Soft on Sin?

I been accused as such...

Somewhere along the way, we created a false choice that Jesus never offered.

You’ve heard it:

“If you’re loving, you must be soft on sin.”

“If you’re strong on truth, you can’t be kind.”

And Jesus is standing there like:
“Who taught you that?”

Because He managed to be perfectly holy and dangerously approachable at the exact same time.

We’ve Got It Backwards

We’ve turned the church into airport security for the kingdom.

“Take off your shoes.”

“Empty your pockets.”

“Step through the scanner.”

“Sir… we’re detecting issues.”

Of course we are. That’s the whole point.

Nobody accidentally wanders toward a cross because everything is going great.

Scripture doesn’t say:

“While we had everything together, Christ died for us.”

It says:

“While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8)

Still sinners.
Not improved sinners.
Not almost-there sinners.
Not “give me six months and I’ll clean it up” sinners.

Still. A mess.

And Jesus said, “That’s my target audience.”

Jesus Never Filtered—He Invited

Look at who Jesus actually spent time with:

Tax collectors (translation: corrupt and proud of it)

Prostitutes (translation: publicly broken)

Religious people (translation: convinced they weren’t broken at all)

And somehow… all of them were drawn in.

Why?

Because Jesus didn’t stand at the door saying:
“Fix yourself, then come closer.”

He said:
“Come to Me… and I’ll handle the fixing.”

We’re Not the Bouncers

Let’s say it plain:

It is not your job to filter people before they get to the cross.

You are not the holiness gatekeeper.
You are not the sin inspector.
You are not the spiritual TSA agent confiscating people’s issues.

You don’t clean fish before you catch them.

And yet some of us are out here like:

“Once they stop doing that… then they can come.”

Come where?
To the place designed for people who can’t stop doing that?

That’s like saying:

“Once you get healthy, then you can go to the hospital.”

That’s not wisdom. That’s confusion with a Bible verse attached to it.

There Is No “Them.” There’s Just… Us.

We love categories.

We love labels.
We love lines.
We love knowing who’s in and who’s out.

It makes us feel safe.
It makes us feel right.
It makes us feel… better.

But here’s the problem:

The gospel does not recognize your categories.

There is no:

“church people” vs. “those people”

“clean” vs. “messy”

“us” vs. “them”

There is only: US!

All of us.

Broken.
Needing grace.
Standing on the same dirt at the foot of the same cross.

And if you don’t believe that—zoom out.

I mean really zoom out.

Not your street.
Not your city.
Not your country.

Zoom all the way out.

I have loved the Images recently from Artemis 2 of the Moon and the Earth.

“From the moon, nobody looks like your enemy.”

When astronauts started sending back images of Earth from space—do you know what they didn’t talk about?

Borders.

They didn’t say:

“Yeah, I could clearly see where the good people live and where the bad people are.”

No.

They talked about how small it all looked.
How unified it all looked.
How there were no lines.

Just this fragile, floating, blue planet… full of people.

People God loves.
People Jesus died for.
People we keep trying to sort into categories He never created.

One astronaut described it like this:

“You realize… we’re all in this together.”

Imagine that.

You had to leave the planet…
to finally see it clearly.

And here we are—

Arguing.
Dividing.
Labeling.
Filtering.

Boarding up our borders…

Acting like Jesus came for a group.

No—He came for the world.

“For God so loved the world…” (John 3:16)

Not your side of it.
Not your version of it.
Not your preferred people in it.

The world.

So maybe the problem isn’t just that we’re too harsh on sin.

Maybe it’s that we’ve decided certain people are “them”…

And once someone becomes “them,” it becomes a lot easier to:

judge them

dismiss them

avoid them

or worse… feel justified ignoring them

But you can’t lead “them” to Jesus.

Because Jesus didn’t die for “them.”

He died for us.

Strong on Love Looks Like Something

Let’s be clear—Jesus was not soft on sin.

He called it what it was.

But notice the order:

He led with love, not lectures.

To the woman caught in adultery:

“Neither do I condemn you… now go and sin no more.” (John 8:11)

We flipped that.

We say:

“Go and sin no more… then maybe we’ll talk about not condemning you.”

Jesus said:
“I’ll stand between you and your accusers first. Then we’ll talk about your life.”

That’s strength.

Anybody can point at sin.

It takes Christlike courage to stand with a sinner and still call them higher.

The Cross Does the Heavy Lifting

Here’s the truth we forget:

You don’t change people.

The cross does.

You don’t convict hearts.
You don’t transform lives.
You don’t rewrite stories.

That job is taken.

Your assignment is much simpler—and much harder for control freaks:

Get people to Jesus.

That’s it.

Not to your opinion.
Not to your standard.
Not to your version of cleaned-up Christianity.

To Jesus.

Because when people actually encounter Him:

Sin gets exposed

Grace gets experienced

Lives get changed

Without you playing junior Holy Spirit.

Division Is Loud. Love Is Stronger.

We live in a world that is constantly slicing people into categories:

“Us vs. them”

“Right vs. wrong”

“In vs. out”

And the church sometimes joins the sorting party like it’s a spiritual hobby.

Meanwhile Jesus is over here building a table, not a scoreboard.

The cross is the great equalizer.

Nobody shows up impressive.
Nobody shows up deserving.
Nobody shows up ahead.

We all show up the same way: in need.

So What Do We Do With This?

Next time you see someone and your first thought is:

“They need to fix that…”

Pause.

That might be your cue.

Instead ask:

“How do I help them get to Jesus?”

Not:

“How do I correct them?”

“How do I confront them?”

“How do I win this argument?”

But:

“How do I move them one step closer to the cross?”

Because once they get there?

You can step back.

You’re not needed anymore.

And honestly—that’s the goal.

Soft on sin?

Nah

Strong on love.

The kind of love that:

doesn’t ignore sin

doesn’t excuse sin

but refuses to make sin the barrier to meeting Jesus

Because the cross was never built for perfect people.

It was built for people who couldn’t get there on their own.

So stop guarding the door.

Open it.

And point people to the One who’s already waiting on the other side.

The Best Is Yet to Come,

Rev. John Roberts