Satan’s Great Lie #7:
Sinner Saved By Grace
In the Baptist and other denominations, I have seen Christians stand up before the congregation and say, “I am a sinner saved by grace.” Is this true? Are we really “sinners saved by grace”?
How is this statement a lie of Satan if it is true? After all, we are saved and there are times when we do sin. It’s important that you understand the meaning and the “spirit” behind the statement.
Contrary to popular belief, I don’t believe this statement is as innocent as it seems. It can show a mindset that is contrary to what God is doing in all of our lives. If you ever use this statement, you should say, “I WAS a sinner who is NOW saved by grace.” By scriptural definition, it is impossible to be a sinner and saved at the same time. This does not mean that I do not occasionally sin. It means I am not a servant to sin. This is a dangerous statement. Why? When I make this profession, especially after I have sinned, I’m saying “I really can’t help myself – I’m just a sinner.” In other words, I’m not accountable for my actions because I can’t help it! The fact that I am saved removes me from the “sinner” category. I will walk you through several scriptures that, hopefully, will show you that we were sinners who are now saved by grace.
Definitions: “Sinner”
Hebrew: A criminal, one accounted as guilty.
Greek: Offend; miss the mark so as not to share in the Prize.
These are the only two definitions for the word “sinner” in the Hebrew and Greek. If we were “still” sinners, we would be counted as guilty of missing the mark and not sharing in the prize. The fact that we believe and confess that we are saved and will have a crown in glory goes against the very definition of what a sinner is. Either we are sinners who are not saved at all, or we were sinners (who gave up a life of sin) and came under grace through Christ Jesus and are saved. We can’t have it both ways.
Romans 6:14-18: “For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under the law, but under grace. What then? Shall we sin because we are not under the law but under grace? May it never be! Do you not know that when you present yourselves to someone as slaves for obedience, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin resulting in death, or of obedience resulting in righteousness? But thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed, and having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness.”
The definition of a slave is “a human being who is owned as property by another; a person having no freedom or personal rights.” Each of us is a slave. We are slaves who serve sin or we are slaves who serve righteousness. There is no grey area – you are either one or the other.
A slave has no rights; he or she must do just as they are commanded to do. Now when there were slaves in America (and other parts of the world), the slave master (both white and black – blacks owned slaves too) would name their slaves. The slave would carry that name often after they were freed. For African American, our names were handed down to us and could probably be traced to a slave master.
Now while we were slaves to sin, our last name was Sinner. My name was Rodney V. Johnson Sinner. Your name was “Something Sinner”. We were sinners and carried the name of our master – Sin. Sin was his name and because we belonged to him, we were named as “Sinners.” So I carried the name of sinner. I served sin and I was owned by sin. Wherever my sin master sent me, I went. Whatever he told me to do, I did. I had no choice; I was a slave to sin (a sinner) and I did what slaves do – whatever the master told me to. I could not say “no”. I could not rebel. I could not just do whatever I thought I wanted to do. I had no choice.
But I did not remain a servant to sin. Paul said, “For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under the law, but under grace.” When I was purchased by a new Master, I got a new name; sin was no longer my master. When a slave was sold, the new master would often change his or her name to reflect new ownership. So when I got a new Master, my new Master gave me a new name. I was no longer known as “Sinner”, one who had no rights. All of a sudden I had rights. The one who purchased me gave them me (See Colossians 1:12-14 & I Corinthians 6:19, 20). I no longer am a servant of sin so therefore I do not have to sin. Do you get that? I do not have to serve sin any longer because sin no longer owns me. So when sin tells me to do something that is wrong I can now say “No, No Way, Absolutely Not!” “You don’t own me any longer and I don’t have to do what you say!” Under my new Master, as Paul says, I “have been freed from sin, (I) you became slaves of righteousness.” Now I am slave to righteousness and not to sin. I have been purchased with blood. Acts 20:28 says that God purchased us “with his own blood”. The blood of His Son purchased us, so therefore we have been freed from our former master and now we are serving a new Master.
Romans 6:22-23: “But now having been freed from sin and enslaved to God, you derive your benefit, resulting in sanctification and the outcome, eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Remember the original definition of sin – one who is accounted as guilty, who misses the mark so as not to share in the prize? When our new master purchased us, we became heirs (Romans 8:15-17), as if we were His own Son. Remember, when we served sin, we had no benefits, but now that we serve righteousness, we have benefits. As a sinner, by definition, you are guilty and can’t share in the prize. Yet we claim to have an inheritance. If we truly have an inheritance, then we can no longer claim to be a sinner. A slave has no inheritance. If a slave was purchased from one owner and later freed, he or she would receive papers to show that he was freed. If he didn’t move to a state that didn’t practice slavery, he could be taken and made slave again. If a slave was free and chose to visit his or her former slave owner – not the one who freed him, but the one who sold them to their new owner – their former owner could “repossess” them as their own property. You must understand this. When slaves were freed, they didn’t go to an area where they could be captured and returned to slave status. They maintained their freedom by going to a state where slavery was not permitted and freedom was accepted.
Why is it so important that you understand that, as a Christian, you are no longer a servant to sin? The idea that you must continue to sin because you are a sinner saved by grace is a slap in the face to our Father who sacrificed His own Son to redeem us. If the blood was sufficient enough to save and cleanse us, then it was sufficient enough to keep us – if we want to be kept. As a former slave, it would have been suicide for me to go back to my former slave owner as a free man. My former slave owner would have taken away my freedom papers. Well Satan is the same way. Through sin, he will try and take away your freedom papers. You cannot serve two Masters and Satan wants you to choose him over God. Now if he has to convince you that you can claim to be saved and yet continue to sin at will in order to get you, then he will. He is not above lying to you to get what he wants. Let me give you one more scripture to close this out, one that I believe can be applied here.
Matthew 6:24: “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.”
The point of what Jesus was saying is that we can’t serve two masters – we could not be loyal to both. We have to choose. If you believe that you are a sinner who is saved by grace, and that justifies your sin, you are trying to serve two masters. You have been set free from sin and therefore you do not have to sin. I don’t care if you are born in, bathe in it, dipped in it and live around it; you do not have to sin. Sin is a choice; a bad one at best.
When you say that you are a sinner saved by grace, you are really saying that the power of the Holy Spirit to renew your mind, change your habit (if you submit) is not enough to keep you from sinner. I disagree. You are not sinners who are saved by grace. You are not sinners by definition. You are children of God who has a new name and an inheritance. When I was a slave to sin, I acted like it. I served my master well – I was a very good sinner. When my new Master purchased me, my old ways of doing things was still present; it was all I knew. But over time, I learned new things, new skills, and new ways of doing things. I put away from me the old things, my old ways of acting – not wanting to ever return to that level of bondage. I have a new owner and if you are saved, you have a new owner too. You do not have to be a sinner. You are not a sinner who is saved by grace. Do not believe this lie. Do not let this lie make you comfortable in sinning. You were a sinner who is now saved by grace. I will leave you with this verse from Romans 6.
Romans 6:1-7: “What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it? Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection. Knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; for he who has died is freed from sin.”
