O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. – Romans 7:24, 25
It is very wonderful, but it is certainly true, that there are many persons in heaven in whom sin once abounded. In the judgment of their fellow-men, some of them were worse sinners than others. There was Saul of Tarsus, there was the dying thief, there was the woman in the city who was a sinner, a sinner in a very open and terrible sense. These, and many more of whom we read in the Scriptures, were all great sinners, and it was a great wonder of grace, in every instance, that they should be forgiven; but did they make poor Christians when they were converted? Quite the reverse; they loved much because they had been forgiven much. Amongst the best servants of God are many of those who were once the best servants of the devil. Sin abounded in them, but grace much more abounded when it took possession of their hearts and lives. They were long led captive by the devil at his will, but they never were such servants to Satan as they afterwards became to the living and true God. They threw all the fervor of their intense natures into the service of their Savior, and so rose superior to some of their fellow-disciples who did not so fully realize how much they owed to their Lord.
The same truth comes out if we think of what sin has done for us. O brethren, sin has infected the nature of man with a foul leprosy, a deadly disease, but Jesus has cured the disease, and given us a life of a holier kind than we ever knew before. Sin has robbed us; but Christ has restored to us more than sin ever took away from us. Sin has stripped us; but Christ has clothed us in a better robe than our natural righteousness could ever have been. Well do we sing of Jesus,-
“In Him the tribes of Adam boast
More blessings than their father lost.”
~ C.H. Spurgeon
https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3115.cfm