Hope For the Ignorant Sinner
And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart. Jeremiah 29:13.
In Romans 3, Paul says there are people who are inescapably lost in their inability to seek God. In fact, he said, “There is none that seeketh after God” (verse 11). If we will seek Him, we’ll find Him when we have searched for Him with all our hearts, but none seeketh after God. Then where does the seeking begin? We are supposed to seek, but none seek.
“‘If a woman has ten silver pieces and loses one of them, does she not light the lamp, sweep out the house, look in every corner till she has found it? And when she has, she calls her friends and neighbours together, and says, “Rejoice with me! I have found the piece that I lost.” In the same way, I tell you, there is joy among the angels of God over one sinner who repents’” (Luke 15:8-10, NEB).
In this story Jesus is telling us, through the symbol of the coin, that it is possible to be lost and not to know that we are lost, and not to know the way back. And the One goes out and looks for this lost coin. In the lost-coin symbol, it was lost in the house instead of out in the mountains somewhere, and perhaps we could go so far as to say it was lost within the church. Or lost in the family. And it’s lost among the rubbish and the rubble of an ancient Middle East dwelling, but the search continues because it is still a piece of silver. It’s still of value, and the value of one soul can never be overestimated in the eyes of Heaven.
“And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me . . .” How? “With all your heart.” “With all your heart.”
It is the sense of need that makes the difference. It is the great finding point. It is the point when we find Christ and the point when Christ finds us. “The Lord can do nothing toward the recovery of man until, convinced of his own weakness, and stripped of all self-sufficiency, he yields himself to the control of God. Then he can receive the gift that God is waiting to bestow.”—The Desire of Ages, p. 300.
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