I was meeting recently with a group of colleagues and one mentioned that he was preparing to preach a sermon about the human condition. So I asked if he planned to use the word “sin” during the sermon. I was thankful to hear his response. He said, “How can’t I?”

This prompted me to think about the reality that sin must exist for grace to mean anything. Why would grace need to exist if sin weren’t a reality? Sin made the cross worth dying on. Sin makes the hope of resurrection more precious than anything else we can put our trust in. Sin makes the possibility of relationship with God something to long for. If sin weren’t a reality then we would never experience grace.

Maybe you’re reading this and thinking, “Duh,” or maybe you’re reading this and thinking, “Who cares?” Either way, you’re reading this and I hope you can begin to connect with this simple but tremendously important concept. If human beings aren’t sinful then Jesus died for nothing.

We don’t glorify the human propensity toward sin, but we appreciate the fact that is precisely because we are sinners that Christ came to die for us and extend the unmerited favor of God to us at no cost. In this sense, the reality that I am a sinner or that we are sinners (as members of the human family) is a gift because that reality introduces us to our need for the gift of God’s grace.

As we endeavor to reach out with the love and grace of God in obedience to the Great Commission, we must remember that the world lives (even chooses to live knowingly or unknowingly) apart from God. Our increasingly secular culture (not in the sense of the secular/Christian sub-culture distinctives, but in the sense that our culture is disconnected from the things/ways of God) is hungry to connect with the deep realities of who they are and what it is their hearts continue to long for.

And to anyone locating themselves in this way we have the privilege of and responsibility to introduce them to the risen Christ by the ways in which we authentically incarnate his love and grace.