Are Christians sinners, saints, or both?

But are Christians, let me ask, not to confess their sins and shortcomings to God their Father? Most assuredly: that is just what they need to do constantly. And they cannot walk with God unless they do; but they should never lower, by unscriptural expressions, the ground of their standing in His presence. Our standing in the presence of God is in virtue of the work of Christ, and according to the riches of God's grace; and, as these can never fail, we can never lose the place they give. Besides, it is "to the praise of the glory of his grace" that we are there. But, though we may be deeply conscious of failure as Christians, we should never take the ground of poor, unpardoned sinners before God. This would be to deny our calling, and to bring darkness, confusion, and weakness into our souls. God says we are before Him as His children, pardoned and accepted in the Beloved. We are no longer on the ground of sinners before God, but as children before the Father. In conversion the ground is changed. When born of God, we cease to be on the ground of sinners before Him, and are ever after on the ground of children in the family. True, we do not cease to be sinners, in the sense that we sin daily and hourly in thought, word, and deed. The thought of foolishness is sin; and who is not troubled with foolish thoughts? But we are to confess our faults as children before the Father, and not as sinners before God. In faithfulness to God and His word, we ought to maintain the ground on which He has set us. Not, of course, that the sin of the child is any the less, but, on the contrary, more grievous, for it is against more light, love, and grace. And, rest assured, the better we understand our calling in Christ, the deeper will be our humiliation on account of failure, and the more unreserved our confession of it. True holiness should characterise the children of God. As it is written, "Be ye holy; for I am holy." Or, in other words, the Christian's state should always answer to his standing. When it is not so, there is too good reason for humiliation and confession.

But, then, some will say, "have we no sin, no failure, no imperfection?" Assuredly we have. "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." (1 John 1:8) We have sin in us, but no sin on us. Moreover, our standing is not in self, but in Christ. It is "in him" we "are complete." God sees the believer in Christ, with Christ, and as Christ. This is his changeless condition, his everlasting standing. "The body of the sins of the flesh" is "put off by the circumcision of Christ." The believer is not in the flesh, though the flesh is in him. He is united to Christ in the power of a new and an endless life, and that life is inseparably connected with divine righteousness in which the believer stands before God. The Lord Jesus has put away everything that was against the believer, and He has brought him nigh to God, in the self-same favour as that which He Himself enjoys. In a word, Christ is his righteousness. This settles every question, answers every objection, silences every doubt. "Both he that sanctifies and they who are sanctified, are all of one." (Heb. 2:11)

But the Christian is not only justified, he is also sanctified; he is a saint (mind, Scripture does not say, as men do, that a few dead Christians are saints, but it says on the contrary that all living Christians are saints). This may startle some who are accustomed to the usual theological expression, that justification is an act done at once, and that sanctification is gradual and progressive. It is not of course denied that there is such a thing as gradual sanctification, i.e. increasing holiness of walk in him, who by abiding in the Son, grows from a little child into a young man and from a young man into a father in the family of God (see 1 John 2:13; Eph. 5:26). This growth is a matter of deep importance, and God forbid that we should make light of it. Nevertheless, it is boldly stated that the Christian is said to be in Scripture, according to the ordinary use of the term, a sanctified one, or saint: by which is meant, not one especially holy in walk, but one set apart for God, by the call of God. The Apostle Paul, after enumerating a terrible list of sins, goes on to say: "And such were some of you; but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God." (1 Cor. 6:11.) In the second verse of the Epistle he writes to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints. This last expression is not quite clear in English. In the Greek it is plain enough "saints by calling"; i.e. by the call of God. In Heb. 10:10 it is written: "By the which will" (viz. the will of God) "we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all." The Apostle Jude also speaks of believers as "sanctified by God the Father" (verse 1). And it must be borne in mind, that Jesus Christ is our Sanctification, as well as our Righteousness. (1 Cor. 1:30.) This sanctification will be better understood by our Lord's words: "For their sakes I sanctify myself that they also may be sanctified through the truth." (John 17:19.) It is evident that the Lord could not be made holy, for He ever was holy; but He was set apart as the Holy One for a special purpose: and so believers are set apart as sanctified ones, or saints; not by holiness of walk, but by the call and will of God, though the result of this sanctification should be, indeed must be, holiness of walk. Any one, who will take a concordance, and look up the word "saints," will find that in the Acts and the Epistles, believers are called saints more than fifty times, and that the word is always applied to all believers, and never to certain special believers, whose walk was more holy than that of others. Moreover, God never calls believers sinners. On the contrary Scripture says: "When we were yet sinners" (Rom. 5:8); plainly implying that we are not so now. The passage in 2 Timothy 1:15, which is sometimes referred to, is spoken by the Apostle Paul of himself and in it he refers to what he did in his unconverted state. It is therefore very evident that God's people are sanctified ones or saints, and not sinners in His sight.

Objectors will assuredly say: "Then you make out that you saints never sin?" Not so. The common definition of a sinner is one who sometimes sins; and if so, then it is naturally assumed that a saint is one, who never sins. But, according to God, a sinner is not one who sometimes sins, but one who always sins, who never does anything but sin, for he is an enemy of God and an unbeliever, and as such, reprobate unto every good work. (Titus 1:16.) He is not reconciled to God, and therefore all that he does is sin (see Prov. 15:8; Prov. 20:4, 27). The saint on the contrary is reconciled, and can please God (see 1 Thess. 4:1), though, alas! he does not always do so; for in many things we offend all. (James 3:2.) Thus we have seen on the unmistakable testimony of Scripture that all real Christians are justified or accounted righteous, and made meet for glory; they are also sanctified, or made saints, by the will of God, through the offering of Jesus Christ and by the Holy Spirit.

We have an illustration of this in the first epistle to the Corinthians: "Unto the church of God which is at Corinth, to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, with all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours" (1 Cor. 1:2). The apostle here uses the name "church of God," which is the title of the whole Body of Christ, and applies it locally, "which is at Corinth." He describes those who are included in it, "them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called saints." We need hardly say that the term "sanctified" includes all who have a share in the work of Christ, all who are sheltered by His blood (Heb. 10:14; Heb. 13:12). It does not refer to personal state, but to the standing of every believer, who is called a saint — a saint by virtue of his calling. All there, then, who were believers in the Lord Jesus Christ formed the Church of God which was at Corinth.

We begin then by laying hold of the great fact that we have been sanctified. Scripture is very definite and plain as to this point, and perhaps the most striking example it furnishes us with is the case of the Corinthians. Of all the Christians of the apostolic age, that we have any knowledge of, they stand out as the least marked by sanctification of a practical sort. Their behaviour was open to much censure, and they got it from the Apostle Paul in very plain language. Yet in his first epistle to them he calls them "saints," as "sanctified in Christ Jesus," (1 Cor. 1:2). Later in the same epistle, after mentioning many of the abominations that filled the heathen world, he said, "And such were some of you: but … ye are sanctified" (1 Cor. 6:11).

The same two lines of truth — the grace of God, and the government of God — which we have found in the book of Numbers are found also in the first Epistle to the Corinthians. The condition of the Assembly in Corinth was deplorable when Paul wrote his letter. Almost every form of evil was active there: party strife (1 Cor. 1; gross immorality (1 Cor. 5); litigation in the world's courts (1 Cor. 6); eating and drinking in the temples of idols (1 Cor. 10); gluttony at the Lord's Supper (1 Cor. 11); disorder in speaking (1 Cor. 14); and dangerous doctrines concerning the resurrection (1 Cor. 15). To all this must be added most improper feelings towards the devoted man who had led them to Christ. Yet with all these terrible evils present to his mind, the Apostle addressed them as "the Church of God which is in Corinth, them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, saints by calling" (1 Cor. 1:2). Here we have the grace of God strongly expressed. In 1 Cor. 3:9 the Apostle adds: "Ye are God's husbandry (cultivated plot); ye are God's building" (His temple). These wonderful figures described the Corinthian brethren collectively. God had made them all this in His grace. The writer would not lessen the sense of it in their souls. What God had made true of them in virtue of Christ and His work formed the basis of his subsequent rebukes and appeals.

There is nothing which so draws the line between spirituality and sentiment, and indeed prevents spirituality from degenerating into mystic refinement, as the realizing that the Holy Ghost, Who, in quickening our souls, has created in us new feelings and desires, is the Spirit of truth, and, whilst presenting truth objectively to the soul, sanctifies by the means of it. "God hath chosen us unto salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth." The whole course of a Christian should be truthful. The very basis of Christianity is truth — the truth of what we are in ourselves, and of what God is as revealed to us in Christ. Our starting point is the recognition of our real position before God — sinners, helpless, ruined, and righteously exposed to the wrath of God. When, by the quickening power of the Spirit of God, we are brought to take this truthful place, the controversy is over between us and God: He justifies us freely by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus. Starting from this on our walk as Christians, if we sin, the truthful place is confession, and then again God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. A large measure of the needed discipline of God is to bring us to this truthful place: "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us."

Under the former covenant the worshipper, in spite of the Levitical oblation, remained a sinner still. With an unpurged conscience he could not be a saint. But the believing sinner is characteristically a saint. He is such by necessary consequence of the finished work of Christ. For, according to the value of the sacrifice is the condition of the worshipper in the sight of God. The Holy Ghost, accordingly, the Witness and Announcer of completed sacrifice, addresses Christians universally as saints. He reckons a believing sinner holy because of that precious blood which once for all has purged his sins. Men commonly attach the saintly title to pre-eminence in real or seeming personal attainment. The title, that is, is conferred by suffrage of the human judgment, on what man estimates as worthy. But God puts honour only upon JESUS. He calls His people saints because He sees His people in His Son. Because of the blood of their redemption they are holy in His sight. To flatter the creature on his own account is the subtle policy of Satan; who, as the prince of this world, strives to strengthen his dominion by disguising his deceptions with a counterfeit of truth. To crown the vessels of His mercy with fair names of sanctity and glory, is the righteous pleasure of the God of truth, who honours thus the Doer of His will by presenting to Him in His own pure likeness the fruits of the bitter travail of His soul. Far different, indeed, from that fair estimate of gracious truth, is the believer's judgment of himself, when, looking away from Jesus, he turns to analyse the complex vanity that fills his natural heart. Miraculous, yet most real and ever-blessed truth! That a man should at the self-same time be conscious of being personally only sin, while by the faith of Jesus he lifts up his face to God, accepted and unblamed of Him who will not look on sin.

But, alas, His people are not like this. Even after conversion, and with the Spirit dwelling in them, believers are not free from evil, either individually or as the Church. The flesh still dwells in them. The presence of the Holy Spirit does not drive it out, kill it, or change it, although by the grace of God, its power need no longer rule in our lives. The loaves, and the leaven, were baked. It is restrained but not "eradicated". Therefore the believer is not sinless. He is not as the Lord was, fit to be placed on the altar for acceptance by God. With the two wave-loaves, it was needful to offer a sin offering, and also the sweet savour offerings were offered.

But though the believer is not in the flesh, he sorrowfully finds that the flesh is in him. He learns through humbling experiences to say, "In me, that is in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing." He does not say, "In me dwells no good," because he has a new life, and the Holy Ghost in him; but he says, "In me, (that is in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing;" for, though delivered from the Adam standing, he still has the Adam nature — the flesh, with its passions and lusts — that evil principle which is ready to serve the law of sin. He has, in fact, two natures: the old nature, "that which is born of the flesh," which "is flesh;" and the new life, or new nature, "that which is born of the Spirit," which "is spirit." The new nature which is born of the Spirit is strengthened by the Holy Ghost which indwells us; so that, while the flesh lusts against the Spirit, the Spirit is against the flesh in such antagonistic power, that we cannot do the things which we otherwise would. The delivered soul knows that he is the subject of the actings of these two opposing natures, and his conclusion is, "So then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin." (Rom. 7:25.)