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

by Dane C. Ortlund

Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your

souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. (Matt. 11:28–30)1

The heart, in biblical terms, is not part of who we are but the center of who we are. Our heart is what defines and directs us. That is why Solomon tells us to “keep [the] heart with all vigilance, for from it flows the springs of life” (Prov. 4:23).2 The heart is a matter of life. It is what makes us the human being each of us is. The heart drives all we do. It is who we are.3 And when Jesus tells us what animates him most deeply, what is most true of him—when he exposes the innermost recesses of his being—what we find there is: gentle and lowly. Who could ever have thought up such a Savior?

Meek. Humble. Gentle. Jesus is not trigger-happy. Not harsh, reactionary, easily exasperated. He is the most understanding person in the universe. The posture most natural to him is not a pointed finger but open arms.

Verse 28 of our passage in Matthew 11 tells us explicitly who qualifies for fellowship with Jesus: “all who labor and are heavy laden.” You don’t need to unburden or collect yourself and then come to Jesus. Your very burden is what qualifies you to come. No payment is required; he says, “I will give you rest.” His rest is gift, not transaction.

Jesus Christ’s desire

that you find rest, that you come in out of the storm, outstrips even your own.

But for the penitent, his heart of gentle embrace is never outmatched by our sins and foibles and insecurities and doubts and anxieties and failures.

For lowly gentleness is not one way Jesus occasionally acts toward others. Gentleness is who he is. It is his heart. He can’t un-gentle himself toward his own any more than you or I can change our eye color. It’s who we are.

He doesn’t simply meet us at our place of need; he lives in our place of need. He never tires

of sweeping us into his tender embrace. It is his very heart. It is what gets him out of bed in the morning.

Indeed, his perfections include his perfect gentleness. It is who he is. It is his very heart. Jesus himself said so.

But the dominant note left ringing in our ears after reading the Gospels, the most vivid and arresting element of the portrait, is the way the Holy Son of God moves toward, touches, heals, embraces, and forgives those who least deserve it yet truly desire it.

The Jesus given to us in the Gospels is not simply one who loves, but one who is love; merciful affections stream from his innermost heart as rays from the sun.

When Jesus, the Clean One, touched an unclean sinner, Christ did not become unclean. The sinner became clean.

If compassion clothed itself in a human body and went walking around this earth, what would it look like? We don’t have to wonder.

Here we remember that the testimony of the New Testament is that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Heb. 13:8). The same Christ who wept at the tomb of Lazarus weeps with us in our lonely despair. The same one who reached out and touched lepers puts his arm around us today when we feel misunderstood and sidelined. The Jesus who reached out and cleansed messy sinners reaches into our souls and answers our half-hearted plea for mercy with the mighty invincible cleansing of one who cannot bear to do otherwise.

Jesus Christ is closer to you today than he was to the sinners and sufferers he spoke with and touched in his earthly ministry. Through his Spirit, Christ’s own heart envelops his people with an embrace nearer and tighter than any physical embrace could ever achieve.

His actions on earth in a body reflected his heart; the same heart now acts in the same ways toward us, for we are now his body.

Goodwin completes his sentence like this: Christ’s “own joy, comfort, happiness, and glory are increased and enlarged by his showing grace and mercy, in pardoning, relieving, and comforting his members here on earth.”

Translation: When you come to Christ for mercy and love and help in your anguish and perplexity and sinfulness, you are going with the flow of his own deepest wishes, not against them.

We tend to think that when we approach Jesus for help in our need and mercy amid our sins, we somehow detract from him, lessen him, impoverish him.

As truly God, Christ cannot become any more full; he shares in his Father’s immortal, eternal, unchangeable fullness. Yet as truly man, Christ’s heart is not drained by our coming to him; his heart is filled up all the more by our coming to him.

He wants us to draw strength from his love, but the only ones qualified to do that are sinners in need of undeserved love. And he doesn’t just want us to be forgiven. He wants us. How does Jesus speak of his own deepest desires? Like this: “Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me” (John 17:24).

Jesus Christ is comforted when you draw from the riches of his atoning work, because his own body is getting healed.