danalwyn

I usually hear it used properly to mark a transformative religious experience, people who convert to Christianity for instance. It's common in certain evangelical circles for people to talk about how they used to be sinners and embrace a lifestyle from the devil, and then they found God. It appears to function almost like street cred, I was really, really sinful, and then God saved me. It also leads to self-reinforcement, telling yourself how bad things were in your previous life, compared to how they are now. They want it to be a transformative experience, the beginning of a new life, which always seems to mean they had to come to it late.

I have no idea how it's treated for those who already were in that life, except that they may have to indulge some sings to get through, but it always felt to me like you were expected to be sinful as a youth (which is sort of logical, because restraining that is hard). Part of it is that the movement spread through adults who had been in other churches for years before being 'born-again', which made the distinction easier to understand.