Everybody Is Underwater
We are lost—separated from God with no way back. Throughout history, people have offered answers.
Everybody Is Underwater
Imagine you are scuba diving with a pressurized suit, an air supply and a tether back to the boat. But something has gone terribly wrong. You have somehow ended up on the bottom with your lifeline cut and an empty air tank.
You try to move, but you can’t get anywhere. You need help.
Then you see another diver coming toward you. Hope rises. Surely they can help. But as they get closer, you realize that they are also untethered and their tank is empty.
Then another diver comes. And another. They are all trying to rescue you, but there’s a problem.
They’re all underwater too, with no air and no lifeline!
They have good intentions and are sincere. They are convinced that they can show you the way out.
But they are doomed too. They don’t have air and they don’t have a way back to the boat.
That, simply, is the human condition. We are doomed. We have no supply to keep us breathing and no way back to the boat.
The Bible never tells us that our greatest need is a sincere person or good intentions.
We need air!
We are lost—separated from God with no way back. Throughout history, people have offered answers—teaching, philosophy, morality, religion.
Some offer enlightenment, self-improvement, rules, rituals or just “look within ourselves”.
But there’s a problem with all those man-made plans.
They’re underwater too.
A drowning man doesn’t need another drowning man teaching him how to breathe. And a sinner doesn’t need another sinner to tell him how to find God.
How can someone give us what they don’t possess?
Religious systems and moral teaching can give us rules to follow and even make us look like we’re doing okay. But none of them can put air back into an empty tank.
So, if everybody is trapped at the bottom with us, where is our rescuer?Who can come from the boat with a lifeline and a supply of air?
That is exactly the question the Gospel answers.
The Captain of the boat has sent Someone to save us.
Psalm 49:7, 15:
“No man can … redeem his brother … But God will redeem my soul.”
The answer isn’t another diver. The answer is the One who came down from the boat.
More tomorrow.
