"Am I a sinner?" Our response to that question has great bearing not only on our status as Christians but also on our ability to demonstrate the healing power inherent in Christian Science.
According to traditional Christian theology, we are all transgressors—born in sin and without hope of salvation except through the grace of God, manifest in Jesus the Christ. Christian Science, however, explains that a vital element of the grace of God is the revelation that a hopeless mortal sinner is not the reality of our being; and that we have hope of salvation from sin because the eternal fact of the actual sinless nature of man in God's image can progressively be brought to light here and now. Christ Jesus demonstrated this radical truth in his unparalleled healing and saving ministry.
When Jesus charged a crippled man whom he had healed, "Sin no more,"John 5:14. he was certainly implying that the man had the opportunity to lift himself above bondage to sin, and to prove he could do better. The reason he could (and we can) do better is that through the grace of God we all can realize the divine Principle and pattern of man that enable us to put off sin.
