Why Calling Yourself “Just a Sinner” Decreases Your Worth as a Christian

I have been putting on the armor of God (Ephesians 6:10-18) for some time, but I can still recall the first time I considered my own righteousness. As I routinely said the words I was so familiar with about the breastplate of righteousness the Lord spoke to my heart.

“You’re righteous.”

Wait. What?! I’ll be honest. I kinda wanted to argue with God on that one.

I’m not righteous, I thought. I’m a dirty ole mess.

“You are righteous because I have made you righteous. Because of me in you, you can be called righteous.”

This was a hard pill for me to swallow. I had grown up in a religious system that said, “you’re a sinner!” And that was pretty much what I got out of it all. I knew that my sinful nature made me unworthy of eternal life! I mean, I believed I was going to heaven, but I most identified myself as a Christian by the title of sinner.

How many times have you said, “I’m just a sinner?”

How often do we humbly proclaim our human nature as sinful, but in the process decrease our worth as Christ followers? It is indeed true that our sin makes us less, but we somehow forget that He makes us more. We become so indoctrinated to the idea of our nature being chock-full of sin that it overshadows the truth that we are new creations in Christ. When we accept Christ as our personal savior we are made new, but the devil will try to tell us that we’re still unworthy because of sin. And while it’s true that sin separates us from God, the fact is that the blood of Jesus redeems us to the Father.