Deeper
Deeper: Real Change for Real Sinners
By: Dane C. Ortlund
“To grow as a disciple of Christ is not adding Christ to your life but collapsing into Christ as your life.”
Do you feel stuck in your faith? Wanting to grow but not feeling very successful?
Dane Ortlund has written this book for you:
“This book is for the frustrated. The exhausted. Those on the verge of giving up any real progress in their Christian growth.”
This is a short book, not to give 9 steps to follow to achieve all your goals, but is a coming back to the fundamentals of our faith. Our spiritual growth happens when we have the right view of Jesus and our unity with him, are honest about our sin, and are resting in his saving and unconditional love.
In other words, when we have the Spirit, we already have what we need to grow.
“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.”
“If you are in Christ, you have everything you need to grow. You are united to Christ: by the Holy Spirit, you are in him and he is in you… You cannot lose. You are inexhaustibly rich. For you are one with Christ, and he is himself inexhaustibly rich.”
You may have read Gentle and Lowly by Dane Ortlund. And if you haven’t, you should. There is some crossover here with Deeper and both are excellent books.
While Gentle and Lowly is a longer book focusing on the heart of God and his position toward us at all times, Deeper, though shorter, does bring in these tones specifically in his Embrace chapter but speckled throughout other chapters as well. Both books give us a sense of compassionate security, confidence, and encouragement in our faith journey.
Sanctification vs Justification
Deeper is primarily a book about sanctification (growing more and more like Christ) but also spends some time talking about justification. I really liked his distinction between the two. He says:
Justification is outside-in, and we lose it if we make it inside-out
Sanctification is inside-out, and we lose it if we make it outside-in
And this inside-out sanctification is largely fed by daily appropriation of this outside-in justification
Basically, we are justified (declared ‘not guilty’) by Christ and the cross apart from anything we could do to earn it, and we are sanctified not by the way we appear to others but because of heart change within through the work of the Spirit. Our sanctification is driven not by a need to earn our justification but from the outflow of the knowledge that we stand justified already.
If we are trying to grow as a means of ‘making up’ for all of our sin, we have it backwards. If we are trying to grow by merely looking more godly to others but are not changing our heart towards our sin, we have it backwards. (2 Tim. 3:2-5)
“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. For if we do, we will find our lives riddled with fear.”
“God himself has come to us with a justification of his own doing. It is the atoning verdict of Jesus Christ. We can only receive it. To add to it is therefore to subtract from it. We simply breathe it in with a heart posture of trusting faith. And thereby God justifies us— God himself. Our okay-ness, our record, our identity, our significance, are no longer in our hands, not even a little.”
I found this book encouraging and easy to read. I would recommend to anyone who desires to grow spiritually, for in this book he asks and seeks to answer this question:
“What must happen in the individual human heart, most fundamentally, most deeply, for a man or woman to get traction and grow?”
Other Quotes:
“If you view your sinfulness as a bothersome headache more than a lethal cancer, you will see tepid growth, if any. The gospel does not take our good and complete us with God’s help; the gospel tells us we are dead and helpless, unable to contribute anything to our rescue but the sin that requires it. Christian salvation is not enhancing. It is resurrecting.”
“If you are a Christian, God made you so that he could love you. His embrace of you is the point of your life… He wants you to know a love that is yours even when you feel undeserving or numb.”
“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 acknowledgment before a Christian brother or sister. In the darkness, your sins fester and grow in strength. In the light, they wither and die…We consign ourselves to plateaued growth in Christ if we yield to pride and fear and hide our sins. We grow as we own up to being real sinners, not theoretical sinners.”
“Through the pain of disappointment and frustration, God weans us from the love of this world.’
“Reading the Bible is inhaling. Praying is exhaling.”
“The commands of the Bible are the steering wheel, not the engine, to your growth. They are vitally instructive, but they do not themselves give you the power you need to obey the instruction.”
“Idolatry is the folly of asking a gift to be a giver.”
“It doesn’t matter what you feel. That doesn’t define you. Jesus was defiled to free you from your defiled status and your defiled feelings. That doesn’t mean we will never battle feelings of defilement. But it does mean that one aspect of growing in Christ is bringing our subjective feelings of defilement into line with that objective, decisive, invincible, true-for-all-time-and-eternity cleansing in the blood of Christ.”
“Killing sin is a strange battle because it happens by looking away from the sin…. [i.e.] looking at Jesus Christ… sin loses its appeal as we allow ourselves to be re-enchanted time and again with the unsurpassable beauty of Jesus.”
“‘The Bible contains the mind of God, the state of man, the way of salvation, the doom of sinners, and the happiness of believers. Its doctrines are holy, its precepts are binding, its histories are true, and its decisions are immutable. Read it to be wise, believe it to be safe, and practice it to be holy. It contains light to direct you, food to support you, and comfort to cheer you… Christ is its grand subject, our good its design, and the glory of God its end. It should fill the memory, rule the heart, and guide the feet. Read it slowly, frequently, and prayerfully. It is a mine of wealth, a paradise of glory, and a river of pleasure… It involves the highest responsibility, rewards the greatest labor, and will condemn all who trifle with its sacred contents.’”
**Received an ARC via Amazon**
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