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

by Dane C. Ortlund

It is one thing to describe what your husband says and does and looks like. It is something else, something deeper and more real, to describe his heart for you.

I am gentle and lowly in heart. Matthew 11:29

am gentle and lowly in heart. Matthew 11:29

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

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. (...

is easy, and my burden is light. (Mat...

That is why Solomon tells us to “keep [the] heart with all vigilance, for from it flows the springs of life” (Prov. 4:23).

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.

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.

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. Whether you are actively working hard to crowbar your life into smoothness (“labor”) or passively finding yourself weighed down by

something outside your control (“heavy laden”), Jesus Christ’s desire that you find rest, that you come in out of the storm, outstrips even your own.

“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 ho...

Only as we drink down the kindness of the heart of Christ will we leave in our wake, everywhere we go, the aroma of heaven, and die one

day having startled the world with glimpses of a divine kindness too great to be boxed in by what we deserve.

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.

And he had compassion on them. Matthew 14:14

Before they could open their mouths to ask for help, Jesus couldn’t stop himself—words of reassurance and calm tumbled out.

Simply seeing the helplessness of the throngs, pity ignites.

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 cumulative testimony of the four Gospels is that when Jesus Christ sees the fallenness of the world all about him, his deepest impulse, his most natural instinct, is to move

toward that sin and suffering, not away from it.

And what did he do when he saw the unclean? What was his first impulse when he came across prostitutes and lepers? He moved toward them. Pity flooded his heart, the longing of true compassion. He spent time with them. He touched them. We all can testify to the humaneness of touch. A warm hug does something warm words of greeting alone cannot. But there is something deeper in Christ’s touch of compassion.

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

pull back the flesh on Christ and you find love.

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.

For the joy that was set before him . . . Hebrews 12:2

Consider Hebrews 12. There Jesus is called “the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God” (Heb. 12:2).

“Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me” (John 17:24).

“If you meet that poor wretch that thrust the spear into my side, tell him there is another way, a better way, of coming at my heart, if he will repent, and look upon whom he has pierced and will mourn. I will cherish him in that very bosom he has wounded; he shall find the blood he shed an ample atonement for the sin of shedding it. And tell him from me, he will put me to more pain and displeasure by refusing this offer of my blood, than when he drew it forth.” Benjamin Grosvenor, “Grace to the Chief of Sinners,” in A Series of Tracts on the Doctrines, Order, and Polity of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, vol. 3 (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1845), 42–43. I am grateful to Drew Hunter for drawing my attention to this reference.

We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses. Hebrews 4:15

Our difficulties draw out a depth of feeling in Christ beyond what we know.

If you are in Christ, you have a Friend who, in your sorrow, will never lob down a pep talk from heaven. He cannot bear to hold himself at a distance. Nothing can hold him back. His heart is too bound up with yours.

He can deal gently with the ignorant and wayward. Hebrews 5:2

What elicits tenderness from Jesus is not the severity of the sin but whether the sinner comes to him.

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.

Whoever comes to me I will never cast out. John 6:37

“the one coming to me I will not—not—cast out.”

It is not what life brings to us but to whom we belong that determines Christ’s heart of love for us.

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

My people are bent on turning away from me, and though they call out to the Most High, he shall not raise them up at all. How can I give you up, O Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel? How can I make you like Admah? How can I treat you like Zeboiim? My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender. I will not execute my burning anger;

will not again destroy Ephraim; for I am God and not a man, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath. (Hos. 11:7–9)

I am God and not a man, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath.

He always lives to make intercession for them. Hebrews 7:25

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.

“Therefore, since we have been justified . . .” (Rom. 5:1).

Justification is tied to what Christ did in the past. Intercession is what he is doing in the present.