Saints & Sinners

The Apostle Paul constantly refers to those who believe in Christ as “saints” (Ephesians 1:1; Phillipians 1:1), this is what we are before God then, saints. At the same time Paul calls us “sinners” (Romans 5:8; Galatians 2:19), indeed he calls himself a sinner (1 Timothy 1:15-16). We know that even though we are new creatures in Christ now, we still sin every day, many times a day. So we know this what we are also, sinners. Isn't that amazing? The way these two words basically define who we are and yet they are so different words; “holiness” and “sinfulness”, they are completely opposed, and yet that is how the Bible calls us, both saints and sinners. How is it possible?

The Bible says that we all "fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23), because of our sinful and wicked nature. Therefore we all deserve death and condemnation, we all deserve to be separated from God for all eternity. Nevertheless, the Bible also says that "we are justified by His grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by His blood, to be received by faith" (Romans 3:24-25). Something incredibly amazing happened to believing sinners the day Christ gave His life on that cross; we were reconciled with God and a new name was granted to us by grace, we are called saints. So, we are called saints not because of the good works we do now as believers, nor because of our own improvements regarding our own behavior, nor because of our search for integrity, holiness and for knowledge of God, when such search most of the times comes from sinful self-righteousness and our prideful hearts that still wants to do things to get God on our side. Our righteousness and holiness before God come only from Christ's work of grace. Because of His perfect and matchless sacrifice on our behalf we are hundred percent accepted before the Father. It has nothing to do with us, it is a miracle! It is something we cannot produce or accomplish. "For our sake God made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God" (2 Corinthians 5:21). Christ's righteousness and holiness were imputed to us by grace.

We must always view ourselves both in terms of what we are in Christ (saints) and what we are in ourselves (sinners). That is what it means to say we need the Gospel every day of our lives. Even after being called saints, we cannot stand before God on the basis of our own works or our own lives, but only on the basis of Christ's work of grace on the cross for us.