You Are Loved: The Cycle of Grace

Reframing Sin

This week, I want to pick up on something from Sunday. It's a shift in how we think about sin. Not as a list of bad behaviors to be managed or judged, but as symptoms. Symptoms of something deeper, something truer—that we don't see ourselves the way God sees us.

Take greed as an example. Wanting more than we need, hoarding, protecting. It’s easy to label that as sin. But underneath it is usually a fear. A sense that we’re alone. That no one is looking out for us. That we have to fend for ourselves.

But what if we believed—really trusted—that we are loved? That we are held? That we are seen and safe in God? When we start to know ourselves in that way, when we begin to experience ourselves through the gaze of God, those symptoms begin to lose their power.

The Toxic Cycle of Shame

There’s a cycle that religion often perpetuates, one that’s incredibly toxic. It begins with the belief that God is out to point out what’s wrong with you. That your job is to fix yourself. That you need to be better.

And so we act out of insecurity. We try to prove ourselves. We chase validation. We build up walls to protect our fragile sense of worth. And religion names those things as sin and tells us to feel bad about them. Which, of course, makes us even more insecure.

And around we go again.

Shame begets insecurity. Insecurity begets sin. Sin begets more shame.

The Virtuous Cycle of Grace

But the gospel offers something better. A virtuous cycle. One that begins with Jesus telling you the truth: you are loved. Not conditionally. Not temporarily. But fully, deeply, eternally.

And when you believe that—when you start to know it in your bones—it changes everything. You begin to see yourself as God sees you. You become less reactive. Less defensive. Less in need of all those old patterns.

This isn’t about perfection. It’s about transformation. It’s about living more and more into the person God already knows you to be.

A Story of Mercy

There’s this moment in the Gospels where Jesus meets a woman caught in adultery. The crowd wants to stone her. But Jesus diffuses the moment. "Let anyone without sin throw the first stone," he says. And no one can.

Then he turns to her: "Go and sin no more."

People like to emphasize that last line—as if Jesus was giving her a warning. But of course he said that. That’s what love does. It calls us to something better. But notice the order: first comes grace. First comes mercy. First comes protection.

That’s always the order in the kingdom.

And Jesus doesn’t come back the next day to revoke it. He comes back again and again and again. Every time you stumble. Every time you forget. Every time you fall into old patterns.

And every time he says the same thing: You are loved. You are forgiven. You are welcome. Go and sin no more.

Becoming Who You Already Are

Here’s what I want you to hear: sin is not your deepest truth. It’s not who you are. It’s a symptom of forgetting who you are.

You are not greedy. You’re scared. You are not dishonest. You’re uncertain of your worth. You are not unloving. You’re afraid of vulnerability.

But you are loved. And when you trust that—when grace sinks in deep—it starts to change you. Slowly, surely, quietly. From the inside out.

And all those beautiful things about you—the generous, gracious, Christlike parts of you—they begin to rise.

So this week, let that be your practice. Let yourself be loved. Let grace find its way to the deepest parts of who you are.

It will change everything. I promise.