“Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus.” Romans 8:1 CSB
I had an interesting conversation with a friend of mine who is a deep water diver. He was explaining to me when you dive, you can sink as fast as you want to the bottom. However, you can’t rise up as fast as you go down or the pressure will kill you. You have to rise up in levels, allowing your body to equalize to the pressure as you go. The fastest you can rise up, in an emergency situation is no faster than the bubbles you blow. In other words, think of bubbles floating to the top of a glass, if you were a diver at the bottom of the glass, you couldn’t beat the bubbles to the top, you have to wait for them to get there first. What does this have to do with Jesus? We can fall into sin very quickly, but we don’t recover from it as quickly as we go into it.
For instance, falling into debt is one of the easiest things to do in today’s world. Credit card applications are in abundance, even if you have bad credit, they’ll find a way to get you more credit. House loans, car loans, student loans, debt is very easy to find for all of us. Debt is a very easy sin to fall into, but it can take a long time to recover from it. You can only go as fast as the dollars when it comes to getting out of debt. In the same way, gluttony is a sin. I am a glutton, I over eat and I have weight issues. I have found in my gluttony, putting on weight is much easier than taking weight off. You can only go as fast as the calories when it comes to weight loss. When we are turning our lives over to Jesus, we can only go as fast as He allows us to go. Jesus knows, if we rise too quickly, it’s too much pressure. Jesus knows if people get out of debt too quickly, they never learn how to manage money. Jesus knows if it was easy for me to lose weight, I wouldn’t learn how to manage calories. Jesus knows, we can’t rise too fast. Jesus knows, life is a journey with lessons along the way. We can’t learn the lessons all at once, we can only learn them when we’re ready to learn them. Jesus knows.
But “There is no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1), that is the bottom of the ocean for us. When there is no condemnation, it means all sins have been forgiven. The moment of forgiveness is when we start to rise back up with the bubbles. Every moment after that is God perfecting us, God teaching us, God raising us up to who He created us to be, for His purpose. We can sink quickly to the bottom, but when there, we can always look up. We can find the forgiveness we need, we can begin the journey back to wholeness. And as we’re following the bubbles up, we can enjoy the journey. We can embrace the lessons, we can love the people, we can enjoy the adventure. Life with God is always an adventure, you’re always rising up. Today’s adventure, let someone go in front of you in line!
