“Sinners are never saved.” (1st Ed S&H) To most Christians this is heresy. Their whole pitch of Christianity is that Jesus died for our sins! But what says Paul, the earliest documenter of Christianity (some contend, the most accurate)? “Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?” A sinner who stops sinning is dead! - no longer a sinner.
Example: I hate my sister-in-law because she is so selfish. Therefore I am a sinner. I convert to Christianity, get baptized to be saved from my sin. Similarly, I find Christian Science, and start asserting I am God’s image and likeness. However, in both cases I still hate my sister-in-law. What has happened? In both cases NOTHING! The sin and the sinner are the same.
Paul goes on to say “The wages of sin is death.” No getting around it. As long as I hold on to sin, I am a sinner, and as such must die. What then is the promise? "the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” (Paul) When I love God, and my neighbor as myself, I can no longer hate my sister-in-law. I will be dead to the sin, and free from its condemnation.
This all becomes clearer when I relinquish my sense of personality that attaches sin or good(!) to a man or woman. Just as “the only good is, is the good that God bestows” (S&H), so the only sin is the product of a big, self-destructive mistake. Our Wayshower:
“Jesus beheld in Science the perfect man who appeared to him where sinning mortal man appears to mortals. In this perfect man, the Saviour saw God’s own likeness, and this correct view of man healed the sick. Thus Jesus taught that the kingdom of God is intact, universal, and that man is pure and holy. Man is not a material habitation for Soul; he is himself spiritual.” (S&H)