Deeper Quotes

“What we all tend to do is walk through life amassing a sense of who we are as an aggregate of what we think everyone else thinks of us. We walk along, building a sense of self through all the feedback pinging back at us. We don’t even realize we’re doing it. And when others are critical, or snub us, or ignore us, or ridicule us, that builds our sense of who we are. It inevitably shapes us. And so we must constantly hold the gospel before our eyes. And as the gospel becomes real to us, the need for human approval loses its vice-like grip on our hearts, because we’re no longer putting our heads down on our pillows at night medicating our sense of worth with human approval. The doctrine of justification frees us not only from the judgment of God in the future but also from the judgment of people in the present.”
― Dane C. Ortlund, Deeper: Real Change for Real Sinners

“None of that matters right now. Don’t give it another thought. All that matters now is you and me. You know you are a mess. You are a sinner. Your entire existence has been built around you. Step in out of that storm. Let your heart crack open to Joy. I was punished so that you don’t have to be. I was arrested so you could go free. I was indicted so you could be exonerated. I was executed so you could be acquitted. And all of that is just the beginning of my love. That proved my love, but it’s not an endpoint; it’s only the doorway into my love. Humble yourself enough to receive it. Plunge your parched soul into the sea of my love. There you will find the rest and relief and embrace and friendship your heart longs for. The wraparound category of your life is not your performance but God’s love.”
― Dane C. Ortlund, Deeper: Real Change for Real Sinners

“True sanctification, true growth in holiness, is internal. It will manifest itself on the outside; "The tree is known by its fruit" (Matt. 12:33). But the tree creates the fruit; the fruit does not create the tree. Edward Fisher, in his famous Puritan treatise on sanctification, explained that external conformity to rules without an internal reality fueling it is akin to watering every part of a tree except its roots and expecting it to grow. The internal realities of the Christian are what define true growth in Christ.”
― Dane C. Ortlund, Deeper: Real Change for Real Sinners

“Do you realize how God treats his children who mistreat his love? He loves them all the fiercer.”
― Dane C. Ortlund, Deeper: Real Change for Real Sinners

“A love so great and so free that it could not be contained within the uproarious joy of Father, Son, and Spirit but spilled out to create and embrace finite and fallen humans into it.”
― Dane C. Ortlund, Deeper: Real Change for Real Sinners

“In the same way that playing matchbox cars on the front lawn loses its attractiveness when we’re invited to spend the afternoon at a NASCAR race, sin loses its appeal as we allow ourselves to be re-enchanted time and again with the unsurpassable beauty of Jesus. Remember what we noted in chapter 1 about “the unsearchable riches of Christ” (Eph. 3:8).”
― Dane C. Ortlund, Deeper: Real Change for Real Sinners

“Who is Jesus? A non-vacillating friend. He perseveres. Heading into the final week of his earthly life, John’s Gospel tells us, “having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end” (John 13:1). Jesus binds himself to his people. No expiration date. No end of the road. Our side of the commitment will falter and stumble, but his never does.”
― Dane C. Ortlund, Deeper: Real Change for Real Sinners

“À mesure que nous discernons plus clairement la deuxième personne de la Trinité – qui elle est et ce qu’elle a accompli – la troisième personne de la Trinité crée en nous une expérience de l’amour divin. Tout comme le soleil procure à la fois de la lumière et de la chaleur, le Fils procure la lumière et l’Esprit la chaleur. C’est cette expérience qui enlaidit le péché à nos yeux et embellit la justice. C’est cette expérience qui nous fait pénétrer plus profondément dans la communion avec Dieu. C’est cette expérience qui déracine le péché.”
― Dane Ortlund, De gloire en gloire: Comment Dieu produit un changement profond chez de véritables pécheurs

“If you felt yourself to be lovely, you could feel loved to a degree, but you could not be astonished with how loved you are. It’s precisely our messiness that makes Christ’s love so surprising, so startling, so arresting—and thereby so transforming.”
― Dane C. Ortlund, Deeper: Real Change for Real Sinners

“That thing about you that makes you wince most only strengthens his delight in embracing you. At your point of deepest shame and regret, that’s where Christ loves you the most.”
― Dane C. Ortlund, Deeper: Real Change for Real Sinners

“But if this is a Savior who draws near to us, who is repelled only by self-righteousness but never by acknowledged shame and weakness, there is no limit to just how deep a transformation is possible in us. It is at our point of deepest guilt and regret that his friendship embraces us most assuredly, most steadfastly.”
― Dane C. Ortlund, Deeper: Real Change for Real Sinners

“The living God is so glorious and kind, he cannot be known without being adored. Those who truly know him will love him, and without that heartfelt delight in God, we are nothing but hollow hypocrites.”
― Dane C. Ortlund, Deeper: Real Change for Real Sinners

“Your salvation in the gospel is far deeper, far more wondrous, than walking an aisle or praying a prayer or raising a hand or going forward at an evangelistic rally. Your salvation is to be united to the living Christ himself.”
― Dane C. Ortlund, Deeper: Real Change for Real Sinners

“work out your own salvation with fear and trembling,”
― Dane C. Ortlund, Deeper: Real Change for Real Sinners

“Jesus, the clean one, was treated as dirty so that I, the dirty one, am treated as clean.”
― Dane C. Ortlund, Deeper: Real Change for Real Sinners

“Might we be lacking an appropriate fear of, wonder at, trembling before, the Lord Jesus, the real Jesus who will one day silence the raging of the nations with a moment’s whisper? Jesus rules.”
― Dane C. Ortlund, Deeper: Real Change for Real Sinners

“the glory of Christian redemption is that it is in union with Jesus that we are given back our true selves. We finally begin becoming who we were truly created to be.”
― Dane C. Ortlund, Deeper: Real Change for Real Sinners

“Christ plunged through death and out the other side into the dawning new creation, and to be “in” him means that he has pulled you with him. To render 2 Corinthians 5:17 woodenly, “If anyone is in Christ—new creation.” In the Greek text there is no verb. What Paul is saying is that if you are in Christ, you have been swept up into Eden 2.0, the new creation that silently erupted when Christ walked out of that tomb.”
― Dane C. Ortlund, Deeper: Real Change for Real Sinners

“Move through your day praying. Let God be your moment-by-moment Father. Hear his voice in Scripture in the morning, and turn that Scripture into prayer—and then let that time with him, that back-and-forth communion, send you off into your day communing with him all day long.”
― Dane C. Ortlund, Deeper: Real Change for Real Sinners

“One of the great mistakes made, generation after generation, through Church history, is to slather rules onto our behavior and think that external behavior is what fosters, or even accurately reflects, vital spiritual growth.”
― Dane C. Ortlund, Deeper: Real Change for Real Sinners

“None of that matters right now. Don’t give it another thought. All that matters now is you and me. You know you are a mess. You are a sinner. Your entire existence has been built around you. Step in out of that storm. Let your heart crack open to Joy. I was punished so that you don’t have to be. I was arrested so you could go free. I was indicted so you could be exonerated. I was executed so you could be acquitted. And”
― Dane C. Ortlund, Deeper: Real Change for Real Sinners

“None of that matters right now. Don’t give it another thought. All that matters now is you and me. You know you are a mess. You are a sinner. Your entire existence has been built around you. Step in out of that storm. Let your heart crack open to Joy. I was punished so that you don’t have to be. I was arrested so you could go free. I was indicted so you could be exonerated. I was executed so you could be acquitted.”
― Dane C. Ortlund, Deeper: Real Change for Real Sinners

“The Christian life is indeed one of toil and labor. Anyone who tries to tell you otherwise is a false teacher. But we cannot receive what God has to give when our fists are clenched and our eyes shut, concentrating on our own moral exertion. We need to open up our fists and our eyes and lift both heavenward to receive his love.”
― Dane C. Ortlund, Deeper: Real Change for Real Sinners

“Love in him is essential to his being. God is love; Christ is God; therefore Christ is love, love naturally. He may as well cease to be, as cease to love.”2”
― Dane C. Ortlund, Deeper: Real Change for Real Sinners

“But here Paul prays that the Ephesians would be given supernatural power—not power to perform miracles or walk on water or convert their neighbors, but power, such power, the kind that only God himself can give, power to know how much Jesus loves them. Not just to have the love of Christ. To know the love of Christ. What’s the state of your soul today, as you read this book?”
― Dane C. Ortlund, Deeper: Real Change for Real Sinners

“If you are a Christian, God made you so that he could love you. His embrace of you is the point of your life. I know you don’t feel it. Even that is taken care of. He wants you to know a love that is yours even when you feel undeserving or numb.”
― Dane C. Ortlund, Deeper: Real Change for Real Sinners

“all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. (Rom. 6:1–5)”
― Dane C. Ortlund, Deeper: Real Change for Real Sinners

“So consider the darkness that remains in your life. The spiritual lethargy. The habitual sin. The deep-seated resentment. That place in your life where you feel most defeated. Our sins loom large. They seem so insurmountable. But Christ and your union with him loom larger still. As far as sin in your life reaches, Christ and your union with him reach further. As deep as your failure goes, Christ and your union with him go deeper still. As strong as your sin feels, the bond of your oneness with Jesus Christ is stronger still.”
― Dane C. Ortlund, Deeper: Real Change for Real Sinners

“Die before you die. There is no chance after.”
― Dane C. Ortlund, Deeper: Real Change for Real Sinners

“As you despair of yourself—agonizing over the desolation wrought by your failures, your weaknesses, your inadequacies—let that despair take you way down deep into honesty with yourself. 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.”
― Dane C. Ortlund, Deeper: Real Change for Real Sinners