Dane Ortlund, Gentle and Lowly

 

My holiday Christian book has been Dane Ortlund’s Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers (Crossway, 2020).

 

The attractively produced cloth bound volume of 224 pages contains 23 meditations on biblical texts on the heart of Jesus, drawing on the work of Calvin, the Puritans, Edwards and Spurgeon. An index and Scripture index will add to its usefulness.

 

Ortlund focuses on the love, compassion and mercy of Christ, who said “I am gentle and lowly in heart” (Matthew 11:29), whilst seeking to uphold God’s simplicity and impassibility. More could have been said about the “emotional life of God” and I’m not completely convinced this is a helpful term even when qualified by ideas such as God’s eternity and incorporeality (see p73). It seems to me there is value in speaking of the “natural” and “strange” works of God (his love and his judgement) (chapter 15) but I think Ortlund is right to think that we risk questioning God’s divine perfections if we think of God as “conflicted within himself when he sends affliction into our lives” (p138).

 

I pick out a few highlights before:

 

The word used for the compassion of Jesus refers to the guts or bowels and reminds us how deeply he feels for us (p26, 106). The Son of God moves towards those who do not deserve his mercy but who desire it (p27).

 

As Thomas Goodwin said, “Christ is love covered over in flesh.” (p32) Peal back his skin and you would find love!

 

Goodwin imagines Christ interacting with the man who thrust the spear into Christ’s side. “I will cherish him in that very bosom he has wounded; he shall find the blood he shed an ample atonement for the sin of shedding it.” (see further p38)

 

Christ is the head and we really are his parts, which he loves (p40f)

 

C. S. Lewis on Jesus resisting temptation like a man continually walking into the wind. Jesus never gave up and lay down in the battle against temptation as we so easily do and therefore Jesus’ temptations were, in this sense, more testing than ours in that he continued to resist them (p49).

 

Notice the parallel between Hebrews 4:15 and 5:2, sunpathesai and metriopathein (p52)

 

Bunyan, Come and Welcome to Jesus Christ (1678)

 

We don’t feel the weight of our sin because of our sin! (p68)

 

Grace is not a thing. The gospel is Jesus Christ and his personal heart of grace towards us. (pp69, 211)

 

The work of the cross was “Finished!” but the intercession of Christ applies what the cross accomplished (p79). Jesus’ intercession hits “refresh” in the courtroom of heaven (p80).

 

Christ prays for us in heaven. Imagine we could hear him doing so now in the room next door! (p84)

 

Jonathan Edward’s sermon “To the children, Aug. 1740” (p95) – those aged 1-14 - ? 15-20 minutes – Matthew 10:37 – six reasons to love Jesus more than anything else

 

As with a photograph in crisp focus, precision in theology can help to bring out beauty (p99)

 

Compassion is the emotion more frequently attributed to Jesus in the Bible (Warfield, On the Emotional Life of Our Lord, 1912) (p105).

 

On the pactum salutis, the covenant of redemption between the members of the Trinity see p128f

 

Goodwin spoke from the floor more times than anyone at the Westminster Assembly (357 times) (p143).

 

On Exodus 33-34 see pp145ff. God’s glory is his goodness. Slow to anger, Heb., long of nostrils (p148)

 

Dt 7:9, not that God’s love will run out at generation 1001! (p149).

 

Pp152f – the parallels between Mark 6 and Exodus esp. Mk 6:48 and Ex 33:22, “pass by”. Jesus thus reveals the glory of Yahweh.

 

“as high as the heavens are above the earth” – Psalm 103:11 and Isaiah 55:9 (p158).

 

With respect to God’s covenant faithfulness, the opposite of his remembering his people for good is not really forgetting but forsaking (p165).

 

Heart, meah, Jeremiah 31, bowels / entrails as in 2 Samuel 20:10. Yearns, hamah, restless / agitated / growling / roaring / boisterous / turbulent (p165f).  

 

Goodwin on God loving your persons but hating your sins (p168)

 

Ephesians 2

Vv1-3 – why we need saving – the problem

Vv5-6 – what this saving is – the solution

V4 – why God saved us – the reason (p171)

 

Our law-ish hearts and Christ’s lavish heart (chapter 20)

 

Jonathan Edwards, “The creation of the world … that the eternal Son of God might obtain a spouse” – The Church’s Marriage to Her Sons, and to Her God – see p206

 

Ephesians 2:7, kindness = easy in Matthew 11:20 (p210)

 

Your death is not a wall but a door, not an exit but an entrance (p212)

 

The Christian life in two steps:

1 – Go to Jesus

2 – see 1! (p216)

https://www.10ofthose.com/uk/products/25689/gentle-and-lowly