Author: Ray Ortlund

Encouragement for Those Who Have Been Betrayed

Betrayal crushes us, because real relationships are built on trust. Real friendship is grounded in the solid bedrock of steady faithfulness. When we trust someone, we take a risk.

April 04, 2025 by: Ray Ortlund

Why Does Betrayal Shatter Us So Deeply?

Betrayal crushes us, because real relationships are built on trust. Real friendship is grounded in the solid bedrock of steady faithfulness we can count on through thick and thin. When we trust someone, we take a risk. We hand over to them something of ourselves deep within. We become vulnerable. If our trust is then violated, it isn’t just our plans that get changed. Our hearts get broken. It couldn’t be more personal—and sharply felt.

The Bible helps us understand why so much is at stake in these bonds we form together. We are not trivial beings, not the way God created us. And the glory of it all shines most brightly in our relationships—or it should, anyway. Scripture shows us the way-down-deep glory, the divine glory, in faithful human relationships. We see it again and again in one of the Bible’s central themes: covenant.

For example, the preface to the whole Bible is Genesis 1–11. There God says to Noah, “I will establish my covenant with you” (Gen. 6:18). What was God doing by saying that? He was committing himself. He didn’t have to. Nobody even asked him to. But God got involved—willingly, sincerely. He obligated himself, so that he couldn’t back out, no matter what it would cost him.1 Why would God stick his neck out like that? Because he cares. He really does care about this train-wreck world. And he’s committed to taking us all the way, to where our happiness will never end.

Rock-solid covenantal faithfulness—God sums up the beauty of it when he says to us, as he does repeatedly, “I will be your God, and you will be my people” (see Gen. 17:7; Ex. 6:7; etc.). In other words, “Here is my solemn promise to you, always and forever. I will be God to you—for all that God is worth. And you will be my people—my own dear ones. We will always be together, whatever it costs me.” And here is my point. Doing life together in that covenantal way is the big, wraparound category for everything else in the whole Bible (Gal. 3:15–29). It is the key insight into the God-defined reality we are living in.

Here’s why I think that’s amazing. Covenant means that we’ve parachuted into a universe where Ultimate Reality is not politics, not even physics, but relationships—personal, lasting, beautiful relationships of promises made and promises kept. It’s who God is, and who God made us to be. Other gods aren’t covenantal. “The idea of a covenant between a deity and a people is unknown to us from other religions and cultures.”2 Covenant living is uniquely Christian. And if a covenant-keeping God created us to be covenant-keeping people together, then violating trust is not only the betrayal of a friend. It is a stab in God’s back.

Let’s all admit how we’ve let others down. But part of God’s covenant with us is to help us even there. He promises to create in us new hearts that will do the right thing, no matter what (Jer. 31:31–34).

The bottom line is this. Covenantal relationships of commitment and trust are not a human invention we can modify for our convenience. The beauty of costly faithfulness is a divine gift worthy of our reverence. Covenantal living is essential to human flourishing. We live together in community by making promises and keeping promises. God dignifies all our relationships with one another with covenantal dynamics.

Here’s how practical it gets. When I walk into a room, in that moment I literally owe everyone there my best. And they owe me their best. We aren’t always good at it. But let’s be clear in our resolve to be faithful to one another, by God’s grace. The essence of our beauty together is a “you can count on me” vulnerability.

When your trust was violated, you weren’t crazy to feel how much was really on the line. Something truly worthy was being trashed. Keeping our word with one another glorifies God and honors people. But betrayal is living hell.

Somewhere I heard Jordan Peterson point out that, in Dante’s Inferno, the deepest level of hell is reserved for treacherous people guilty of betrayal. And their hell is not a lake of fire but of ice. One Dante scholar explains: “This is Dante’s symbolic equivalent of the final guilt. The treacheries of these souls were denials of love and of all human warmth. Only the remorseless dead center of the ice will serve to express their natures.”3 No wonder you found betrayal utterly chilling. What came after you was seriously evil.

There is only one thing more costly than giving our hearts away. And that is not giving our hearts away at all.

There is only one thing more costly than giving our hearts away. And that is not giving our hearts away at all. In his classic work The Four Loves, C. S. Lewis helps us see the alternatives always before us:

​​To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket—safe, dark, motionless, airless—it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.4

Thank you for giving your heart away. Even though your trust was broken, still, you stepped into covenant. You did the Christlike thing. Way to go! The Lord will honor you for staying true to him when it was costly.

This is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. We should not be like Cain, who was of the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother’s righteous. (1 John 3:11–12)

Maybe you weren’t perfect in that covenant relationship. But you were Christian. In fact, that was your crime. It was your integrity that made you someone’s sacrificial lamb.

Notes:

  1. Bruce K. Waltke, An Old Testament Theology: An Exegetical, Canonical, and Thematic Approach (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2007), 287: “Covenant means ‘a solemn commitment of oneself to undertake an obligation.’ ”
  2. Moishe Weinfeld, “be rith,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 90 (1970): 278, quoted in Waltke, An Old Testament Theology, 148.
  3. Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy: Inferno, trans. John Ciardi (New York: Modern Library, 1996), 270.
  4. C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1960), 169.

This article is adapted from Good News at Rock Bottom: Finding God When the Pain Goes Deep and Hope Seems Lost by Ray Ortlund.

Ray Ortlund is the president of Renewal Ministries, the pastor to pastors at Immanuel Church in Nashville, and a canon theologian with the Anglican Church in North America. He is the author of several books, including Marriage and the Mystery of the Gospel; The Death of Porn; and the Preaching the Word commentaries on Isaiah and Proverbs. He is also a contributor to the ESV Study Bible. Ray and his wife, Jani, have been married for fifty years.

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An Open Letter to Anyone Who’s Hit Rock Bottom

If you’ve hit rock bottom, you know one thing for sure. It’s horrible. I know it too. You’re not alone. Jesus is down here, and he welcomes you.

March 24, 2025 by: Ray Ortlund

This article is part of the Open Letters series.

Dear friend,

If you’ve hit rock bottom, you know one thing for sure. It’s horrible. I know it too.

You’re not alone. Jesus is down here, and he welcomes you. His friends are down here, and we welcome you. Rock bottom isn’t where we wanted to go, obviously. But here we are. And to our amazement, rock bottom is where great things are finally starting to happen, thanks to Jesus and his gospel of grace. That’s the first thing we need to know. Down at rock bottom, we discover that hope is waiting for us—with open arms too.

Here’s the second thing we need to know. Before we can start feeling hopeful again, before we can risk getting excited about our future again, we must get closer to God. He is where hope gets traction. He is our hope. Without him, why care about anything? With him, we can face life as it is, and we will prevail. We will even laugh again.

So, our pain gets us to reach out to God with a deep urgency. We’re sure not playing churchy games anymore, are we? But we are wondering, Where do we turn now? We really need God. But where can we find him? Amazingly, God anticipates our need, our question. He tells us where he can always be found:

For thus says the One who is high and lifted up,
     who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy:
“I dwell in the high and holy place,
     and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit,
to revive the spirit of the lowly,
     and to revive the heart of the contrite.” —Isaiah 57:15

Okay then. Now we know. God dwells in two places. He lives way up high, up in the holy place, in eternal heaven above. And he also lives way down low, among the lowly and the contrite, down with the crushed and devastated people, down at rock bottom.

The thing is, we can’t go up to his lofty dwelling place above—not while we’re still living in this world. But we can go down to his humble dwelling place below, down at rock bottom, where the lowly and the contrite are being revived by his grace in Christ. His dwelling place high above is beyond our reach. But rock bottom way down low is where we can go, and where we do go sooner or later. And God loves it down there. It’s where his grace is reviving broken people. They’re coming alive again. They’re getting excited about their future again. What a great place to be! Sign me up!

That’s how Mary, the mother of Jesus, saw it. It’s how she felt:

He has shown strength with his arm;
     he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts;
he has brought down the mighty from their thrones
     and exalted those of humble estate;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
     and the rich he has sent away empty. —Luke 1:51–53

I’m guessing you’re ready to say the same.

Rock bottom is where great things are finally starting to happen, thanks to Jesus and his gospel of grace.

So let’s take our next step. Our part in all this is to accept, deeply accept, a new realization, a new reality. And it’s sobering. Here it is. That life you and I wanted to live, that life we even expected to live, that ideal “designer life” where we’d be happy and popular and well-off and in control, our careers trending well, our children getting above-average grades, and we have enough money coming in to keep trouble out—that life, that world, that social space I call “the mushy middle.” It isn’t heaven above, and it isn’t rock bottom below. It’s a culture floating around in between.

Nearly everybody wants to live there! And why not? That world, with its neighborhoods and career tracks and social events, it’s pleasant, convenient, prestigious. But there is a problem with “the mushy middle.” It’s a serious problem, though few people pay much attention. The problem is, it can be harder to find God in “the mushy middle.” Oh, he’s there all right. Of course, he’s present there. He’s present everywhere. But the clutter, the ease, the selfishness make it easier to marginalize God and harder to experience him. And the reason for our obliviousness there is downright scary. God will never agree to being used as a lifestyle enhancement for the privileged few. Never.

So “the mushy middle” looks nice. But it’s much better to be down at rock bottom. It’s where God is near—so available, his arms wide open.

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What then is happening down in the low place, where God is so wonderfully present? Two things.

One, God is “reviving” the contrite and the lowly. Isaiah’s word “revive” means to reinvigorate. It’s about exhausted people getting fresh strength, crushed people standing tall again, injured people feeling alive as never before. And what if you’re not eager to become more religious? I’m not either. But who doesn’t long for the richness and fullness of life? It’s what God gives to the contrite and lowly.

They don’t deserve God, and they know it. But through the cross of Christ, they receive God with the empty hands of faith. And he gives them all that his grace can do—forever.

Two, the contrite and lowly are also discovering one another. I include this, because “the contrite” and “the lowly” in the last two lines of Isaiah’s verse are plural nouns. Yes, God draws near to the individual: “. . . him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit.” But God also gathers the contrite and lowly together as a new community. And what a community!

The best people I’ve ever known I discovered down at rock bottom. Are they recovering from some hard things? Yes. Some really hard things. But the contrite and lowly are also relaxed, honest, open, gentle, and downright fun. They listen well. They care sincerely. They are tearful, and they are cheerful. They pray, and they work. They believe the gospel, and they confess their sins. You don’t have to wonder about them. They have your back, and you have theirs. I love it down there with those precious people! You’ll love it too.

It's a privilege to be your friend down here, where God dwells and where broken people get their lives back.

God bless you.

Warmly,
Ray

Ray Ortlund is the president of Renewal Ministries, the pastor to pastors at Immanuel Church in Nashville, and a canon theologian with the Anglican Church in North America. He is the author of several books, including Marriage and the Mystery of the Gospel; The Death of Porn; and the Preaching the Word commentaries on Isaiah and Proverbs. He is also a contributor to the ESV Study Bible. Ray and his wife, Jani, have been married for fifty years.

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