As with wells, everyone’s bottom plumbs a different depth. The deeper the hole we dig, the further we must fall to hit bottom. Yet for those who are called according to His purpose, God is there in the depths, waiting to rescue prodigal sons and daughters from the pit of their despair. Jonah couldn’t hide from God in the furthest reaches of godless Tarshish any more than you or I can hide from Him in the darkest corners of our selfishness and sin.
In my blog Double-Minded, I shared how I invited Jesus into my heart at a young age. After that, I spent countless hours apologizing and pleading for forgiveness. Eventually, it became too much. I pushed Christ to the backburner and wandered into what I call my Rumspringa — my season of “running around.”
Rumspringa— is the Amish rite of passage where youth are permitted to go out into, and live like, the rest of the world for a season. Afterward, they must choose either to be baptized into the community and adopt its world-shunning ways, or to leave it forever. Likewise, God gave me over to a reprobate mind, knowing my sins would eventually become their own punishment.
I knew my actions were wrong, and guilt gnawed at me. But I couldn’t seem to resist the temptations around me. I begged God to help me bring my flesh under control, yet nothing seemed to change. My prayers felt like they were bouncing off the ceiling.
In my pride, I even daydreamed about a dramatic intervention — God Himself descending, blasting a heavenly horn, and thundering, “You! Step out of that cesspool — behold My strength! NOW go, and sin no more!” But if He didn’t intervene, I hoped at least for enough time to breathe out one last desperate “Hail Mary” prayer of forgiveness before I left this world. I was playing Russian Roulette with eternal consequences.
My runaway train finally derailed the day I divorced my first wife. Divorce is taboo in the Christian faith, especially without the “clear” justification of adultery.
Since I had no proof she’d ever been unfaithful, Satan and my own guilt accused me relentlessly. Though much of my conscience had been dulled by years of sin, divorce hit the one place that wasn’t numb — my Achilles’ heel.
A verse I’d memorized as a kid suddenly resurfaced with terrifying clarity. In Matthew 19:9 Jesus said, I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.
There I was — divorced — and now an adulterer! The fearful expectation of judgment haunted me day and night. So I buried myself in commentaries and lexicons, looking for some kind of loophole — anything to justify myself.
Eventually, I assembled an argument that might work in an earthly courtroom. But I wouldn’t be standing before a jury of my peers at the judgment seat of God; I would be standing before the Judge — the One who could recall my every thought, every intention — so that brought me no peace. God’s law had exposed me, convicted me, and slowly, painfully, it was driving me back to my only hope: Jesus Christ.
A New Friend
Eventually, I sought counseling. During one session, I told my counselor about my friend Gene.
I met Gene while replacing the roof on my first fixer-upper. A stranger crossed the street, without saying a word, and started pulling the old gutters from my trash pile. I asked what he was doing. He calmly explained those filthy, painted, 100-year-old gutters… were solid copper — and the scrapyard would pay me good money for them.
Most people, judging by appearances, would have assumed he hadn’t seen me up on the roof and was trying to capitalize on my ignorance and grab those gutters for himself. But having been judged by appearances plenty of times myself, I chose to look deeper, and climbed down to meet this stranger.
Up close, Gene didn’t look or smell so good. He looked homeless — and living in his mother’s garage, he wasn’t far from it. As I got to know him, I learned he was a severe alcoholic who’d grown up in the projects, served time in prison, and struggled to stay employed because of his record and drinking. Despite all that, he never took advantage of anyone. If anything, people took advantage of him — paying him pennies for solid mechanical work, sometimes nothing more than a six-pack.
A few weeks after I began counseling, Gene came to me heartbroken. His mother had passed away. He adored her, and she loved him fiercely despite everything.
Wanting to comfort him, I offered to pay for a funeral Mass in line with their faith tradition.
But as we approached the church doors, Gene froze. He shook violently — not from withdrawal, but from fear. He told me he believed he’d been so bad that stepping inside a church would be a desecration, and God would make the ceiling collapse on him.
I tried to assure him that nothing he had done was beyond God’s forgiveness — but he just couldn’t make himself go in. No amount of pleading, no Scripture I cited, could convince him. He wanted to believe me; I have no doubt of that. His mother had been everything to him — his reason for trying to stay out of prison. But in Gene’s mind, he had already been tried, convicted, and sentenced — and he believed he deserved no reprieve.
As I was telling the counselor this, tears poured down my face. She leaned in, handed me a tissue, looked at me incredulously, and said:
“Let me get this straight… You believe God can forgive Gene for everything he’s done — but He can’t forgive you for your divorce?”
And right there, in that counselor's office, the truth finally hit me.
Putting It in Perspective
Before my divorce, I viewed myself as a sinner — yes — but no better or worse than anyone else. I believed I was inherently good, and therefore entitled to mercy and grace. I wasn’t one of the “bad guys.” I was one of the good guys. Flawed, sure, but my heart was in the right place… wasn’t it?
Scripture says all sin is unforgivable apart from Christ — all of it punishable by death. The wages of sin is death.
Any sin.
Every sin.
God hates sin. When His Son hung on the cross, draped in the filthy sin of the world, the Father had to turn away.
At that moment Jesus cried out, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?
— “My God, my God, why have You abandoned Me?”
His friends — the disciples He had loved, taught, corrected, fed, and walked with for three and a half years — had already turned their backs and fled. But now, in that single, terrifying moment, even His Father turned away.
Jesus hung there, suspended between earth and heaven, utterly alone.
Not one human friend to stand with Him.
Not one divine comfort to sustain Him.
No angel to strengthen Him.
No voice from heaven.
The One who had never known a moment apart from the Father — from eternity past — now entered a degree of darkness and isolation no human soul will ever fully comprehend.
Why did God turn away?
Because perfect holiness cannot dwell with even one transgression — your sin, my sin, all the sins of the world, past, present, and future, all there, all then, heaped upon His Son — our Savior.
He was taking our place, dying the death we deserved to die.
“The soul that sins, it shall die” (Ezek. 18:20).
“Without the shedding of blood there is no remission” (Heb. 9:22).
Someone had to pay.
And yet how quickly we excuse ourselves:
“It’s only a white lie.”
“I’m not hurting anyone.”
“I only thought it — that’s not the same, right?”
Wrong. Jesus said even sinful thoughts make us guilty.
God can offer pardon only because Jesus shed His innocent blood. And knowing that, how can we treat sin casually? How can we return to it so easily, as if it did not cost our Savior His life?
Are we not, in some sense, crucifying Him afresh when we sin knowingly and then slink back to the cross — pretending we didn’t know any better, assuring ourselves we’re still the “good guys”?
Working Out Salvation
The debate about salvation — how it occurs, when it happens, whether it can be forfeited — has raged for centuries. For me, much of that discussion is unprofitable and vain. As the old saying goes, “A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still.” So as Paul wrote to the Romans, “Let each be fully convinced in his own mind.”
That day in the counselor’s office, as I pictured myself standing before God — a sinful man before a holy and righteous Creator — I was convinced: I have no excuse, no defense, no plea except this: Christ’s blood was shed for me.
But how many times can I return to that well of mercy? Seventy times seven? Four hundred and ninety? The number of times Jesus said I should forgive my brother? I pray not — because my sins blew past that number years ago.
My strength fails because of my iniquity.
Lord, remember my frame! Remember that I am dust. You began this work in me — give me the strength to keep working out the salvation You began in me, with fear and trembling. Amen!