In working with other fallen creatures like myself I have found the phrase, “They haven’t hit bottom yet,” very unhelpful. Truly, when I think the human elevator of self destruction is about to “hit bottom” it keeps going…and going. So this is what I’ve learned: sin is no respecter of persons. Sin doesn’t have an altitude setting that will allow you to only fall so far. Sin has dark momentum that overrides our best efforts at control. This is why God, knowing the evil Adam had unleashed, said “What have you done?”
But here’s what else I’ve learned in my own life and seen with my own eyes: there is a power greater than the power of sin. That power is the mercy of God; that power is the cross of Christ. We hit bottom when God says “that’s far enough,” and intervenes in our headlong pursuit of self destruction. This great hope means that the depth of our darkness has no bearing or control over a God of light. “Darkness is as light to Him” in whom “there is no darkness at all.” This means that plundering the midnight pits of hell is His specialty. This is the beautiful doctrine of God’s sovereignty at work. He finds broken, rebellious and hopelessly lost people and rescues them.
There is an Agent at work in the fallen world in which we live. The Holy Spirit, who would never suffer it upon His reputation to leave incomplete the work Christ sent Him to do, fills us and empowers us to fulfill Christ’s great commission to make disciples of all nations. God’s sovereignty, understood correctly, does not lead us to sit on our hands and watch the world “go to hell in a hand basket” but compels us to be His light bearers to the world where we live. “How can they believe in the One of whom they have not heard?” It will be the proclamation and demonstration of the gospel in our goings that will be for some God’s intervening, “that’s far enough!”
Psalm 139:12; 1 John 1:5; Romans 10:14
