As with the addict there has to be an intervention, an act form without. In treatment of alcoholics some would speak of the necessity of “bottoming out”, reaching the absolute bottom where one can no longer escape the need for help. Then it is finally evident that the desire can no longer be satisfied, but must be extinguished. In matters of faith, the preaching of the cross is analogous to that intervention. It is an act of God, entirely from without. It does not come to feed the religious desires of the Old Adam and Eve but to extinguish them. They are crucified with Christ to be made new.
— Gerhard O. Forde, On Being a Theologian of the Cross
