Sinner Saved by Grace: Is That What You Are Now?
“Sinner saved by grace” is half true: you were a sinner, and you were saved by grace, but when you were born again God made you a new creation, the righteousness of God in Christ. Calling yourself a sinner now disagrees with what He did, because your nature was changed at the root and you are not defined by what you do.
Is “sinner saved by grace” true?
You have probably heard this phrase your whole Christian life, and you may have said it about yourself this week, usually after a mistake or after a compliment or when you did not want to sound proud. It sounds honest and humble, and most people who say it genuinely mean well, but I want you to answer honestly whether it is true, because what you call yourself is never a small thing.
If you believe you are a sinner, you will expect to sin, you will make room for it, and you will accept it as the normal Christian life. Worst of all, you will spend your days trying to become something God says you already are, which is why I think the label deserves a closer look instead of a pass.
Pay attention to the order of the words in the phrase, because before I was saved by grace I was a sinner, and that part is completely true since every one of us started there. But at the moment I was saved by grace something happened to me, and I did not just receive a pardon and a clean record along with a second chance at the same old life, because I was born again.
Why do born-again believers keep calling themselves sinners?
There are usually three reasons a believer keeps wearing that label, even after years of loving Jesus. The first is that it sounds humble, because calling yourself righteous feels arrogant and so you default to the word that feels safer. The second is that your experience seems to confirm it, because you still fall and “sinner” feels like the most honest description of your life, and the third is that no one ever showed you what actually happened at the new birth, because you were taught that you were forgiven but never that you were made new.
The first two reasons only make sense once you understand the third, which is why I start with what happened to you and not with what you did. The second reason, why you still fall, is a real question that deserves a real answer, and I take it up on the page about habitual sin.
What happened to you when you were saved by grace?
"That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit."John 3:6 (KJV)
Jesus told Nicodemus, a Pharisee and a ruler of the Jews who had spent his life studying and teaching the Law, that unless a man is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God. Nicodemus knew how to improve a life, discipline a life, and cleanse a life by the Law, but he had no category for what Jesus described, which was God giving birth to a brand-new life on the inside of a person.
That is exactly what happened to you, and Paul names it when he writes that if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature, with old things passed away and all things become new. The Greek word for new there, kainos, means new in kind rather than merely newer, so God did not give your old self a second chance but brought into being someone who had never existed before. You can read more on the pages about new creation in Christ and 2 Corinthians 5:17.
Are you still a sinner after you are born again?
"For ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of light:"Ephesians 5:8 (KJV)
Paul tells believers who they used to be, and he does not say that you were once in darkness but that you were darkness, which describes your nature and not just your surroundings. He also does not say that you are near the light or working toward it, but that you are light in the Lord. I was not only living in sin but was sin, and now I am righteousness, which is not a high opinion of myself that I invented but simply what God did.
I can say this without pride because your actions never made you who you are. A person who is not born again can give to the poor, tell the truth at work, stay faithful to a spouse, and treat neighbors with kindness, and none of it makes him righteous, because his nature has not changed. If doing righteous things cannot make an unbeliever righteous, then doing a wrong thing cannot turn a believer back into a sinner, because you are not what you do; you are your spirit and your nature, and your nature was changed at the root.
Is it prideful to say you are righteous?
"For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him."2 Corinthians 5:21 (KJV)
Someone always pushes back here and asks whether it is prideful to call yourself righteous, and the answer depends on what humility actually is. True humility agrees with God, so if God says He made you righteous, the humble response is to say what He says, and insisting on your own opinion of yourself after God has already spoken is disagreement that happens to sound humble.
You did not earn this righteousness, which is the whole point, because Paul speaks of the man “unto whom God imputeth righteousness without works.” To impute is to credit something to someone’s account, so righteousness was not earned and deposited a little at a time but credited in full the moment you believed. Jesus took what I was, and I received what He is.
That takes an enormous weight off your shoulders, because you cannot become righteous through struggle or effort or anything except being born again. If you have been scrubbing yourself clean over and over to become righteous, you have been working toward something you already have, and the question was never how to become righteous but how to live out the righteousness you already have.
What should you call yourself when you fall?
When I fall or do something I know is wrong, I do not call myself a sinner; I call myself someone who is righteous and who made a mistake. I am not saying the mistake does not matter, and I am not saying you should shrug off sin as though it were nothing, but there is a world of difference between being defined by your failure and being defined by your Father. Deal with the mistake honestly, bring it to your Father, and do not let it rename you.
You may still feel like a sinner, and the book’s answer to that feeling is that your spirit was born again while your flesh and soul were trained for years by the old nature, so the habits outlived the man. Feeling the pull of an old habit does not mean the old man is alive, and I explain that on the page about habitual sin and on Romans 6:6.
The book suggests saying it out loud: “I was a sinner, and I was saved by grace. Now I am a new creation and the righteousness of God in Christ. I made a mistake, but it does not rename me.”
From the book
This page is drawn from New Creation, Old Habits by Benjamin Riggins. Read more in:
- Chapter 1: "Sinner Saved by Grace"?
- Chapter 5: The Habits Outlived the Man
Questions people ask
Is it wrong to say “I am a sinner saved by grace”?
The first half is true of your past, since you were a sinner and you were saved by grace. The book’s position is that once you are born again you cannot call yourself a sinner without disagreeing with what the Bible says about you, so a truer sentence is that you were a sinner, you were saved by grace, and you are now a new creation.
What am I if I am not a sinner?
You are a new creation, the righteousness of God in Christ, and light in the Lord. Those are not titles you earned but descriptions of what God made your spirit when you were born again, and Paul uses them of believers in 2 Corinthians 5:17, 2 Corinthians 5:21, and Ephesians 5:8.
What does it mean to be saved by grace?
It means you did not earn it, because by grace you are saved (Ephesians 2:5) and righteousness is credited to you apart from works. You did not become a new creation by effort, and you do not stay one by effort, because grace gave you the new birth and you grow by receiving.
If I am righteous, why do I still sin?
Your spirit is new, but your flesh and soul were trained for years by the old nature, so they still remember its habits. When you do fall, the book’s way of saying it is that you are a righteous person who made a mistake, so deal with it honestly and bring it to your Father without letting it rename you.
Why do I still feel like a sinner?
Your soul learned how to feel from the old man, and your flesh was trained on his habits, so the feeling can persist after the man himself is gone. That feeling is not a verdict on your nature, and it can be retrained because the old master is dead.