Book Review: Gentle and Lowly by Dane Ortlund

It’s always fun to read a book that’s having such a powerful impact for the glory of Christ and the health of the church. This is one of them. It’s been read widely and loved deeply, for good reasons: its beautiful blend of biblical theology, pastoral warmth, creative word crafting, and clear focus.

What I Loved

The power of Ortlund’s book is in taking a clearly biblical but often overlooked truth and making us stare at it. We’ve all read that Jesus is “gentle and lowly of heart” (Matt. 11:29). But we don’t work out what this really means for us spiritually. What does it mean for the very heart of God to be “gentle and lowly”? What does that reveal about the nature of God? What does it reveal about our own misperceptions of who God is and how we should approach him? How does this truth have the potential to revolutionize how we see and meet with God? These are some of the questions the book addresses. And it does this by engaging with some of the great Puritan writers along the way.

I would say that the heartbeat of the book is this: God is not repulsed by your sin, weakness, and shortcomings. Instead, those are the very things that draw out his fatherly heart to you, a heart showcased in the person of Christ. The gentleness of God isn’t just another facet of God’s character. No — this is who God is, in the depths of his being. His heart has a magnetic pull toward his children in their brokenness. Our brokenness sends him running towards us, not away from us. That’s an idea that many Christians are familiar with on the surface, but they haven’t really absorbed it. They haven’t owned it. They haven’t made it their default perception of who God is and how he relates to us. And that needs to change. I think this book will go a long way in changing that.

Favorite Quotes

I have so many, so I’ll try to limit myself here, maybe capping it at around 20. You’ll certainly have your own favorites if you give the book a try.

• “The heart, in biblical terms, is not part of who we are but the center of who we are. Our heart is what defines and directs us. . . . The heart drives all we do. It is who we are” (pp. 18–19).
• “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” (p. 19).
• “No one in human history has ever been more approachable than Jesus Christ” (p. 20).
• “The Jesus given to us in the Gospels is not simply one who loves, but one who is love; merciful affections stream from his innermost heart as rays from the sun” (p. 27).
• “It is the very fallenness which he came to undo that is most irresistibly attractive to him. This is deeper than saying Jesus is loving or merciful or gracious. 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” (p. 30).
• “As we go down into pain and anguish, we are descending ever deeper into Christ’s very heart, not away from it” (p. 57).
• “We are called to mature into deeper levels of personal holiness as we walk with the Lord, truer consecration, new vistas of obedience. But when we don’t — when we choose to sin — though we forsake our true identity, our Savior does not forsake us. These are the very moments when his heart erupts on our behalf in renewed advocacy in heaven with a resounding defense that silences all accusations, astonishes the angels, and celebrates the Father’s embrace of us in spite of all our messiness” (p. 92).
• “Let Jesus draw you in through the loveliness of his heart. This is a heart that upbraids the impenitent with all the harshness that is appropriate, yet embraces the penitent with more openness than we are able to feel. It is a heart that walks us into the bright meadow of the felt love of God. It is a heart that drew the despised and forsaken to his feet in self-abandoning hope. It is a heart of perfect balance and proportion, never overreacting, never excusing, never lashing out. It is a heart that throbs with desire for the destitute. It is a heart that floods the suffering with the deep solace of shared solidarity in that suffering. It is a heart that is gentle and lowly” (p. 99).
• “When God himself sets the terms on what his glory is, he surprises us into wonder. Our deepest instincts expect him to be thundering, gavel swinging, judgment relishing. We expect the bent of God’s heart to be retribution to our waywardness. And then Exodus 34 taps us on the shoulder and stops us in our tracks. The bent of God’s heart is mercy. His glory is his goodness. His glory is his lowliness. ‘Great is the glory of the LORD. For though the LORD is high, he regards the lowly’ (Ps. 138:5–6)” (p. 147).
• “The Christian life . . . is the long journey of letting our natural assumption about who God is, over many decades, fall away, being slowly replaced with God’s own insistence on who he is” (p. 151).
• “The Lord passed by Moses and revealed that his deepest glory is seen in his mercy and grace. Jesus came to do in flesh and blood what God had done only in wind and voice in the Old Testament” (p. 153).
• “God’s heart confounds our intuitions of who he is” (p. 167).
• “The Christian life is a lifelong shedding of tepid thoughts of the goodness of God” (p. 172).
• “If you are in Christ, you are as eternally invincible as he is” (p. 178).
• “The things about you that make you cringe the most, make him hug the hardest” (p. 179).

What I Would Have Liked

One of the dangers that theologians take in trying to draw us into understanding God is humanizing him. In other words, they portray God in such a way that he’s more understandable to us and yet perhaps not accurate when we consider the Creator-creature distinction. There are places in the book where this happens, such as when the author talks about God being “conflicted” when he sends affliction into our lives (p. 138). There’s no conflict in God. He’s supremely certain and has gloriously good purposes for the affliction we meet (namely, to conform us to the image of his Son). This was one of the points I tried to drive home in Struck Down but Not Destroyed and Finding Hope in Hard Things. This is an example of how humanizing God too much actually does more harm than good. It sounds comforting on the surface, but it actually runs contrary to the nature of God articulated elsewhere in Scripture. Readers should always be aware of this in reading contemporary theology.

Readers should also be wary of reductionism or oversimplification. I’m always skeptical when theologians say, “Well, there are lots of things that reveal God’s deepest character but THIS is the most important one.” Of course, Ortlund will run into this when trying to tells us what the heart of God is. In reality, I believe God’s heart is infinitely deep. Is mercy at the heart of God? Sure! But so is love, peace, goodness, justice, sovereignty, etc. God’s heart is not for only one thing. However, I’ll temper this critique by saying that all authors use some reductionism or simplification to help us focus on their message. It’s part of what happens when you write a book. Still, it’s good to be aware of this as a reader.

Should You Read It?

Yes! Given the caveats above, I don’t have hesitations in recommending this book. In fact, if you only read one or two books in a year, make this one of them. It will lift your heart into the light of God’s love and mercy. But don’t just read it. Let it soak in. Let it lead you into prayer and worship. God seeks you out . . . all the time. That’s worth celebrating, and this book will help you raise your arms in gratitude.

Pierce Taylor Hibbs is an award-winning Christian wordsmith. He’s the author of several books, including Finding God in the Ordinary, Struck Down but Not Destroyed, Finding Hope in Hard Things, and The Book of Giving.

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