"For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well."
-Psalm 139:13-14
There seems to be a divide between styles of Christianity, accurately captured by a description made by James Choung terming the two sides as "grace heavy" and "truth heavy". The former style emphasizes God's grace, while the latter style emphasizes our sinful nature. The grace heavy side definitely appears as the attractive option to choose, for no one really wants to dwell on their failures. On the other hand, it largely neglects the reason that Jesus needed to come to earth: sin. But of course, dwelling on our depravity is not helpful either, a problem with the truth heavy side. The following discussion will address these shortcomings in an attempt to balance the two sides out.
For one thing, we know that we are made by God, and God's creation is good. The prime support of this is of course Genesis 1, which actually describes creation as very good. Adam and Eve lived without sin until they ate from the tree, actively demonstrating the goodness inherent in God's creation. The problem comes when we see that sin entered the world and interpret that as meaning that creation turned from good to bad. Truly, creation was still good - it had the propensity for evil, which differs from an innate evil. David recognized the goodness of creation as he reflected on God forming him in Psalm 139:13-14 (above). God's works are wonderful, as he says, and we are God's work. Therefore, we are wonderful; we are good.
The fact that we are good is the answer to sin. If we, as truth heavy believers, see our sin and permit that to define us, we are no better than sin. As a result, we are fully unable to escape the grasp of sin when it tempts us. Knowing that we have salvation in Jesus does not mystically unlock the good inside ourselves, but it does reclaim it. In other words, Jesus did not die for us because we are full of sin but because He saw the good that could be redeemed in us. Now as believers we find the situation to be exactly as Paul wrote so many years ago - our sinful nature is indeed thrown off because it is powerless in the good creation of God! Jesus makes us whole, releasing the chains that bound us. Thus, instead of living as those enslaved by evil we can live in the ways God intended. We define ourselves by the good redeemed in Jesus, and thereby tell sin that we are better. When facing temptation, we can overcome it in the power of our good nature (and indeed Jesus, fully good, never fell to it at all). How you define yourself dictates how you interact with the world around you. Defining yourself by sin leads you into sin; defining yourself by good leads you to good.
Of course, this does not nullify the fact that Jesus still had to come so that we may be redeemed. Here the grace heavy and truth heavy find balance. Nor does this preclude the sacrifice Jesus made as a sin offering to God. The Old Testament offerings were always the best of all things, that is, the first fruits, and everything without defect. We could not redeem ourselves because despite being made for good, we were stained by sin. Again, stained, but not consumed. Jesus, as mentioned, perfectly filled the qualities of a sacrifice: first born and unblemished. In sending Jesus to earth, God spoke to the Israelites in the native language of sacrifice with which He raised them, demonstrating the depths of His love by not sparing even His Son. Perhaps, though, this all seems to leave out repentance. Ah, but no! "My sacrifice, oh God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise" (Psalm 51:17, emphasis added). Spoken by David before Jesus' time, this fits perfectly into the story of redemption. Jesus' sacrifice redeems the good in us, and it is in this goodness that we see our brokenness and are able to offer up our own sacrifices to God through our contrition. Broken, yes, in our repentance, but redeemed and made whole in Christ.