Believing in the Lord's redemptive death for our sins is a crucial item of the gospel, but not the most crucial one. The most crucial thing is that a person open his heart and mouth to the Lord Jesus to receive Him (Rom. 10:8-10). There was a time when preaching about sin and hell was very effective in motivating people to repent and turn to the Lord, but now the world is filled with so many jokes about this message that few unbelievers take it seriously. The truth has not changed but the world has changed. In your own experience, the Spirit may have enlightened you concerning your sins and led you to receiving the Lord with repentance. But the Spirit can work in many ways, not just that one.
So what about repentance from sins? A sister who had recently received the Lord through the preaching of receiving God as life, told us that we probably did not want to come to her house for a Bible study because she was too sinful. Actually, she was a good person according to the standard of the world. Before she received the Lord, if someone would have told her that she was sinful she would not have believed it. But after she received the Lord, the Holy Spirit began to enlighten her concerning her sinfulness. Then she was ready to hear of the Lord redemptive death for our sins. She was ready to be led to repentance and confession to receive the Lord's forgiveness with a heart full of thankfulness to Him.
We should not be limited by our doctrinal concepts when presenting the Lord to people. The Lord in His wisdom dealt with each case recorded in John in a different way to meet each person's specific need. Through that He was also able to meet the general need of each of them, that is the need of receiving Him as their Saviour.