Deeper: Real Change for Real Sinners
Deeper is a rare book. It is applied theology. It is doctrine pressed on the heart. It is a book that enacts an approach to change rather than simply arguing for that approach.
Dane C. Ortlund. Deeper: Real Change for Real Sinners. Crossway, 2021. 192 pages, hardback. $21.99.
Dane C. Ortlund is the author of the widely-acclaimed book Gentle & Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners & Sufferers (Crossway, 2020), which has won awards, drawn the ire of certain readers, and was given away for free to every church who wanted it.
Ortlund’s new book is titled Deeper: Real Change for Real Sinners. The book is also published by Crossway and is the second installment in a series edited by Michael Reeves titled Union (the first installment was Rejoice & Tremble: The Surprising Good News of the Fear of the Lord by Michael Reeves). One thing this means is that Ortlund’s book comes with a companion “concise” volume (How Does God Change Us?), which attempts to convey the same subject matter in a 96-page booklet.
Summary
Deeper is a book about sanctification (85), or how Christians grow. (15) While that seems pretty straightforward, Ortlund wants to distinguish his approach in this book from that of others. He groups other approaches to growth into three models—those who think change happens through outward improvement, through intellectual addition, or through felt experience. Elsewhere he tags those competing approaches as purer behavior, sharper doctrine, or richer emotions. (17) In contrast, his “argument is that all three of these elements are included in healthy Christian development…” but “growing in Christ is not centrally improving or adding or experiencing but deepening.” (16) He further explains how his view differs from others: “Implicit in the notion of deepening is that you already have what you need. Christian growth is bringing what you do and say and even feel into line with what, in fact, you already are.” (16)
I will admit that I read over that distinction without much thought. It wasn’t until the conclusion of the book that I realized how profound Ortlund’s point was. Almost nothing in the book is about adding. There is no “sanctification by addition” to be found in these pages. Instead, Ortlund continually brings us back to what is already true of us and presses it upon us more firmly. As he says in the introduction:
We’re not after behavior modification in this book. I’m not going to talk to you about setting your alarm earlier or cutting carbs. We’re not even going to reflect on tithing or church attendance or journaling or small groups or taking the sacraments or reading the Puritans. All of that can be done out of rottenness of heart. (18, my emphasis).
Rather than another book telling us what else we should do (after we read the book), Deeper is a book that actually does something to us. The only two chapters that tell us to do something (“Honesty” and “Breathing”) actually spend most of their words shaping the heart posture of someone who would want to do those things. Deeper is a book about heart change (i.e., “real change” in the subtitle). And rather than spending 192 pages arguing for a specific heart-change approach to sanctification, Ortlund spends 192 pages trying to bring a heart-change in the reader.
The outline of the book is as follows with a quote that I think sums up the point of each chapter:
Chapter 1, Jesus: “One common reason we fail to leave sin behind is that we have a domesticated view of Jesus.” (21)
Chapter 2, Despair: “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.” (38)
Chapter 3, Union: “Only in the relaxed safety of your eternally secured union with Christ can true growth blossom.” (57)
Chapter 4, Embrace: “The love of God is not something to see once and believe and then move beyond to other truths or strategies for growing in Christ. The love of God is what we feed on our whole lives long, wading ever more deeply into this endless ocean. And that feeding, that wading, is itself what fosters growth. We grow in Christ no further than we enjoy his embrace of us.” (70)
Chapter 5, Acquittal: “If we long to grow in Christ, we dare not do what comes so naturally—namely, say we believe that the verdict over our lives is decisively settled in our justified status before God but then move on to other ideas and strategies when it comes to our emotional lives and daily pressures.” (98-99)
Chapter 6, Honesty: “You are restricting your growth if you do not move through life doing the painful, humiliating, liberating work of cheerfully bringing your failures out from the darkness of secrecy into the light of acknowledgement before a Christian brother or sister.” (114)
Chapter 7, Pain: “Our natural instincts tell us that the way forward in the Christian life is by avoiding pain so that, undistracted, we can get down to the business at hand of growing in Christ. The New Testament tells us again and again, however, that pain is a means, not an obstacle, to deepening in Christian maturity.” (125)
Chapter 8, Breathing: “You wouldn’t try to go through life holding your breath. So don’t go through life without Bible reading and praying. Let your soul breath. Oxygenate with the Bible; and breathe out the CO2 of prayer as you speak back to God your wonder, your worry, and your waiting. He is not a force, not an ideal, not a machine. He is a person.” (156)
Chapter 9, Supernaturalized: “We don’t need the Spirit to be different on the outside; we do need the Spirit to be different on the inside. Yet again: we don’t need the Spirit to obey God; we do need the Spirit to enjoy obeying God.” (164-65)
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You Become What You Watch
Your future is not determined because of your past. You will become that which captures your attention. Is your attention set on the things of God, you will look like God. Is your attention captured by your family, you will probably love them well. Your attention is valuable and it is transformative. Don’t waste it. Where do you spend your attention? That is what you will become. The focus of your attention is transforming you.
We have a tendency to focus on all the things in life that happen or exist outside of our control. You can’t control the weather, you can’t control other people, you can’t even control when your hair turns gray or turns loose. You did not choose where you would be born or to whom. You had not part to play in your genetic make-up or your siblings or even your kindergarten teacher. You do not control the drivers in the other lane or the barista taking forever to make your black coffee.
But, it turns out, none of those things matter as much about who you become as you might think. The things outside of our control are more excuses than they are causes. The things I cannot control become perfect excuses for my bad behavior or my lack of commitment or initiative.
How do I know?
I am often tempted to blame my kids for my short temper or slow drivers for making me late or even others around me for distracting me from the task I need to accomplish.
I can be an expert excuse-maker.
But I have great news. The things outside of your control are not the most important things in your life. The things outside of your control do not have to be the most formative things in your life.
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3 Reasons Why Christians Should Lay “R.I.P.” to Rest
The Scriptures make it abundantly clear that God has purchased peace only “through the blood of the cross” (Col. 1:20). The rest and peace for which we should long—both for ourselves and for those around us—is grounded on the nature of the person and atoning death of Jesus. If men have spent their lives rejecting the gospel and have not professed faith in Jesus, we should not be offering them posthumous well-wishes. It puts the nature of the exclusivity of Jesus and the gospel in jeopardy, even if that is not our intention.
I have great admiration for non-Christians who have contributed to the improvement of society through their inventions, production, leadership, literature, and art. My wife and I were recently reflecting on the remarkable ways in which Steve Jobs’s labors helped change the world in which we live. I love so many of the beautiful works of art and music that have been the product of secular artists; and I do not, for one second, believe that we should sequester ourselves from the use and enjoyment of the contributions of self-avowed unbelievers in the world around us. Otherwise, as the apostle Paul wrote, “you would need to go out of the world” (1 Cor. 5:10). There is a common grace principle at work in the world by which God allows men to benefit their neighbors, making life in this fallen world a little less painful than it would otherwise be.
That being said, I’ve noticed something of a concerning trend over the past several years. It is the way in which believers speak about culture-impacting individuals at their deaths. Instead of simply expressing appreciation for their life and achievements, it has become commonplace for Christians to use the shorthand “R.I.P.” (rest in peace) on social media when speaking of individuals in whose lives there was no evidence of saving grace at their death. At the risk of sounding ill-tempered, I wish to set out several reasons why I am troubled by this occurrence.
1. R.I.P. refers to the afterlife.
First, when we employ the abbreviation R.I.P., we are inevitably admitting a state or condition inseparably linked to the idea of the afterlife. We are not speaking of something indifferent to the truth of the hereafter. Someone might push back at this point, suggesting that R.I.P. is nothing other than a way of expressing appreciation for an individual’s life and achievements.
However, while certain words and phrases can be fluid in their meaning (e.g., “goodbye” has taken on a different meaning than its Old English sense, “God be with you”), “rest in peace” gives the sense that the deceased are “in a better place”—a place of rest and peace. If we care about the eternal salvation of people, and whether or not they are trusting in Christ alone for eternal life, then we should painstakingly avoid giving the sense that we believe in any form of universalism whatsoever.
2. Christians should not pray for the dead.
Second, as Christians we should revolt at the idea of “praying for the dead,” since there is not a single ounce of biblical support for such an idea.
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The Secret to Spurgeon’s Success
In 10 topical chapters, Chang considers various facets of Spurgeon’s ministry at the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London, ranging from church leadership and congregationalism to the ordinances and membership. He invites us to study Spurgeon as one who thought deeply about the local church and who therefore “remains a valuable conversation partner for pastors today.”
Everyone is a theologian, R. C. Sproul rightly observed. Anyone with ideas or beliefs about God is doing theology. It may be poorly considered, but it’s theology nonetheless.
By the same token, it might be said that everyone has an ecclesiology, a doctrine of the church. We all have beliefs or assumptions about what the church is, why it exists, and how it ought to function. Rarely do we pause, though, to think deeply about these things. Even among pastors, the incessant demands of ministry often pull us toward fixing urgent problems while neglecting larger questions. What does healthy pastoral ministry look like? What matters most in the life of my church? Am I shepherding God’s flock in a way that pleases him?
In Spurgeon the Pastor: Recovering a Biblical and Theological Vision for Ministry, Geoffrey Chang shows why the 19th-century Baptist expositor should be regarded as more than “the Prince of Preachers”—he should be studied as an example of a faithful pastor. Chang—assistant professor of church history and historical theology and curator of the Spurgeon Library at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary—contends there’s “no better model of faithful pastoral ministry and commitment to the local church” than Spurgeon (2).In 10 topical chapters, Chang considers various facets of Spurgeon’s ministry at the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London, ranging from church leadership and congregationalism to the ordinances and membership. He invites us to study Spurgeon as one who thought deeply about the local church and who therefore “remains a valuable conversation partner for pastors today” (5).
First Things First
We have a fascinating propensity to overcomplicate things. Just as Naaman couldn’t fathom that his leprosy would be healed by bathing in the appointed waters (2 Kings 5), we can have a lurking suspicion there must be more to church than a covenant community preaching the gospel and practicing the ordinances.
When we doubt the sufficiency of God’s appointed means for ordering his church, we begin to seek out every manner of man-made scheme to make up for what’s lacking. The result is churches who will try everything except the relatively few things most essential to a biblically healthy church. Is it possible that our never-ending church innovations and strategic ministry “breakthroughs” reveal a lack of faith in God’s own design for his church?
Spurgeon never tired of the simplest strategies, because he believed they were biblically warranted: corporate prayer, congregational singing, and the reading and preaching of God’s Word. He was convinced that people’s primary need is to hear the gospel—and that preaching is the primary means by which it happens.
Shepherding the Masses
None of this means a stripped-down, simplified approach is always best. Sunday-morning attendance at the Metropolitan Tabernacle numbered in the thousands, and weekly church life was remarkably busy. By his 50th birthday, Spurgeon’s congregation supported some 66 entities. The busyness wasn’t in spite of Spurgeon’s straightforward ecclesiology but a natural byproduct of it.
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