A few months ago, I was invited to preach at my church, and I decided to talk about social justice because I was a Christian who worked as a public defender. I tried awkwardly to highlight the problems with the "we should help poor people with material goods but never talk about Jesus" extreme and the "poor people are kind of scary - we should pray for them to meet Jesus, maybe preach from a safe distance, but not get physically involved" extreme, and I hoped to describe a view of social justice that is more faithful to the Bible, in which Christians both meet the physical needs of the poor as well as being bold in speaking the truth about who God is. I received Tim Keller's book recently and was overwhelmed with the sense that it was closely related to my sermon, but a million times better. Keller patiently walks the reader through the dangers of non-Biblical extreme views that Christians hold, and he describes the complexities of justice issues in both the Old and New Testaments. He gives examples from his own life and the lives of others (especially a humble and faithful Christian who moved to the Sandtown neighborhood of Baltimore), and he fairly represents the views of people who disagree with him, using plenty of endnotes to reference works by secular philosophers. This book isn't perfect - I found the penultimate chapter to be a little less specific and practical than I wanted - but it's awfully close. This book is a beautiful encouragement to Christians to respond to the grace given to them by pursuing justice for their neighbors, and I think every Christian should read it.