Are we sinners?
Sunday 24th August 2025
If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us …
If we claim we have not sinned, we make [God] out to be a liar and his word is not in us.
1 John 1:8, 10 (NIV)
Are we sinners?
It seems something of a non-question. Are we sinners? “Yes, of course!” The evidence, sadly, is all around us and even within us. And we only need to glance at the verses above to confirm the sad truth: if we claim “to be without sin” or that “we have not sinned,” we are grievously and seriously mistaken. And the apostle John is writing to Christian believers. So Christians, too, are still sinners – forgiven, justified, reconciled, redeemed, adopted, welcomed and accepted sinners, sure, but still sinners.
The trouble is, the New Testament never actually calls Christians “sinners.” Sure, it’s clear, as John is, that we still sin, that sin remains in us and will do until the day “when Christ appears [and] we shall be like him” (1 John 3:2). And yet the New Testament stubbornly refuses to call us “sinners.” Instead it call us “saints” (or God’s “holy people” as NIV translates it). This is how the apostle Paul addresses believers in many of the letters he writes, even when writing to churches, like Corinth, which are full of sins. We are saints, God’s holy people. True, we still sin, but that’s not who we are.
There is perhaps one exception, which is when Paul describes himself as “the worst of sinners” (1 Timothy 1:15, 16), but there’s a good case for arguing that he’s speaking there of his pre-Christian experience.
But, you may wonder, does it really matter? Yes, it will matter whenever we use Bible language in a way the Bible itself doesn’t. There will be some distortion. The question is, what will that distortion be? Here are a few suggestions:
We’ll miss out on the encouragement of knowing that we are God’s “holy people,” of seeing in our very identity what a wonderful thing it is that God has already done in our lives. We’ll be in danger of focusing on our sins rather than our salvation, tending to be discouraged rather than encouraged.
We’ll be mistaken about our fundamental identity. We will, to put it crudely, tend to think of ourselves as ‘sinners who happen to be forgiven,’ rather than ‘saints who happen still to sin.’ Just think about how different it feels to say each of those two phrases!
We’ll miss out on a major motivation for being godly. If we see ourselves as saints who still sin, that will surely motivate us to stop sinning. We’ll find ourselves saying, “This should not be! How can I continue in this sin if I’m one of God’s holy people? I must change!”
Prayer
Lord, it’s often hard to believe that I’m one of your holy people, and I’m amazed to think it’s true, but I thank you that it is; help me to see who I really am in Christ, what my true identity is, and help me to live up to who you’ve made me to be. Amen.
Yours warmly, in Christ,
Chris Hobbs (Senior Minister)