Peter SmytheA Different Kind of Word Preacher

to open their eyes so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the dominion of Satan to God, that they may receive [remission] of sins and an inheritance among those who have been sanctified by faith in me. (Acts 26.18, NASB)

In the past, the Church has been strong to emphasize man’s weaknesses and his inability to please God, but she has failed in her primary mission: to open the eyes of the unsaved and turn them from Satan’s dominion (and nature) to that of God Almighty. Instead of putting forth the truth of the New Birth and the believer’s inheritance in Christ, she has continually accentuated the denunciation of sins to Christian and heathen alike. In so doing, she has inculcated a treacherous sin consciousness in the believer that has subverted the very meaning of the Gospel.

The moniker of “a sinner saved by grace” is not just a humble social convention, but a repudiation of the success of Christ’s very mission. If the Christian is, indeed, a sinner, then he continues to have the nature of Satan in him. He therefore sits at the same table as those unregenerate Jews who claimed to love God, but who had another father instead:

Why do you not understand what I am saying? It is because you cannot hear My word. You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies. (John 8.43, 44, NASB) (emphasis supplied)

By saying that he is a sinner, the Christian says that the Blood is not enough. The Blood is not enough to cleanse him from all unrighteousness. The Blood is not enough to drive out his fallen nature. The Blood is not enough to render him a true son of God (see 1 John 3:10 - “the sons of God”). By calling himself a sinner, the Christian says that the New Birth, the crowning achievement of Jesus’s mission to give us the God-kind of life, ended in failure. It failed to wipe out the very fallen nature from which we need redemption.

There are those who would say, “Smythe, you’re missing the point. We are sinners saved by grace so we’ll receive that eternal life once we die and go to heaven.” To those I’d say they make a mockery of the sufficiency of the Blood and the Word. The Word demonstrates clearly that death is an enemy (1 Cor. 15.26 - “The last enemy that will be abolished is death.”) and that death will one day be thrown into the lake of fire (Rev. 20.14 - “Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire.”). To say that we must experience death in order to receive the fruit of Jesus’s mission is to say that God needs Satan to perfect our redemption.

Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. (1 Cor. 8.9, KJV)

The evidence of Christians defining themselves as “sinners saved by grace,” demonstrates that the Church has failed to preach the realities of the New Birth. She has failed to communicate the inheritance to those who have turned from Satan’s dominion to light and she has failed to rightly divide the “spirit of Christ.” One who is born of God is no sinner at all, but a possessor of the spirit of Christ (the New Birth) and a “holy one” of God.

[Note: The Greek word for “saint” is hagion which means “holy.” In Ephesians, Paul actually addresses his letter to the “holy ones” in Ephesus. Bear in mind, a “holy one” is quite different from “the Holy One,” but we’ll get into that in future posts.]