If you don't point out sin, or define it, then you cannot express why people might have need of a savior in the first place.
If you can't point out persistent, ongoing sin, you can't ask people to examine whether or not they truly belong to Christ, or whether they may find themselves in the Lord Lord group.
That doesn't work and it's not the method Jesus modeled for us.
When we look at someone and see "sin" we think that's what we need to cudgel that person with. We see a prostitute on the street, and we run over and say, "You harlot! You need to repent of your whoring and come to Jesus!"
Notice the sequence: When we focus on the sin, the sequence is always to fix the sin first, then come to Jesus.
But Romans 6 tells us that fixing the sin is impossible before becoming a believer. Belief has to come first. Before that, the person is a slave to sin.
And we know that. We know that none of us had fully cleaned sin from our lives before we believed.
But when we assail the prostitute "You harlot!" the problem is that the sin we can see is the very sin that person has built the strongest bulwark of rationale to protect. That prostitute has constructed a thousand reasons why she must live that way, and rarely will that accusing Christian have an answer to them.
When Jesus approached the Samaritan woman at the well, He could have said at the outset, "You're a harlot." And she would have countered with the reasons why she lived as she did, and had no other choice.
Jesus didn't do that, though. We've probably all heard teaching about how the time and place the woman was drawing water indicated she was a social outcast--probably because of her sexual relationships. That was the point Jesus led with--the loneliness and ostricization that was exemplified by when and where she was forced by her sin.
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” -- Matthew 11
Jesus led with, essentially, "I know your problem--I am the fix for your problem."
Jesus said this:
No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them....
....
He went on to say, "This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled them."-- John 6
I don't know how many times I'd read that before its implication struck me. What this means is that God has
already worked within every person who will accept the gospel. It's not our clever arguments or strident railing that does it.
People are walking around "enabled" to accept the gospel, and they don't even know it. I have met a number of people who had known they were missing something, and when they heard the gospel, they realized immediately, "That's it!"
We don't know who they are, either. We can't see it on them. But God has seen through their bulwarks of rationales and found what I call their "convicting sin"--and it won't usually be the sin we see from the outside.
They don't need to be told about their sin; that's what the Accuser does. Telling them they are sinners is
not the gospel. It's the Holy Spirit's role to convict them of sin, not ours.
They need to be given the gospel: That's what Jesus does.
Those who have been enabled need nothing but the gospel.
