"Gentle and Lowly" by Dane Ortlund. A Quick Review

 

Since there are already thousands of reviews and ratings given for this book, I'll just add a few simple comments. In so many ways it was like reading Richard Sibbes's "The Bruised Reed" or an easier version of Jonathan Edwards. Scripture was handled in the meaningfully devotional ways that the gracious Puritans handled them. Ortlund doesn't shy away from the harder subjects, such as God's justice and wrath, but places them beautifully alongside God's steadfast love and faithfulness, in the way God himself puts things in Exodus 34:6-7. Neither does he back off from tackling our sinfulness. Rightly he observes, "we can vent our fleshly passions by breaking all the rules, or we can vent our fleshly passions by keeping all the rules, but both ways of venting the flesh still need resurrection. We can be immoral dead people, or we can be moral dead people. Either way, we're dead. The mercy of God reaches down and rinses clean not only obviously bad people but fraudulently good people, both of whom equally stand in need of resurrection" (176-7). It was a delightful read and one that all Christians would benefit from.