Deeper: Real Change for Real Sinners

by Dane C. Ortlund

us. We discover that so much of our lives, so much even of the ways we are blessing the world around us, flows subtly from the fountain of Self.

The basic point of this book is that change is a matter of going deeper.

but real growth transcends them all. Growing in Christ is not centrally improving or adding or experiencing but deepening.

“real change for real sinners,” as our subtitle puts it—as opposed to surface change for theoretical sinners.

A sense of urgency, yes; but not a sense of hurry.

open your heart to the possibility of real change in your life.

but simply a sense of helplessness

Our growth is not independent personal improvement. It is growth in Christ.

we have a domesticated view of Jesus. Not a heterodox view;

for all its doctrinal precision, has downsized the glory of Christ in our hearts.

Let me suggest that you consider the possibility that your current mental idea of Jesus is the tip of the iceberg. That there are wondrous depths to him,

is that the Jesus you are following is a junior varsity Jesus,

ruling, saving, befriending, persevering, interceding, returning, and tenderness.

You will be judged one day not according to what was visible to others but according to what you really were and did.

reduced the Lord Jesus to a safe, containable, predictable Savior who pitches in and helps out your otherwise smoothly running existence?

I mean he is saving and not only helping.

impoverished view of the length to which God had to go in Christ to deliver us?

your dearest and truest friend.

A friend draws near in time of need. A friend delights to come into solidarity with us, bearing our burdens. A friend listens. A friend is available to us, never too high or important to give us time.

He is fully engaged on our behalf, as engaged as ever he was on earth. He is interceding for us. Why? Because we continue to sin as believers.

He is more committed to your growth in him than you are.

Infinite strength, infinite meekness. Dazzlingly resplendent; endlessly calm.

In your smallness, he notices you. In your sinfulness, he draws near to you. In your anguish, he is in solidarity with you.

not only that Jesus is gentle toward you but that he is positively drawn toward you when

You will not change until you get straight who Jesus is, particularly with regard to his surprising tenderness. And

We are told time and again that the way forward will feel like we’re going backward.

of God’s very desire that we be joyously happy, filled to overflowing with the uproarious cheer of heaven itself, that he says these things.

Fallen human beings enter into joy only through the door of despair. Fullness can be had only through emptiness. That happens decisively at conversion, as we confess our hopelessly sinful predicament for the first time and collapse into the arms of Jesus, and then remains an ongoing rhythm throughout the Christian life. If you are not growing in Christ, one reason may be that you have drifted out of the salutary and healthy discipline of self-despair.

倒空自己？对自己的绝望？

But no man can be thoroughly humbled until he knows that his salvation is utterly beyond his own powers,

For as long as he is persuaded that he himself can do even the least thing toward his salvation, he retains some self-confidence and does not altogether despair of himself, and therefore he is not humbled before God,

resplendent with glory.

We were put here to develop this world, to conquer it, to master it.

we construct our entire lives around the throne of Self.

profoundly underplay it.

Evil is the ocean, not the islands, of our internal existence.

because there is a mechanism in you as a result of sin that will always be defending you against every accusation.

solid ground of self-despair.

Christian salvation is not assistance. It is rescue.

You cannot feel the weight of your sinfulness strongly enough. I never met a deep Christian who did not have a correspondingly deep sense of his or her own natural desolation.

see yourself as vile and vulnerable in the presence of Holiness himself?

traction. Let your emptiness humble you. Let it take you down. Not to stay there, wallowing, but to shed the facile optimism that we so naturally believe of ourselves.

but a curve down into death and thereby up into resurrection existence.

if you deflect the searching gaze of Purity himself, if you cover over your sinfulness and emptiness with smiles and jokes and then go check your mutual funds again, holding at bay what you know in your deepest heart: you are wicked.

Like jumping on a trampoline,

Repentance is turning from Self. Faith is turning to Jesus. You can’t have one without the other.

we live our whole lives by faith. Paul said not “I was converted by faith” but “I live by faith” (Gal. 2:20).

For there you will find a friend, the living Lord Jesus himself, who will startle and surprise you with his gentle goodness as you leave Self behind, in repentance, and bank on him afresh, in faith.

Those who collapse into him in repentance and faith are united to him—joined to him—one with him.

controlling center,

because his grace is not a transaction; rather, his grace comes to us through union.