Are We All Sinners?
Posted by Randy Peterman on 9/20/2005
I just heard on a podcast the insinuation that we’re all sinners. I can’t stand this since as Christians we have been identified with the righteousness of Christ rather than the wretchedness of sin. The image below displays a timeline of sorts. It illustrates the fact that we’ve got an eternal new nature as believers in Christ, but also an adamic nature something that the non-Christian has. This is why Paul recommends in Romans 6:11 that we reckon our old self to be dead. We are identified with Christ and not with anything else that could be pointed to as who we are. In Christ we are not sinners.
Click image for a larger version of this image.
We are not sinners, we are more than conquerors.
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I understand what you are saying. However, we ARE all sinners. Romans 3:23 says “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.” We sin every day. That is what makes God’s grace so amazing. He loves us even though we sin. Being a Christian does not mean you aren’t a sinner, it means that you are accepting God’d forgiveness through his son Jesus Christ. Romans 5:8shows this, saying that “God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” If we were no longer sinners, then why does his death matter?
Tony, are you still a sinner [one who habitually and can only sin]? Does God see you as a sinner or hidden within Christ as Colossians 3:3 says? Your verses point to past tense passages. Believers are not sinners because their new nature was resurrected with Christ and they died to the Law that would make them habitual and only sinners.
Of course we have all heard that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God, which is taken from Romans 3:23, and most people use that to make other people feel that they have no hope at all with God. If you would read Romans 3:21-26 in context, you will find that what God is talking about is a righteous standing before Him in Christ, not us being filthy sinners. I have heard it said that we are nothing but sinners “saved by grace”, but I refuse to say that about myself. I was a sinner ( and believe me, I knew how to do it well) but now that I have accepted Jesus into my heart, I am right now by God considered the righteousness of God in Christ, and that goes for anyone who accepts Jesus. For example, if someone were in a pool or an ocean swimming and they started drowning, then someone jumps in and saves that person from drowning, you wouldn’t look at the person that was rescued from the water and say he or she was still drowning. Why? Because they are no longer in the water and they have been pulled to safety. Likewise, the same is true for all of us. We were all drowning in our own selfishness, our own sins, our own messed up ways, but Jesus came to pull us all out of that and no longer are we all sinners that are “saved by grace”, but we in Christ are now righteous, or placed in right standing with God because of Jesus and we are not sinners saved by grace. Now, let me say that we are saved by grace, which in it’s simplest definition could be defined as God’s willingness to get involved in your life. So when I say that we are saved by grace, I am saying that we are saved because of God’s willingness to get involved in helping us when we did not know how to help ourselves and didn’t realize we needed help, but we are not sinners anymore once we accept the free gift that God through Jesus offers us.
The righteous standing, or righteousness, means that we can stand in the presence of an Almighty God without a sense of guilt or shame for our sins. 2 Corinthians 5:21 says that Jesus Christ bore our sins, He took every sin that we ever could commit upon Himself and in exchange He gave us His righteousness, so we who have accepted Jesus as our Savior now are righteous in God’s eyes, not because of anything we have or ever could do, but because of what Jesus did and as we accept the gift of grace and salvation through Jesus, we also receive this free gift of a right standing before God. And since it has already been freely given to us, all we have to do is receive it, to take hold of it as it was in our possession and we do not have to try to do a lot of good things to make ourselves seem “right” before God. We don’t have to work to be right with God and no one has to do any “goody goody” thing to be right with God because all that we had to do to get right with God, Jesus did for us, for God took the sinless Christ and poured into him our sins. Then, in exchange, he poured God’s goodness into us. Now, after having this knowledge, I want you to understand that you can still do good things, but not to do them to gain or earn God’s love or acceptance, but rather you can do good works because of God’s love and acceptance for you and you can do good works out of love and gratitude to Him for what He has done for you.
This is in response to Tony and Romans 3:23. One thing we, as believers, must always do when reading the scriptures is know: Who is speaking, Who is being spoken to, and the dispensation in which it is being spoken. So many single out one verse and hold on to that as gospel. Read the entire chapter and it will become more clear.
We are all sinners. We are all born sinners. This is the price we pay for adam and eve disobaying god in the graden of eden. Because of that we didnt obey god and we were cast into the kingdom of darkness ( satans kingdom) We are all decendents from adam and eve. We are to burn forever in the lake of fire unless we accept jesus christ as gods only son and our savior. I’m guessing pretty much the lake of fire is earth, and by being mortal we are ( burning ).
I know myself I was born a sinner it took me 22 years ( I’m 22 years to really understand how to deal with sin). And im still working on it. All you have to do is obey god and you will not be a sinner. There are two kinds of people on this earth. Those who obey god and those who do not obey god. Those who obey god accept Jesus Christ as their savior. Remember if you do not accept jesus christ as your savior you are directly disobeying god. Just like cain did when god told him to kill a animal and sacrifice it. His brother did this but cain disobeyed god and brought him vegitables and fruit. While on paper vegitables and fruit look better then a dead animal to sacrifice to god, thats not what god said. This was how god forgave our sins before Jesus Christ. We sacrificed animals because only blood could pay for our sins. But then god brought Jesus Christ to die for all our sins, our sins where so great that the son of god had to be killed to pay for all our sins! So only blood can be paid for sins, so the price of sin is death. But to get out of Satins Kingdom ( pretty much earth) You must believe in Jesus Christ as your savior. If you do not believe in Jesus Christ as your savior to take you to heaven you burn in the lake of fire forever, because like cain you diobeyed god, also just like Adam originally disobeyed god and that is why we are here today. Life is literally a test. If you want to make a good grade on judgement day in gods eyes you need to listen to god. Also the devil ( satan, the serpeant) always contradicts god. For everything God says, the devil always has an opposite to say. So now in history, schools are teaching evolution and questioning the bible.. there are many false religions. These are all false religions and false flags. I mean just look at DNA its in the shape of a serpeant! Its obvious that if you believe in science you will burn in the lake of fire forever. I’m not saying science isnt real or true, because if you think about it its got some truth to it. But man creates science from what man can see. Thats man worshiping himself =666 the number of the beast. Hope this helps you realize some stuff that i’ve pretty much come to realization.
Hang on. We’re not descendents of Adam and Eve as everyone drowned in the flood except for Noah and his family. This means we are descendents of Noah, not Adam and Eve. We aren’t implicated in original sin at all.
Yes?
Why did you remove my post?
i thought I made a reasonable point.
Peter, I did not delete your comment, it was in moderation as all first time commenters are in moderation.
As for being descendants of Adam & Noah we are descendants of both genetically up until the point where a fallen individual becomes a saint (a believer), in which case we’re identified with Christ and are part of the new creation in Christ, who was the first born from the dead. You make the statement that we’re descendants of Noah only… but if Noah was a descendant of Adam, then anyone who is a descendant of Noah is, by logic, also a descendant of Adam [this is a syllogism].
Good discussions to all! The thing I think most people don’t realize is that there is a difference between sinning and being a sinner. A sinner sins as a lifestyle. Now that my life is in Christ I don’t wake up thinking how I can get into sin today. I’m not a sinner. However, I do miss the mark and because it wasn’t my willing intention to commit the act of sin and I’m now in the righteousness of God. I just have to ask God to forgive me and He is faithful and just to forgive me of my sins and He justifies me. Making my slate clean and perfect through His eyes. If I mess up again it wasn’t my intention because now that I’m a Christian I don’t purposely go around sinning any more. I ask God to forgive me and He puts it under the blood. God knows are heart and if we’re living after Him and not being the sinner we WERE before we got saved, when we mess up and sin God will take that sin and throw as far as the east is from the west. That’s the power of God’s grace!
I would be interested in how you interpret the verses in which paul calls himself the greatest of sinners. He uses the present tense. I for one would say he is both exaggerating for effect, and that when he uses the word sinner, he is in fact defining a sinner as someone who has sinned at some point. Paul did in fact commit a few heinous crimes at points in his life, and I think that he is deprecating himself and implying that a sinner is someone who has sinned.
Anyways, this feels a lot like pointless semantics
We are humans, we are imperfect because of the fall from grace at the Garden of Eden. Because of what Adam did we are all sinners. Remember GOD created man in his own image. Adam and Eve were a perfect creation, but unlike the angels we were given free will. And Adam exercised that free will and disobeyed GOD. We were made imperfect by the introduction of sin. From that moment on every human that has exsisted is contaminated with sin. By accepting Christ he washes away our sin so we appear white as snow before GOD. However being a Christian does not make us righteous. We still sin. Christians are still human, we still lie, cheat, steel, divorce and kill. If you tell a little white lie, you are a lier. If you take an extra newspaper from the paper box you are a thief, if you look at a woman and have the slightest desire, then you are an adulterer. We are still all sinners folks. Accepting Christ does not magically make us perfect in this world. It only makes us perfect before the eyes of GOD.
Christians that consider themselves righteous tend to consider all others as not righteous and some how beneath them. This leads to hypocrisy.
since christ came in this earth to make us free from the sin and he died for us….but still if u say we r sinner then what is the use of christ diying for us….so my thinking is we r no more sinner.m his son and my father paid my debt through his precious blood ,so iam no more sinner.
OMG im 16 an i get it. its so simple. you sinned your a sinner. just like you killed your a killer. he died for our sins so we would not go to hell! all are sin was put on him. but we still sin every day on and on we will not stop. just think of it as this we are all consumed so we are all consumers. we were made like god, but it says we fall sort of the glory of god. SO THERE FOR WE ARE NOT LIKE GOD. It just like when people started to clone things. a dog could be cloned, The dog would the same as the first dog. but it won’t have the same feeling or personality as the first dog.
Michael, I don’t think you understand what I wrote. Sinners are identified with Adam and his federal headship. As believers we’re identified with Christ’s federal headship and therefore are no longer carrying the label of ‘sinner’.
I addressed this issue this weekand at my local church and i saw people disagreeing with me. It always suprises me why christians clamour to be called sinners no wonder why the spirit of GOD is not in many of us. We have layers and layers of bible interprattions yet the bible is mearnt to be understood in its simplest form. I beleive one of the reason people argue that they are sineers is that there is no relationship with GOD. If you have GOD its not a question whether you are a christian or not.
To tell you the truth our flesh always wants to sin but our spirit always wants to worship God. It is a battle as to who wins out. Does your flesh or does your spirit man win. Since you are in charge of your own body then you have to decide who do you want to win.
Just like the apostle Paul struggled with his flesh and with his spirit man, we also struggle as Christians to do the right thing. The right thing is to listen to the voice of God as He talks through your spirit man.
So that makes our spirit man is the righteousness of Christ and our fleshly man sinful.