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

by Dane C. Ortlund

The heart, in biblical terms, is not part of who we are but the center of who we are.

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

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.

The point in saying that Jesus is lowly is that he is accessible. For all his resplendent glory and dazzling holiness, his supreme uniqueness and otherness, no one in human history has ever been more approachable than Jesus Christ.

“Gentle and lowly.” This, according to his own testimony, is Christ’s very heart. This is who he is. Tender. Open. Welcoming. Accommodating. Understanding. Willing. If we are asked to say only one thing about who Jesus is, we would be honoring Jesus’s own teaching if our answer is, gentle and lowly.

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.

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.

when we hold back, lurking in the shadows, fearful and failing, we miss out not only on our own increased comfort but on Christ’s increased comfort.

When we today partake of that atoning work, coming to Christ for forgiveness, communing with him despite our sinfulness, we are laying hold of Christ’s own deepest longing and joy.

He “co-suffers” with us.

Our sinfulness runs so deep that a tepid measure of gentleness from Jesus would not be enough; but as deep our sinfulness runs, ever deeper runs his gentleness.

Looking inside ourselves, we can anticipate only harshness from heaven. Looking out to Christ, we can anticipate only gentleness.

Our strength of resolve is not part of the formula of retaining his good will.

Psalm 63:8 expresses the double-sided truth: “My soul clings to you; your right hand upholds me.”

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.

Intercession is the constant hitting “refresh” of our justification in the court of heaven.

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.

our haunting shame is not a problem for him, but the very thing he loves most to work with.

we sign up for the law approach to salvation, the slightest failure torpedoes the whole project.

We are sinners. We sin—not just in the past but in the present, and not only by our disobedience but by our “of-works” obedience. We are perversely resistant to letting Christ love us. But as Flavel says, “Why should you be such an enemy to your own peace? Why read over the evidences of God’s love to your soul . . . ? Why do you study evasions, and turn off those comforts which are due to you?”3 In the gospel, we are free to receive the comforts that are due us. Don’t turn them off. Open the vent of your heart to the love of Christ, who loved you and gave himself for you. Our law-ish hearts relax as his lavish heart comes home to us.