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

by Dane C. Ortlund

The point in saying that Jesus is lowly is that he is accessible.

You don’t need to unburden or collect yourself and then come to Jesus. Your very burden is what qualifies you to come.

Yet German theologian Jürgen Moltmann points out that miracles are not an interruption of the natural order but the restoration of the natural order. We are so used to a fallen world that sickness, disease, pain, and death seem natural. In fact, they are the interruption.

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.

To no one will Jesus be neutral.

We say, “But I . . .” He says, “I will never cast out.”

The greater the misery is, the more is the pity when the party is beloved.

It is the most counterintuitive aspect of Christianity, that we are declared right with God not once we begin to get our act together but once we collapse into honest acknowledgment that we never will.

The atonement accomplished our salvation; intercession is the moment-by-moment application of that atoning work.

To speak of God the Father as “the Father of mercies” is to say that he is the one who multiplies compassionate mercies to his needful, wayward, messy, fallen, wandering people.

For God to be merciful is for God to be God.

Yahweh needs no provoking to love, only to anger. We need no provoking to anger, only to love. Once again, the Bible is one long attempt to deconstruct our natural vision of who God actually is.)

It is God’s own way of saying: There is no termination date on my commitment to you. You can’t get rid of my grace to you. You can’t outrun my mercy. You can’t evade my goodness. My heart is set on you.

The sun is shining. It cannot stop. Clouds, no clouds—sin, no sin—the tender heart of the Son of God is shining on me.

He and his Son took the initiative. On terms of grace and grace alone. In defiance of what we deserved.

Gentleness and lowliness of heart is who Christ is steadily, consistently, everlastingly, when all loveliness in us has withered.