“Come to Jesus. He will not turn you away. He will accept you just as you are.” These are common words that express the conviction that everyone who comes to Jesus in faith, recognizing him as the only Savior and humbly submitting to his exclusive lordship, is assured of his full acceptance. “For God loved the world in this way: He gave His One and Only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life” (John 3.16 HCSB). Jesus declared, “the one who comes to me I will never send away” (John 6.37 NET).
Yet popular thought today has corrupted what the Bible means by divine acceptance and inclusion. Coming to Jesus no longer calls for the removal of the offense that created the need for salvation in the first place. No longer are sin and sinful behavior offenses against God with eternal consequences. They have become only differences of opinion or practice that no one has the right to denounce as wrong. Jesus is recharacterized merely as a teacher of love, and God is reconceptualized as one who simply wants everyone to be happy. It is claimed: “What Jesus taught was a radical message of welcome and inclusion and love. I feel certain God loves me just the way I am.”
God does love us just the way we are. His love is not conditioned by our behavior. BUT it is precisely his love that cannot leave us to continue in what will ultimately destroy us. The “welcome and inclusion and love” of God allows—even urges—anyone to come to him SO THAT he can work his gracious work of liberating the sinner from self-destructive behavior. “God demonstrates his own love for us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5.8 NET). Yet that is not all. “When he died, he died once to break the power of sin. But now that he lives, he lives for the glory of God. So you also should consider yourselves to be dead to the power of sin and alive to God through Christ Jesus. Do not let sin control the way you live; do not give in to sinful desires” (Romans 6.10–12 NLT).
“What Jesus did in such a radical way was to reach out to the worst sinners of His day and change them by His presence and His words rather than affirming them in their sins. I call this ‘transformational inclusion’ as opposed to ‘affirmational inclusion,’ which is not the gospel” (Michael Brown). We do not have to change ourselves to be accepted, for we cannot. But when we come to him in repentance and faith, God, on the basis of Christ’s work, accepts us into his presence and changes us (2 Corinthians 5.17).
—Keith Y. Jainga