Some Christians say “I’m just a sinner, saved by grace.” Some say that, following salvation we have received a new nature and should no longer call ourselves a sinner.

Perhaps both are true.

But if I am to still call myself a sinner, it should not be because I have been unchanged by the Grace of God or am implying (as some do) that I cannot be expected to change or be better than I presently am. To mean that is to say that God’s Grace is ineffective.

Yet the more I know God, the more deeply I’m aware of how much more Grace is available to me if I will but submit myself to the Lordship of Jesus and allow Holy Spirit to work in every part of my life, and the more I deeply long to go further and further down the road of being transformed into the image of my Lord.

So if I say that I am a sinner, it is not because I am still where I was, but rather that, no matter how far I have traveled, my eyes are so fixed on all that is yet available to me that I long to be ready and responsive to cut away any part of my life that holds me back. I am a sinner in that I hold no part of my life as more precious than the prize of drawing ever closer to Jesus, and it all appears to me as rubbish in light of the greater Grace upon which I have fixed my eyes.