Gently and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers

by Dane Ortlund

Published by Crossway

Reviewed by Lorraine Triggs

When I first picked up Dane Ortlund’s book, I naturally gravitated to the subtitle, “The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers,” and thought, “Oh, a book about me—sinner and sufferer.” I was wrong. Ortlund’s book isn’t about me or you at all. It’s all about Jesus, gentle and lowly. Though not about us, the book is for “the discouraged, the frustrated, the weary, the disenchanted, the cynical, the empty.” If that’s the intended audience, it won’t surprise me if Dane Ortlund has a best seller on his hands, especially these days.

Using various Bible passages, teachings from the Puritans and other writers, the author looks at what he describes as “the single diamond of Christ’s heart from many different angles.” The first Scripture passage up for discussion is Matthew 11:29, the basis for not only the book’s title but also its premise—“the point is that Jesus deals gently and only gently with all sinners who come to him, irrespective of their particular offense and just how heinous it is.”

According to Ortlund, “In the one place in the Bible where the Son of God pulls backs the veil and lets us peer way down into the core of who he is, we are not told that he is ‘austere and demanding in heart.’ We are not told that he is ‘exalted and dignified in heart.’ We are not even told that he is ‘joyful and generous in heart.’ Letting Jesus set the terms, his surprising claim is that he is ‘gentle and lowly in heart.’ By far, one of my favorite sentences in the book is this: “If Jesus hosted his own personal website, the most prominent line of the ‘About Me’ dropdown would read: GENTLE AND LOWLY IN HEART.”

Ortlund primarily integrates teaching from Jonathan Edwards, Thomas Goodwin and John Owen, with teaching from John Bunyan, B.B. Warfield and Richard Sibbes strategically placed throughout the book. And the preacher who preached, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” was the same preacher “who affirmed that God ‘delights in mercy, but judgment is his strange work.’”

Dr. Ortlund goes on to write that the Puritans “affirmed and preached and taught divine wrath and an eternal hell. They saw these doctrines in the Bible. But because they knew their Bibles inside and out and followed their Bibles scrupulously, they discerned also a strand of teaching in Scripture about who God most deeply is—about his heart.” (p. 143)

Gently and Lowly doesn’t shy away from doctrine, with discussions about Christ’s intercession and advocacy, but all in the light of Christ’s very heart. There is one chapter devoted to the emotional life of Christ and his permanent humanity, admittedly a difficult doctrine to grasp. However, the author stresses that one “implication of this truth of Christ’s permanent humanity is that when we see the feeling and passions and affections of the incarnate Christ toward sinners and sufferers as given to us in the four Gospels, we are seeing who Jesus is for us today. The Son has not retreated back into the disembodied divine state in which he existed before he took on flesh.” (p. 104)

After several New Testament passages that show us Christ’s heart, Ortlund turns to the Old Testament to show us God’s glory, to show us God’s heart. The stage is set in Exodus 33 and 34 when Moses asks God to show him his glory. Writes Ortlund, “When we speak of God’s glory, we are speaking of who God is, what he is like, his distinctive resplendence, what makes God God. And when God himself set the terms on what his glory is, he surprises us with wonder. . . We expect the bent of God’s heart to be retribution to our waywardness. And then Exodus 34 taps us on the shoulder and stops us in our tracks. The bent of God’s heart is mercy. His glory is his goodness. His glory is his lowliness. ‘Great is the glory of the Lord. For though the Lord is high, he regards the lowly’” (Ps. 138:6).

The book does not make light of sin and God’s judgment nor does it make light of our tendency to “function out of a subtle belief that our obedience strengthens the love of God.” Ortlund reminds us that Galatians teaches that “we are made right with God based on what Christ has done rather than on what we do. To help the gospel, therefore, is to lose the gospel.”

Ortlund writes that the only two words Jesus uses to describe his heart are gentle and lowly, and the first two words that God uses to describe who he is are merciful and gracious. God’s mercy doesn’t come with an expiration date. It’s steadfast love, not fickle love.

Gentle. Lowly. Merciful. Gracious. Steadfast. Imagine the crowds that would line up, in a socially distance way of course, if we stood in line with them as sinners and sufferers making our way to Jesus.

Summer Book Group will meet to discuss this book. The Zoom meeting will take place August 3. 10, 17, 24, and 31. The in-person meeting will take place Aug 5, 12, 19, 26 and Sept. 2. You can order a copy of this book at our website: https://www.10ofthose. com/us/products/7061/gentle-and-lowly. For details of the meetings, contact Wil Triggs at the Church Office or email wtriggs@ college-church.org