a new creation

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. (2 Corinthians 5:17)
How many times have you heard a Christian say; “I’m a sinner saved by grace.”
I submit that half of this statement is correct. Christians, those who are in Christ, redeemed by the blood Christ, the perfect and forever and only atonement for sin, made alive in Christ by the Holy Spirit who indwells them, are indeed saved by grace.
Half of this statement is incorrect. Christians are not sinners.
I know this may challenge your paradigm. If you are a Christian and you disagree with me, consider why you would refer to yourself and other Christians as sinners. I think there are primarily two reasons Christians say this. First, because we have heard it said many, many times. We have heard it from church leaders and pastors. We have heard it from the pulpit. Second, because we sin it seems to fit our experience. I submit that both of these are poor reasons to embrace something as truth.
Scripture should inform our thinking about everything. As Christians, our worldview is to be biblical, not informed by popular sayings or by forming our own truth around our experiences. Scripture says; “Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” I submit that saying that we are a new creation in Christ, the old having passed away and the new having come, and calling ourselves sinners is a contradiction.
Before I was born again, I sinned because I was a sinner. I still sin, but I am no longer a sinner. I say this because before I was born again I was dead in sin, I was a sinner by nature and behavior; unregenerate sinner was my identity. Now I am alive in Christ. I have a new nature and a new identity. My identity is not sinner, one who is in sin; it is Christian, one who is in Christ.
Yet I live in a body corrupted by sin and in a world corrupted by sin, and I sin. My new nature produces new behavior and at the same time I find that I still do things that I did when I had the former nature. Does this mean I now have two natures, the old and the new? No, I am a new creation, the old has passed away.
The apostle Paul wrote: I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. (Romans 7:15-20)
The apostle Paul battled with sin. He did things he didn’t want to do, things that didn’t conform to his new nature. Paul was a man; he lived in a corrupted body in a corrupted world. He was redeemed and regenerate, a new creation in Christ, living in the old body in the old world. In these bodies and in this world we will be tempted and we will sin, but in the new nature sin is not what we want so we fight against it. We keep fighting or sin wins, there is no other alternative, but we will keep fighting because we are in Christ it is in our new nature to fight. Note that this isn’t an all-or-nothing proposition. We can battle some sin and at the same time give in to other sin. I can avoid committing adultery and at the same be a liar. I can tell the truth and at the same time be proud. Most of us will not commit murder, but who of us has not been angry enough to try and beat another to death with our words?
I suspect that Paul was man who did battle with every sin in his corrupted body and put up a defense against every temptation in his corrupted world. Yet he must not have won all of those battles, or else why would he say; “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.”
Before we go on I need to say something about this passage. There are those who believe that Paul is talking about himself before he was a believer. This is not correct. I come to this conclusion by reading the text in context. The reason I bring it up is because if this is your thinking you will not get what this passage is about. This is the apostle Paul relating his ongoing battle with sin as one who has been born again, who has been given a new nature, and is indwelt and empowered by the Holy Spirit, yet lives in a body corrupted by sin.
If you are a Christian, that describes you. You have been born again, you have been given new nature, and you are indwelt and empowered by the Holy Spirit, yet you live in a body corrupted by sin.
All who are in Christ are fully redeemed. We were slaves to sin, but the blood of Christ purchased us for himself, setting us free from slavery. Imagine you were a slave, the property of another, and could do nothing but what your master commanded. The only alternative is to die. Now imagine that someone comes to your master and negotiates to buy you. You leave with your new master, but instead of pressing you into service he sets you free. You are no longer a slave, you are free! Would you continue to call yourself slave?
We were slaves to sin; we were by nature and identity sinners. We are no longer slaves to sin; we are not by nature or identity sinners, yet we still sin. There is the rub. Why do we act like slaves when we are free?
Imagine being a slave your whole life. Freedom might be a dream, but you would not think like one who is free. If suddenly you gained your freedom, you would still think like a slave and act like a slave. It would take time for your thinking and behavior to change.
In Christ, we are no longer slaves to sin, but we still think like slaves and act like slaves. As we live as free people we learn what it is to be free, we learn to think like we are free, and we learn to act like we are free. We become progressively like Jesus, the One who set us free. We call this sanctification.
The illustration of being a slave doesn’t work for us because we cannot consider ourselves as slaves. We need a more accessible illustration. Think of how many things you do in a day where you are reacting to what you have learned. If you’re driving down the freeway and the guy in the car in front of you locks up his brakes you don’t consider what to do, you react to what you have been taught. Your training takes over. The brain moves the foot to the brake pedal with all urgency because that is what the brain and the foot have been trained to do.
Think of soldiers and police officers and fire fighters and athletes; they devote themselves to many hours of ongoing training so that when they are doing what they were trained to do their training takes over. When they don’t have time to think they react to their training.
Consider a perfect double play. The pitch is hit and the runner at first base takes off for second, the ball, grounded to the short stop, is tossed to the second baseman who tags the base and then rifles it to the first baseman ahead of the batter. This happens because these guys have trained and they are reacting to their training. Each player does what he does because he has been trained to do it.
Now imagine what happens when a right fielder becomes a shortstop. He must be retrained, leaving his right fielder training behind and learning to react like a shortstop.
Our experience is somewhat like this. We have a new position – we are in Christ – but we have to learn our new position. We bring to our new position everything we learned in our old position, and sometimes we react like we did when we were in our former position. Yet, regardless of what our experience suggests, we are not what we were.
Our position is secure. No one who is in Christ is going back. Our redemption is complete because it is complete in Christ, yet we do not completely experience our redemption because we live in corrupted bodies and in a corrupted world. We live with our former training as we are being retrained. There is a tension between the old and the new. Christians live in the tension of being alive in Christ and at the same time living in bodies corrupted by sin. We live in the tension of the new nature and the old training, but we do not live with two natures.
In the new birth we receive a new nature, the old nature is no more, yet we still live in the old body which has been trained by the old nature and will sometimes react to its training. God has changed our position. Our job is to apply ourselves to retraining for and living in our new position, and this will be our job as long as we live here. The best shortstop is the best because he applies himself in practice and he practices throughout his career.