TL;DR: We all carry labels born from our worst moments. But Romans 8 reminds us that while failure may describe something we've done, it never gets the final word about who we are. In Christ, there is no condemnation.
What follows is the actual transcript of my sermon, delivered July 12 in at First Congregational Church in Loveland, CO, formatted for substack. Audio is available at the bottom.
The Fear of Being Labeled
Have you ever been so convinced that you were in trouble that you could feel it in your body?
Your heart racing.
A pain in your stomach.
Your chest tightening.
Your head spinning.
I remember I was about ten or eleven years old, sitting in my grandparents’ basement watching TV with my cousin. We were doing what kids did in the ‘90s—laughing, joking, making “your mama” jokes. Does anyone remember “your mama” jokes?
I thought I was being funny.
He said, “Your mama’s so ugly...”
I fired one back, thinking I was being pretty clever.
Then he looked at me and said,
“I’m gonna tell her you said that.”
Instantly, every ounce of joy left my body.
I was terrified.
I begged him,
“Please don’t tell her.”
I was the kind of kid who hated getting in trouble. Respecting adults mattered in my family, and my conscience immediately went into overdrive.
I remember feeling physically sick. I kept running back and forth to the bathroom because my stomach was in knots.
Looking back, I think I was less afraid of simply getting in trouble.
My uncle and aunt had recently married, and my cousins were my aunt’s children from a previous relationship. We had all just moved back to Colorado. We really didn’t know each other all that well.
I was terrified that one stupid comment I made trying to be funny might become the way she knew me.
That instead of seeing me as Loren, she’d see me as some disrespectful kid.
Now, whether because it had been a gag all along or because he simply felt sorry for me, he eventually said,
“I’m not gonna tell her.”
Boy, let me tell you—it was like a weight lifted off my shoulders.
Have you ever felt that kind of relief?
All that stress.
All that weight.
All that condemnation...
left my body.
I could breathe again.
When Judgment Becomes Condemnation
I’ve been thinking about that story because I wonder if what I was experiencing wasn’t simply guilt.
It was condemnation.
The fear that one mistake would become my label.
Have you ever felt something like that?
Have you ever made a mistake—big or small—that you worried others would hold against you forever?
That because of one moment you would forever be known as a bad mother...
a bad husband...
a bad friend...
a bad person?
Or maybe worse...
because of those mistakes, you began calling yourself those things.
Even if we’ve never experienced that ourselves, I imagine we’ve all seen it happen to others.
A few years ago, we lived through what many called cancel culture.
There was tremendous energy around calling out public figures for harmful behavior. In many cases, that truth-telling was long overdue. People who had hidden behind fame, wealth, and power while abusing others were finally being held accountable—names like Harvey Weinstein being the most obvious example.
Now let me say this clearly:
That kind of judgment is necessary.
Justice matters.
Actions have consequences.
But somewhere along the way, I think something changed.
What began as judgment often became condemnation.
Not simply,
“What you did was wrong.”
But,
“This is who you are.”
A bad person.
Soon it wasn’t just celebrities.
Relationships were canceled.
Adult children cut themselves off from their parents.
Friends walked away from one another.
Mistakes became identities.
There was no path toward repentance.
No possibility of repair.
No hope of reconciliation.
Only condemnation.
Paul’s Astonishing Promise
And I wonder if that’s where things often go so wrong—not only in our culture, but also in our own lives.
We confuse judgment with condemnation.
We mistake the labels born of our worst moments for our truest identities.
And into those fears, Paul speaks these astounding words:
“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 8:1)
What Comes Before “Therefore”?
When I was growing up in church, I always remember hearing that whenever you see the word therefore in Scripture, you should ask what it’s there for.
In other words, what came before it?
In this case, what comes before it is one of the most honest and heartbreaking passages Paul the Apostle ever wrote.
For the sake of time, I’ll summarize chapter 7.
Paul looks back at his own life and says,
“I keep doing the things that I don’t want to do.”
Paul knows what is right.
He knows what is good.
Yet somehow he finds himself making the same mistakes again and again.
Sound familiar?
Maybe not in those exact words.
But perhaps you’ve said something like:
“I can’t believe I did that again.”
“I thought I’d be further along by now.”
“Why do I keep making the same mistakes?”
Maybe you’re a parent and you’ve yelled at your child for what feels like the millionth time.
Maybe you’ve had another fight with your spouse.
Or another painful conversation with your adult child.
And afterward you ask yourself,
“Why do I keep doing this?”
Eventually, the question begins to shift.
Maybe I’m just a bad parent.
A bad spouse.
A bad friend.
Because Paul isn’t simply describing mistakes.
He isn’t just describing sin.
He’s describing what happens when our failures begin telling us who we are.
Listen to how he speaks about himself.
He doesn’t simply say,
“I’ve done bad things.”
He says,
“I am a bad person.”
His failures have become his labels.
Finally, Paul cries out,
“Who will rescue me from all of this?”
Notice the question.
He doesn’t ask,
“How do I try harder?”
Or,
“How do I finally get my life together?”
He asks,
“Who will rescue me?”
Paul’s answer comes almost immediately:
“Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
Which is why chapter 8 begins with these extraordinary words:
“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”
Notice what Paul doesn’t say, because I think this is important.
Paul does not say there is no failure.
Paul doesn’t say there is no accountability.
Paul doesn’t even say there are no consequences.
He says there is no condemnation.
Because on the cross, Jesus took the condemnation that belonged to us.
Paul writes that because Christ bore our condemnation, our failures no longer get to define us.
Yes, they may describe something we’ve done.
But they are no longer our truest identity.
They’re no longer our labels.
What Does It Look Like to Trust This Promise?
So what does it look like, then, to trust in this promise?
First, I think it means trusting that our worst mistakes—our worst labels—are not our truest identities.
Paul says there is no condemnation for us. Not for someone else, but for you and for me.
Which means the labels that echo around in our heads—
bad husband...
bad parent...
bad friend...
bad person...
Maybe someone else gave you those labels.
Maybe you’ve given them to yourself.
But they are not the labels by which Christ knows you.
Paul’s promise is this:
Those labels are not your truest identity.
Your identity is found in Christ.
God’s beloved. That’s your identity.
God Does Not Define Us by Our Worst Mistakes
Secondly, I want us to trust that God doesn’t define us by our worst mistakes.
Again, I want to repeat this because I think it’s important.
There are still consequences to our mistakes.
There are still things to confess.
There are still relationships to repair.
Paul is not denying any of that.
But neither does God reduce us to our worst moments.
In Christ, our failures might describe what we’ve done, but they don’t determine who we are before God.
Beloved child of God.
Like God does not have a running thread.
God doesn’t have a big file cabinet in the sky.
God doesn’t even have a cloud storage account.
(I was hoping that would land.)
God does not have a running list—or a cloud storage account—of all our mistakes.
Free to Tell the Truth
Thirdly, this morning, I want us to trust that we are finally free to tell the truth.
And I think this is one of the most important implications.
Christianity is not anti-judgment.
Christianity is anti-condemnation.
Judgment tells the truth about what is broken.
And there are a lot of broken things in our world today.
Broken things in our families.
Broken things in our relationships.
But condemnation says that what is broken can never be repaired.
And that’s not the good news Jesus shares.
Because in Christ, condemnation has been removed.
We no longer have to protect ourselves.
We no longer have to pretend.
We no longer have to hide.
We can confess without fear of condemnation.
“I’ve failed.”
“I’ve made a mistake.”
“I’ve hurt someone.”
Not because those things don’t matter—they very much do.
There still may be consequences.
There still may be hard conversations.
There still may be repair work to do.
But confession no longer has to threaten our very identity.
And I think, then, the church should be the safest place in the world to tell the truth.
Not because failure doesn’t matter—but because condemnation doesn’t get to tell us who we are.
When Failure Became My Identity
I wish I had believed those words for myself five years ago.
In 2021, a church plant I led for more than three years closed.
I was quite simply devastated.
I’d poured my heart and soul—and more than that, blood, sweat, and tears—into that effort. It closed for a whole host of reasons, COVID-19 being the most obvious. But like many things during the pandemic, COVID simply revealed or accelerated what was already happening.
We were small, averaging only about thirty-five people on a Sunday.
We were nowhere near financially viable.
And I had made plenty of mistakes along the way.
Frankly, the details aren’t really the point.
We all have things we’d do differently.
We were running out of funding.
I had two young kids at home.
My wife was an ER nurse, literally on the front lines of the pandemic.
And I was quite simply running out of gas.
So when my church planting coach suggested it might be time to call things a wrap, I couldn’t disagree.
In the spring of 2021, we held our final worship service.
There were consequences.
There were things to grieve.
There were things I wished I’d done differently.
Those facts have not changed.
But in the months that followed, something else happened.
It wasn’t simply that the church had closed.
The church closure became a label.
I hadn’t just experienced failure.
I was becoming a failed church planter.
Quite literally, I’d heard those words from other pastors. Never directly, of course—more in the ways we all tend to talk.
And as I looked for other ministry opportunities, I could almost feel that label follow me into every conversation.
In many ways, I had become a black sheep.
After all...
I was a failed church planter.
Some people may have placed that label on me.
But eventually, I placed it on myself.
What made it truly painful wasn’t that other people used the label.
It was that I began to believe it myself.
In the months after the church closed, I actually changed my Twitter handle to @failedchurchplanter, trying to be funny.
A little self-deprecating humor.
But I eventually deleted it.
Not because it wasn’t true.
But because I realized it wasn’t a joke anymore.
I believed it.
And I began to wear it—not as a badge of honor, but as a mark of shame.
It became a weight around my neck that I carried into every gathering I attended.
It shaped my confidence.
It shaped my energy.
It shaped my behavior.
I wasn’t Loren anymore.
Beloved child of God.
Husband to Corinna.
Father to Lexi and Jackson.
Son of Loren and Kathleen Richmond.
Brother.
Friend.
Pastor.
I was simply...
Failed church planter.
And I thought I deserved no better.
A Different Story
Then, in the winter of 2025, something shifted.
I was listening to an episode of the Hidden Brain podcast about reframing our stories of pain and failure as a step toward healing.
As I listened, I had one of those moments where God used an unexpected voice to reveal—or perhaps remind me of—an old truth.
I found myself thinking,
This sounds quite Christian.
Because God has always been in the business of taking what looks like the end of the story and refusing to let it be the end.
I mean, that’s quite literally what happened at Easter.
And I began to wonder:
What if I stopped asking, “Am I a failed church planter?”
And instead asked, “Am I someone who has experienced failure?”
That little shift opened up just enough space within me for God to keep working.
The church really did close.
That fact has not changed.
There were still things I wished I’d done differently.
But failed church planter no longer had to be the final story.
Or the ultimate label.
Because Christ had already spoken different words over me.
“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”
The Truest Label
I don’t know about you.
Maybe you have labels that rattle around in your own head.
I certainly do, at times, still.
But more and more I’m learning to trust that Christ’s declaration is the truest label I’ve ever worn.
Failure may tell the truth about something I have done.
Failure may tell the truth about something you’ve done.
But it does not—
It does not—
It does not—
get the final word about me.
And it does not get the final word about you.
Christ does.
So this morning I wonder...
Is there a label you’ve been carrying around?
A mistake you’ve quietly allowed to become your truest identity?
Maybe no one else even knows.
But Christ knows.
And into that place, he speaks the same promise he spoke through Paul:
“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”
That promise is not just for Paul.
It’s not just for me.
It’s for all of us.
It’s for you.
There is therefore now no condemnation.
That is good news, friends.
That is very good news.
Thanks be to God.
For the last decade or so a phrase keeps popping up in my preaching. It begins with challenging the common motivational phrase from sports or business: "failure is not an option." This is, of course, nonsense. Where human beings are involved, failure is ALWAYS and option. But because of Christ, failure is NEVER final.
Thank you for sharing your experience of failure. I can definitely relate and I’m sure many if not most people have had at least one similar experience. With anything you care about deeply and have poured yourself into, it’s hard not to take it personally when things don’t work out as hoped for and it’s easy see it as a evidence of your own ability and worth. So glad you’ve been able to reframe it and to use this experience to help others.