Believers Were Sinners, Now Saints
Ephesians 2:1-3 “And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, (2) in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, (3) among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others.”
Each one of us was guilty of a life of disobedience to God’s laws before we came to Christ. In other words we were guilty of a life of sin. In the passage of scripture quoted above the Holy Spirit through the apostle Paul teaches us that we were all at one time sons of disobedience. Some of us were more wicked than others, but nevertheless even the ones who tried to live good lives by obeying their consciences still ended up disobeying God’s laws, for the scripture teaches us that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). And so before we came into the kingdom of God we were all sinners and as such we had no hope, but rather a certain fearful expectation of the wrath of God on the Day of Judgment. However I want you to notice in the above passage that the apostle Paul speaks about the believers’ lifestyle of sin in the past tense, and there is a reason for that. Satan on the other hand, would try convincing the church that they are still sinners, and in doing so he has managed to get many in the church to take up his saying that they are “just sinners saved by grace”. But under the New Covenant the Lord Jesus never calls His church sinners, He always calls them saints.
1 Timothy 1:13-15 “although I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and an insolent man; but I obtained mercy because I did it ignorantly in unbelief. (14) And the grace of our Lord was exceedingly abundant, with faith and love which are in Christ Jesus. (15) This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I was chief.”
In the passage of scripture quoted above the Holy Spirit through the apostle Paul teaches us the faithful truth which is worthy of all acceptance, that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. When Paul shared this truth with us he then put himself forward as an example of one who was the chief of sinners, for he tells us that before he was saved, he was a blasphemer, a persecutor, and an insolent man. And so contrary to every bible translation in print today, I have replaced the word “am” with the word “was” in this passage of scripture, and the reason I did that is because the same word translated “am” can also be translated “was”, and in the context of this passage the word should be translated “was”. Sadly the translators, in using the word “am” instead of “was”, would have us to believe that even though Paul was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor and an insolent man before he was saved, that nothing changed after he was saved, and he remained the chief of blasphemers, persecutors and insolent men. In this series we will see from scripture that Paul certainly didn’t agree with the men who mistranslated his letter. So why did men mistranslate this one little word? The answer to that question is that they simply could not believe it was possible that Christians could walk free from sin, for they had forgotten the word’s that our Lord taught us that with God all things are possible. And so they chose to try convincing the church that the Lord’s foremost apostle was unable to overcome sin and in fact claimed to remain the chief of sinners even after being saved. You will find that this series is controversial because it teaches the truth of God’s word that sin no longer has dominion over the born-again believer. And so the truth remains that as believers, we were sinners but now we are saints.
Michael E.B. Maher
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