But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
—Romans 5:8
I know there are people who don’t like to hear about sin. They think it’s a meddlesome, outdated topic. But it’s precisely against the dark backdrop of our sin that we can truly see all Jesus has done for us. The depth of our sin speaks directly to the great depth of God’s love.
Some are convinced that human nature is basically good. You’ll hear it from the media, from the experts, from the culture all around us. But that idea runs flatly against Scripture. Jeremiah 17:9 says, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick.” In plain language, sin is an offense to a holy God. It degrades our personalities, defiles our purity, and destroys our principles. Left to ourselves, we are not basically good: we are deeply broken.
But our story does not end with our sin. Look at the timing in this verse, because the timing is everything: “while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Not after we cleaned ourselves up. Not once we’d proven we were worth it. While we were still in our rebellion, still His enemies, still running the other way, that’s when Christ died for us.
Let me be honest about how undeserved this is, because we tend to romanticize it. Many believers secretly think God was lucky to get them, “I’m glad He saw I was worth saving.” But that’s not the gospel. God did not look at us and see how worthy we were. He looked at humanity in all its rebellion and said, in effect, “You are pitiful and unable even to help yourself — and I love you anyway, and I’m going to send my Son to die for you.”
And notice the tense, “God shows his love.” Present tense, ongoing, active. His love isn’t a one-time gesture frozen in history. It shows up every single day, in countless ways. He never stops loving us. He doesn’t love us less on our worst days and more on our best ones. He loved us at our absolute worst, all the way to a cross.
That kind of love makes no human sense. We can’t manufacture it and we can’t fully fathom it. It is unconditional, unchangeable, and forever. And here’s the wonderful thing: when that love is poured into us, we have a love worth sharing with someone else.
So, whatever you’ve done, however far you feel from God, hear this clearly. You don’t have to become worthy first. Christ already died for you “while you were still a sinner.” The love is already proven, already poured out.
Turn from your sin and live the life you were created to live, and then take this love you didn’t deserve and give it away.
GOD DIDN’T SAVE YOU BECAUSE YOU WERE WORTHY. WHILE YOU WERE STILL A SINNER, CHRIST DIED FOR YOU.
