Content taken from Good News at Rock Bottom by Ray Ortlund, ©2025. Used by permission of Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

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It’s hard to think about. The memories are painful—those moments when we were selfish, reckless, stupid. We all know what it’s like to realize, “My life was boring and confining. I felt like I deserved better. So I looked at that sin and thought, ‘That might be fun.’ But now? The bitter aftertaste of shame and self-hatred and devastated relationships! Still worse, I hate this wretched sin, but I also need it. How do I get free again?” Our ugly secret sits there deep inside us, like a squatter occupying a building. We’re smiling on the outside, but we’re sick on the inside. “What if my family, what if my friends, find out?”

Is there any rock bottom as horrible as that?

At this point, some voices will be very ready to yell at us, “Shape up, you sorry loser! If you’ll get yourself together, all this will go away!” Really? It’s that simple? Maybe you’ve read the poem “If—,” by Rudyard Kipling. It goes like this:

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same; . . .

If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run, Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son![1]

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But if we grow strong simply by a rational decision, backed up with enough willpower, why did Jesus say, “Everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin” (John 8:34)? How can we keep choosing what is good when there is a wild drivenness inside us for what is bad? That is slavery— our slavery.

So to God we turn, with nothing but need. I remember, back in college, my dad writing a magazine article for us students. It was about prayer. The title alone described prayer in a way I’ll never forget: “Go to God, and hang on!”[2] In the article, Dad told this story:

A minister preaching at a rescue mission on Skid Row was quoting Kipling’s poem “If.” When he came to the lines, “If you can fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds’ worth of distance run . . . ,” a desperate voice from the back row shouted, “But what if I can’t?”

We understand. But the people up in their self-righteous mushy middle—they have it together enough, or they think they do, to look down on Skid Row drunks and all the rest of us. Thing is, Jesus dwells down among the lowest of the low. At his cross, our shameful addictions, our embarrassing slavery—everything we hate about ourselves—he took onto himself. It sank him down to death, so that we can get free and live again. No wonder the Bible calls him “a friend of . . . sinners” (Matt. 11:19).

With the grace of Jesus as our only confidence, we can now face ourselves honestly. Let’s think it through in three steps.

What Is Sin?

Sin is not breaking a petty taboo or overstepping a mere tradition. Sin violates the sacred covenant God made with us. Sin also tears down the beautiful solidarity he built among us.

For example, in Psalm 51, David’s prayer of repentance, he uses three words to describe his sin with utter realism:

Have mercy on me, O God,

according to your steadfast love;

according to your abundant mercy

blot out my transgressions.

Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,

and cleanse me from my sin! (vv. 1–2)

First, “transgression.” That is, willful, open-eyed, deliberate revolt against God. David knew exactly what he doing when he took another man’s wife and got her pregnant (2 Sam. 11). He defied God. His behavior was like giving God the finger. This is the same word used for Joseph’s brothers deliberately selling him out (Gen. 50:17). It wasn’t a mere mistake.

What on earth was David thinking? Maybe he was feeling confined by his life of obeying God. Maybe he was ­ feeling sorry for himself, like God owed him. Maybe he started thinking, “Why not break free and explore my options?” Restless self-pity gets us doing horrendous things.

Second, “iniquity.” That is, a warped, twisted, destructive act. This word appears in Isaiah 24:1, where the Lord “will twist” the earth’s surface into an unnatural form. The English word iniquity sounds quaint, old-fashioned. But think of Gollum, that weird little villain in The Lord of the Rings. He wasn’t himself anymore. He had descended into something bizarre. Like Gollum, David distorted and degraded his God-given sexuality from life-giving to life-taking, from noble to repulsive.

Iniquity is like taking a smartphone—brilliant communications technology—and using it to hammer nails. That isn’t what a smartphone is for. It will break.

Third, “sin.” That is, missing the mark or losing one’s way. This word appears in Judges 20:16, where some highly skilled men could sling a stone “and not miss.” We too miss when the map says, “To get home, turn right here.” But we think, “I know a better way,” and we turn left. No surprise, then, that we get lost, waste time, show up late, disappoint others, and more. Sin is like trying to get healthy eating junk food. It can’t work. Sin can only miss out and let us down. We end up lost, isolated, depressed—and too proud to admit it.

David sums it up in Psalm 51:4: “[I have] done what is evil in your sight.” “Evil” is a strong word! Can we be honest enough to use that word to describe things we have done, not just what other people have done?

In each kind of wrong—defying God, misusing his gifts, veering off from his path—we end up in the same low place, with losses and injuries and sadness we didn’t foresee. On his thirty-sixth birthday, the brilliant Lord Byron, still a young man, wrote this:

My days are in the yellow leaf;

The flowers and fruits of love are gone;

The worm, the canker, and the grief

Are mine alone![3]

It’s not as though, if we just sin more cleverly, we can avoid those painful outcomes. No, sin always entraps us in consequences that leave us defeated and shamed. Then our tears flow. Rock bottom, for sure!

How Does God Feel about Us Now?

Does God look at sinners like us with disgust? Why shouldn’t he? Look at what we’ve done—or left undone! What hope do people like us have by now?

The Bible shows us the heart of God for sinners like us, who don’t deserve God. Check this out:

How can I give you up, O Ephraim?

How can I hand you over, O Israel? . . .

My heart recoils within me;

my compassion grows warm and tender. . . .

For I am God and not a man,

the Holy One in your midst. (Hos. 11:8–9)

God is agonizing over his people. What grieves his heart, more than their sins against him, is the thought of not having them as his people. “How can I give you up?” is his way of saying, “I could never give you up!” To God, breaking covenant with us is unthinkable, even when we hurt him. And he feels such tender compassion, not because he’s bending his rules, but precisely because he is God: “For I am God and not a man.” In other words, “I am not touchy and explosive and vindictive, like you. I am the Holy One. I am upholding all that it means for me to be God, right in your midst. The door to your better future opens here: my endless capacity to love you.”[4]

Behold, the God of grace!

And don’t tell him he’s wrong to be so kind. His grace does not need your correction. You need to accept his grace and stop keeping your distance and run to him and fall into his arms. What are you waiting for?

The Bible says Jesus is our sympathetic high priest (Heb. 4:15). The Bible says he deals “gently with the ignorant and wayward” (Heb. 5:2). The Bible is clear: God does not match our sins with his grace. He overmatches our increased sins with his surplus of hyper-grace (Rom. 5:20). His greatest glory is how he responds disproportionately to our sins upon sins with his “grace upon grace” (John 1:16). The whole logical structure of the biblical gospel is summed up in two simple words: “much more” (Rom. 5:15, 17). Your worst sin is far overshadowed by his “much more” grace.

Excuse me for being blunt, but you’ve met your match. You are not such a spectacular sinner that your sin can defeat the Savior. You might as well give in, come out of hiding, and wave the white flag of surrender. What awaits you and me, right down at our lowest rock bottom, is the finished work of Christ on the cross for the undeserving. And we will find such an astonishing hope nowhere else.

All we do in response, all we can do, is receive his grace with the empty hands of faith—and yes, even the dirty hands of sin.

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[1] Rudyard Kipling, “If—,” Poetry Foundation, https:// www.poetryfoundation.org/.

[2] Raymond Ortlund, “Go to God, and Hang On!,” HIS Magazine, February 1968, 30.

[3] Lord Byron, “On This Day I Complete My Thirty-Sixth Year,” PoetryVerse, https:// www.poetryverse.com/.

[4] Cf. Bruce K. Waltke, An Old Testament Theology: An Exegetical, Canonical, and Thematic Approach (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2007), 836.

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