I was sitting in my bed last night after watching a live performance of Skillet playing “How Deep the Father’s Love For Us”, thinking and pondering. John Cooper, the lead singer, had been talking before the song, kind of leading into the song by talking about how messed up the world was. Cutting on the rise, teen suicide on the rise, alcoholism, drug abuse, sexual abuse, wars still shaking the world. He gave a message of encouragement. He gave the Gospel of Jesus right there on the stage. As he was talking, however, he said this one statement that I’ve heard very often in the Christian community.

“Wherever you are tonight, whoever you are, I want you to know that Jesus Christ loves you just the way you are, and He wants to be with you tonight. He loves you.”

Such truth in that statement…but I paused when he said, “Jesus loves you just the way you are”. This is something I began to think about and I want to try and explain, mostly for myself, if anything, because the foundation of this statement is true, but the execution and connotations of it are far from.

“Jesus loves you”. Plain and simple, this is true. Jesus loves His creation (John 3:16-17), wants all to come to repentance (2 Peter 3:9), and was willingly sacrificed by the Father so that all who believe would be saved (John 6:57). This is the Gospel of Jesus. His lived a perfect life, died a shameful death, was buried for three days, was resurrected from the dead and showed Himself to over 500 witnesses before ascending back into Heaven. This is love, indeed (1 John 4:10).

However, this act was not done for the righteous. Paul explains quite well that “while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person-though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die- but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:6-8)

Additionally, Paul, in his letter to Timothy (1 Timothy 1:8-11), outlines us for who we are:

“Now we know that the law is good, if one uses it lawfully, understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who strike their fathers and mothers, for murderers, the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality, enslavers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine, in accordance with the glorious gospel of the blessed God with which I have been entrusted.“

Others, like the prophet Isaiah, says “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way.“(Isaiah 53:6)

We are labeled as those who were dead (Ephesians 2:1), children of wrath (Ephesians 2:3), alienated and hostile in mind with evil deeds (Colossians 1:21), having an evil conscience (Hebrews 10:22), idolators (Colossians 3:5), and so on and so forth. These are only a handful of passages I found, and the Bible is littered intensely with adjectives and nouns to describe how evil we, the human race, are.

I also found an alarming Psalm that punches the “God loves everybody!” preachers straight in the gut. Psalm 5:4-6 says, “For you are not a God who delights in wickedness; evil may not dwell with you. The boastful shall not stand before your eyes; you hate all evildoers. You destroy those who speak lies; the Lord abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful man.“

Strong words, but all Scripture is God-breathed and profitable (1 Timothy 3:16). Here is what I can deduce from these Scriptures to make a more accurate statement:

We, humanity, are evil and wicked from birth. We are sinners, depraved, losers, failures, heathens, pagans, idolators, and rebels. We run from God to Hell, separated by our own sin and choice. We have gone astray, pridefully stating with our sin that we can do better than God, and that we can be like God, or even be God.

God hates the wicked and our sin. He promises destruction for us, His enemies. He abhors our evil and will exact righteous judgment upon His enemies. His reign is holy and He is good, and in order for Him to be just and good, He must punish the wicked and destroy evil from His creation.

Thankfully, this is not the end of the story. God hates us because we are evil, but because of Jesus, He will love us. Through redemption and regeneration, we are no longer children of wrath but instead children of God. This is when God says, “I love you.” Jesus made a way so that we could be loved, a way for us to be reconciled to the Father.

There is a process that needs to happen, however, and this is where the phrase “Jesus loves you just the way you are” is faulty. God does not love us just the way we are, because the way we are is sinful and evil. In fact, God doesn’t even want to fix us. We aren’t broken pots just to be glued back together. We don’t change for God to love us. God loves us, and then we change. But there is something that happens in between that.

God doesn’t want to fix us. He wants to kill us.

Matthew 16:24: “Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.“
Romans 6:6-9: “We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.“
Colossians 3:5-6: “Put to death therefore what is earthly in you:  sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.“

This isn’t a physical killing, though it is physically apparent. The rebel within us needs to die, the master of sin in our lives must be put to death. Our “old man” must be crucified, a horrendous and shameful death, but through death of our sin comes life.

Beautifully written is 2 Corinthians 5:17-18: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.  The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.“

We are not fixed, we are made new. We are not bandaged up, we are reborn. This doesn’t mean that we are no longer sinners, but it means that the ownership of our lives has passed from sin to Jesus. He owns us, we are His, and though we may turn and run at times, though we still sin, He continues to love us and pursue us and bring us back to Him.

Jesus doesn’t “love us just the way we are”. Jesus love us in spite of who we are. He loves us in a contradicting way of what our sin deserves. If Jesus loved us just the way we are, there would have been no reason for His crucifixion. There would be no reason to pursue holiness, and in fact, there would be no reason for us to seek to live righteously with Him. Jesus loves us, and this is true, but in spite of who we are and what we deserve. That’s grace.

In this, we don’t have to try and earn God’s love. That’s religion, and it’s disgusting. Grace says that we are forgiven by God when He chooses to love us, and grace says that there’s nothing we can do to earn God’s love and there’s nothing we can do to unearn it. However, just because grace is there, we don’t just go around sinning because of it (Romans 6:1). By the grace of the Father and the sacrifice of the Son and the power of the Holy Spirit, we can live in life and newness. That’s grace.

“Jesus loves you just the way you are”, eh, not so much. But Jesus will love us even though we deserve Hell, conscious eternal torment in separation from Him. Jesus loves you, which changes the way we are.

Just some thoughts. I’m not bashing people who use the sentence, I’m just trying to provide some clarity to it so that we can think through the catchy Christianese that we use, sometimes without thinking. Hope this was as helpful to anyone who reads it as it was for me.

 Authored by

Corey David Miller