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

by Dane C. Ortlund

But observe Goodwin’s logic. If the intensity of love maps onto the intensity of misery in the one beloved, and if our greatest misery is our sinfulness, then God’s most intense love flows down to us in our sinfulness.

the Christian life is a lifelong shedding of tepid thoughts of the goodness of God.

the evidence of Christ’s mercy toward you is not your life. The evidence of his mercy toward you is his—mistreated, misunderstood, betrayed, abandoned. Eternally. In your place.

There is an entire psychological substructure that, due to the fall, is a near-constant manufacturing of relational leveraging, fear-stuffing, nervousness, score-keeping, neurotic controlling, anxiety-festering silliness that is not something we say or even think so much as something we exhale.

You find lack of felt awareness of Christ’s heart. All the worry and dysfunction and resentment are the natural fruit of living in a mental universe of law. The felt love of Christ really is what brings rest, wholeness, flourishing, shalom—that existential calm that for brief, gospel-sane moments settles over you and lets you step in out of the storm of of-works-ness.

Our most haunted pockets of failure and regret are where his heart is drawn most unswervingly.

The Greek word for kindness means a desire to do what is in your power to prevent discomfort in another. It’s the same word used in Matthew 11:30 where Jesus says “my yoke is easy.” His yoke is kind.

Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a