Sinners or Saints?

by Tyler Young

   And may we remember that the only difference between a sinner and a saint is that one is forgiven, and the other one ain’t.” With those words the minister closed his prayer at the high profile prayer breakfast several years ago. The event included various political leaders and clergymen, whom the denominational minister led in petitioning God. His rhyme may not have been correct grammatically, but it was politically, as evidenced by the validation it was given by the hearty “amens” of those present.

The sentiment is popular, but is it true? Is the only difference between a sinner and a saint that the saint is forgiven? Most religionists—and more than a few in the Lord’s church—answer in the affirmative. For example, one editor of a popular brotherhood paper asserted: “Christians aren’t better than anyone else – just forgiven.”

This concept is usually advocated to suggest that no one has a right to judge anyone else. That was clearly the minister’s intention of introducing it, and many of our own brethren find it appealing for the same reason. “Who are we to charge someone with advocating error, or to identify false teachers, or withdraw fellowship, when, after all, we’re all sinners?” To point the finger of judgment is to risk being labeled a hypocrite because, after all, “We’re all sinners.”

But are we? To suggest we are all sinners in the sense in which many do today is misleading because it fails to recognize a critical, biblical distinction between sinners and saints. Yes, in a general sense, all men are sinners in that “all have sinned” (Rom 3:23). Paul included himself when he said, “while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom 5:8). Looking back on his heinous persecution of the church before his conversion, the great apostle called himself the “chief of sinners” (1Tim 1:15). No accountable person is sinless; we all sin. In this sense we are sinners.

However, the term sinner is used in a more specific sense in scripture of those who persist in sin. Luke distinguished the woman who anointed Jesus in the house of Simon the Pharisee by saying she was a “sinner” (Luke 7:37).

Jesus required a higher standard than merely loving those who love us, “for sinners also love those that love them: (Luke 6:32). Peter said, “For the time is come for judgment to begin at the house of God: and if it begin first at us, what shall be the end of them that obey not the gospel of God?” (1Pet. 4:17-ASV). Notice those who belong to God are here called righteous, in plain distinction to those who have not obeyed the gospel who are designated as sinners.

The difference between sinner and saint is that, while both have sinned, the saint is no longer practicing sin. This distinction is an enormous and morally significant one, and it is the reason the saint is forgiven but the sinner “ain’t.” There is joy in heaven “over one sinner that repenteth” (Luke 15:7), because when a sinner repents, he turns from sin and turns to God (Acts 26:20). That is something a man who is still outside of Christ has not done. In Romans 6 Paul stressed that the one who belongs to Christ does not “continue in sin”; he walks in “newness of life”; he does not let sin “reign” in his body, to “obey the lusts thereof”; he is no longer a “servant of sin”; but a “servant of righteousness.” The saint is “walking in the light,” which means when he sins, he repents of it (1John 1: 7-9). In this sense, then he is not a sinner—he is not continuing in sin—and may be said to be doing as Zacharias and Elizabeth did, “walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless” (Luke 1:6).

Yes, all need grace because all have sinned. And no one is of any more worth as a human being than any other person. But faithful Christians are better than others in that they are living better lives than those who practice sin as a way of life. One brother wrote, “After all is said and done, the church remains a fellowship of sinners saved by grace more than it is a fellowship of saints.” But on what biblical grounds can he make this contention? There is none. The church is no more one than the other. To suggest the only difference between a sinner and a saint is that one is forgiven is a gross misrepresentation of what it means to be faithful of God and merely serves to undermine the crucial moral distinction between the church and the world. It is a notion used to dismiss our obligation to be holy and reprove sin. It is utilized to shame into silence anyone who would dare to pass judgment on those who—unlike saints—are continuing to walk contrary to God’s truth.

We all need forgiveness. But to put all men on the same level with respect to sin fails to recognize who we are and what God calls us to be—no longer sinners, but saints. By the grace of God “one is forgiven, and the other one ain’t” because one is fully striving to submit to God and the other ain’t. That is a much bigger difference than some would have us to believe.