Going Deeper

The way that we as Christians grow in Christlikeness is not by putting our heads to work, but by opening our hands to receive all that God is for us in Christ. There is no other way to mature in our faith than to keep our eyes on Jesus.

That’s the main message of Dane Ortlund’s book Deeper: Real Change for Real Sinners — the best book I’ve read this year. He emphasizes his point repeatedly, and refreshingly:

• “The basic point of this book is that change is a matter of going deeper. … Growing in Christ is not centrally improving or adding or experiencing but deepening. Implicit in the notion of deepening is that you already have what you need. Christian growth is bringing what you do and say and even feel into line with what, in fact, you already are.” (16)
  

• “The primary emphasis I have wanted to give is that we grow specifically by going deeper into the gospel, into the love of Christ and our experienced union with him.“ (153)
  

• “My goal in this book has simply been to coach you into that single, simple, all-determining impulse of the heart: looking to Jesus. If you look to him, everything else is footnotes.“ (172)
  

• “This is a book with one point: Be astonished at the gracious heart of Jesus Christ, proven in his atoning work in the past and his endless intercession in the present. Receive his unutterable love for sinners and sufferers. Stop resisting. Let him draw near to you. Gaze upon him.“ (173)

So I’m here for that. 

That is the ascent to which God has called his people from the start, as we saw this past Sunday. That’s the movement back to Eden, to life with God, to holiness, to being like Christ. We grow up into Christ by going deeper into his gospel. 

And part of that going deeper is a healthy suspicion of our own hearts. As Calvin has taught us, the human heart is an idol factory. We are constantly — inadvertently and almost always unbeknown to us — hoisting up things in the way of Jesus’s throne. There are lots of good things, but lesser things, that can distract us from making Jesus our all-consuming passion and all-satisfying treasure. And sure, I know you’ve probably heard this before, but honestly, we don’t hear it enough.

This is something we should make a regular part of our private worship and personal prayer. To help us mine our hearts, Ortlund sketches out a list of questions to consider. I encourage you to take some time and really think over these.

• What does my mind tend to drift back to when I lie awake in bed?

• What do I spend disposable income on?

• What in other people do I tend to envy?

• What is that one thing that, if God were to appear to me today and tell me I would never have it, would make life feel not worth living?

• If I’m married, what would my spouse say I tend to give myself to that makes him or her feel neglected?

• How would my heart — not my theology, but my heart — phrase the hymn, “When ____________ it is well with my soul”?

• What do I find myself praying for that is nowhere promised in the Bible? (100)

Ortlund closes this section with the encouragement:

Every idol is man-made. Every false justification is generated by us. But God himself has come to us with a justification of his own doing. It is the atoning verdict of Jesus Christ. We can only receive it. To add to it is therefore to subtract from it. We simply breathe it in with a heart posture of trusting faith. And thereby God justifies us — God himself. (102)