"Did Jesus come to save sinners so they could remain sinners?" No. In Christ sins are forgiven on account of his blood shed for us, and his righteousness is counted as ours through faith. That is different from recognizing that we remain, in this life, with a sin nature that is being gradually put to death and that we will only finally be rid of after passing into glory. "Or did Jesus come to save sinners so they would become the righteousness of God in Christ, and children of God, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, saints, with access to the Father through Jesus alone?" Yes, he absolutely did. But again, there is an already/not yet aspect to this. We have a down payment on it now in this life, but it will only be fully realized in the resurrection. Trying to act like we have fully received what is promised to us as Christians here and now is what is referred to as an overrealized eschatology. "All Scripture is inspired, but only one man in Scripture is God." You cannot use that to dismiss Paul's self-identification as a sinner, and even the foremost of sinners, post-conversion. Yes, Christ Jesus alone is God and man, but that does not make Jesus words hold more weight than or overrule Paul's words that are Scripture. If all Scripture is God-breathed, then ALL of it is equally the Word of God, regardless of whether God gave it directly in the person of Jesus, or by the Holy Spirit through Paul. Nor can you ignore something Paul said under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit because it doesn't fit with your particular emphasis. If Paul said that he is the foremost of sinners in the present tense, though he was a born-again believer, and if Paul wrote those words under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit such that we can consider them the very Word of God, then we must conclude it is not only acceptable but appropriate for Christians to continue to recognize their remaining sin. Not to celebrate it, but to continue to repent of it. "Since a house divided against itself cannot stand, a Christian cannot build their identity on Christ and sin at the same time, or they will fall." I am not in any way suggesting that a Christian should "build their identity on sin" and Christ at the same time. A Christian should be putting sin in themselves to death through the enabling grace of the Holy Spirit secured to them in Christ. They should be dying more and more unto sin and living more and more unto righteousness as they are conformed more and more into the image of Christ "from one degree of glory to another" (2 Corinthians 3:18). Rather, I am acknowledging that Christians still sin, and sometimes sin grievously, despite being Christians. It is a recognition of the reality of remaining corruption, and therefore the necessity of continuing repentance and dependence upon grace, not advocating that Christians should embrace sin or build their identity upon it. "So if a Christian continues to identify as a sinner after being born again, he is implicitly asserting, 'I know better than God.'" That word "identify" is where I think we are getting hung up. When Paul said, "I am the foremost of sinners," was he identifying as a sinner, in the same sense as someone today might "identify" as a cat, or as a woman, though they were born a man? No. That kind of identification embraces what it means to be a cat or a woman and tries to live in accordance with that identification in order to prove that they really are what they identify as. When Paul said, "I am the foremost of sinners," it was a confession of a reality that he could not deny, but that he most certainly did not embrace. Far from any form of pride, Paul was recognizing his absolute dependence upon God and the grace only available through Christ, not only to have forgiveness of sin, but freedom from it and victory over it. We absolutely must take ALL of what Scripture says into account in our understanding. We cannot ignore one thing God says in his Word because something else seems to contradict it. Our identity, the one we should embrace and try to shape our lives around as Christians, is in Christ and his righteousness imputed to us. Yet that does not nullify the fact that until we enter glory, we ARE still sinners who, like Paul, can and should confess that we are still sinners, repenting from it, and putting it to death by the enabling power of the Holy Spirit, and never embracing sin as our pattern of life. If we fail to hold both of these things in balance, then we have wrongly pitted Scripture against Scripture by dismissing something God has said through Paul, rather than rightly using it to help us understand what Jesus said, and what Paul also said elsewhere in his letters.