DELIVERANCE FROM THE SINNER

...So we see that objectively the Blood deals with our sins. The Lord Jesus has borne them on the Cross for us as our Substitute and has thereby obtained for us forgiveness, justification and reconciliation. But we must now go a step further in the plan of God to understand how deals with the sin principle in us. The Blood can wash away my sins, but cannot wash away my 'old man'. It needs the Cross to crucify me. The Blood deals with sins, but the Cross deals with the sinner.

You will scarcely find the word 'sinner' in the first four chapter of Romans. This because there the sinner himself is not mainly in view, but rather the sins he has committed. The word 'sinner' first comes into prominence only in chapter 5, and it is important to notice how the sinner is introduced. In that chapter a sinner is said to be a sinner because he is born a sinner; not because he has committed sins. The distinction is important. It is true that often, when a Gospel worker wants to convince a man in the street that he is a sinner, he will use the favourite verse Romans 3.23, where it says that "all have sinned"; but this use of the verse is not strictly justified by the Scriptures. Those who so use it are in danger of arguing the wrong way around, for the teaching of Romans is not that we are sinners because we commit sins, but that we sin because we are sinners. We are sinners by constitution rather than by action. As Romans 5.19 expresses it: "Through the one man's disobedience the many were made [or constituted] sinners."

How were we constituted sinners? By Adam's disobedience. We do not become sinners by what we have done but because of what Adam has done and has become. So chapter 3 draws our attention to what we have done - "all have sinned" - but it is nevertheless not because we have done it that we become sinners.
One who sins is a sinner, but it is equally true that one who does not sin, if he is of Adam's race, is a sinner too, and in need of redemption. Do you follow me? There are bad sinners and there are good sinners, there are moral sinners and there are corrupt sinners, but they are all alike sinners. We sometimes think that if only we had not done certain things all would be well; but the trouble lies far deeper than in what we do: it lies in what we are.
So I am a sinner because I am born in Adam. It is a matter not of my behaviour but of your heredity, my parentage. We are apt to think that what we have done is very bad, but we ourselves are not so bad.
God is taking pains to show us that we ourselves are wrong, fundamentally wrong. The root trouble is the sinner; he must be dealt with. Our sins are dealt with by the Blood, but we ourselves are dealt with by the Cross. The Blood procures our pardon for what we have done; the Cross procures our deliverance from what we are. (by Watchman Nee)