Do you know the heart of Jesus?
Do we really know the heart of Jesus? Have we even stopped to consider that Jesus has such a heart as that can be known? I mean one like we each have. A center. A driving force. A thing about us that most characterizes our motives and determines our actions. You know, a heart.
This is the first of Dane Ortlund’s concerns in his book, Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers. This is a book that I couldn’t more highly recommend, a book that bears truth so good you’ll have a hard time believing it. And best of all, there is absolutely nothing new here.
Thomas Goodwin wrote the book, The Heart of Christ, back in 1651, meditating on the heart of Jesus that exceeds our comprehension. Remember the simple words of Jesus in Matthew 11:29, “I am gently and lowly in heart.” This is the only place, Ortlund reminds us, that Jesus describes his heart in the Gospels. We know and talk often of Jesus’s person and work, but in Matthew 11 Jesus describes his heart. This is who he is when he is most himself. This is the Jesus we might catch “off guard,” in reactive mode, you know, in those moments when people like us don’t have time to compose our appearance. Jesus is compassionate and gentle, the truest friend who would never not love you. Not if you’re his sheep, one of his own.
I worry, with Ortlund, that sometimes we could shrink back from emphasizing Jesus’s love for fear that it will sound mushy on truth. We don’t want to be soft on sin, because the Bible certainly isn’t — because Jesus isn’t! In fact, he takes sin so seriously that he gave his life. He bore the wrath we deserved and suffered in our place. Jesus paid for our sins to demonstrate God’s love (see Romans 5:8). So how can talking too much about that love go easy on sin? It can’t. The most vivid display of the love is it’s harsh response to sin, and now with that sin out of the way, can we rest in this love?
I mean, really.
Isn’t that what Paul prays for us? That we would have the strength to comprehend with all the saints the breadth and length and height and depth of the love of Christ — the love that surpasses knowledge! (See Ephesians 3:18–19). Dear Christian, you have no idea. I’m serious. We can hardly fathom the intensity of Jesus’s love for his people. And we definitely don’t live in it. Jesus, help us!
In fact, and you won’t believe this, but did you know that the things about yourself that you like the least are the very things about you to which Jesus is most attracted? That is his fierce compassion at work, his heart in action. As Ortlund puts it,
That God is rich in mercy means that your regions of deepest shame and regret are not hotels through which divine mercy passes but homes in which divine mercy abides. It means the things about you that make you cringe most, make Jesus hug hardest. (179)
Let us think on this for the next thousand years.
Excursus
The main voices behind Ortlund’s book are the Puritans Thomas Goodwin and John Owen, with a few Richard Sibbes cameos from time to time. One immediate take away from the book before I finished the first chapter was how badly I needed to read old books (which is also not a new idea; and here too). I’ve told the pastors about my new resolve, partly inspired by Ortlund’s book, to always be reading the Puritans here out. That’s also a lasting memory I have of the late J. I. Packer. Back in 2012, as an aspiring pastor then working for Desiring God, I had the honor of enjoying lunch with Dr. Packer, and I asked him for pastor advice. He told me to read the Puritans, and asked me if I had heard of The Reformed Pastor by Richard Baxter. According to my notes from the day, I told him I had a copy of the book but had only dabbled in it so far. His reply: “Well, it’s not a book meant for dabbling.”
I’ve mainly been embarrassed I used the word “dabble” in the presence of J. I. Packer, but now, finally, thanks to Ortlund’s example, I plan to get around to a good, long read. There is something simultaneously deepening and refreshing to the soul to learn from theologians whose teaching has stood the test of time — theologians who wrote for the church from a faithful devotion to Jesus, not mere reactions to their cultural climates. This is especially helpful when these solid saints are mining the riches of God’s immeasurable grace, like in the case of Ortlund’s teachers.
