resist temptations to do evil instead of giving into them as if they were okay to do. And although I do sin, I do not sin as much as if I were not a follower of Christ. Resisting sin, and repenting when we do sin, are things that Christians do, and non-Christians do not do. For me to call myself a sinner would make me feel like I am what I was without Christ’s forgiveness. As if I were still a slave to it.
Romans 7:15-20
I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do-this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.
I know that I am not perfect and I have found myself plenty of times wondering why I do evil when I want to do what is good. In verse 20 Paul says, now if I do what I do not want to do, I no longer am the one who does, but it is sin living in me that does it. I don’t think I completely understand this, but he says that it is no longer him who does the sin. Paul is separating himself from the sin that he does. In this verse I think he is saying that he is not a sinner. If he were saying that he was a sinner, I would think he would say, that he wishes he didn’t sin, but that he was a sinner and could not help it. But instead he says that he didn’t do it, that the sin living inside him who did it.
Romans 7:5,6
For when we were controlled by the sinful nature, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in our bodies, so that we bore fruit for death. But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.
Here again I see this as being freed from being a sinner because we are no longer controlled by sin.
Romans 8:5-10
Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace; the sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God's law, nor can it do so. Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God.
You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ. But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness.
1 Peter 2:24
He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed.
Because of what Jesus did, we can live for righteousness and do not have to live as sinners.
2 Corinthians 5:16-21
So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
I am a new creation. What was I? I was sinner. What am I now? I am the righteousness of God. That is not to say that it is because of me, it is only through Jesus that I am righteous and that is only true because of God’s love and grace.
I know that I still sin. But I believe that Jesus has set me free from being a sinner. I was a sinner in need of a savior, but now I am righteous because of my savior. I see the difference between me being a sinner and not being a sinner as an important one. I think that if I had the mindset of being a sinner I would feel lowly and unlovable to Jesus. But as righteous through Christ, I see myself as clean from my sin, loved by Christ and someone who can be close to God. And I see myself as righteous only because of what Jesus did for me, not because of anything that I did.
I hope this makes sense and seems true and biblical to you. If not, let me know, I don’t want to believe anything that does not line up with God’s Word.
-Daniel
(NIV)
Romans 5:8-11 & 19
Romans 6
Romans 7:15-20
Romans 7:5,6
Romans 8: 5-10
1 Corinthians 11:7
2 Corinthians 5: 17,21
1 Peter 2:24