64 | Dane Ortlund: Everything Is Going To Be Alright

It's What We Really Want's second anniversary episode! 🎂 🎉🎈 With gratitude for two years of great Conversations About Connection, we get to have another one with pastor and best-selling author Dane Ortlund.

Dane comes from a family with generations of ministry service, including his grandparents (Ray Ortlund Sr. and Anne Ortlund) and his father (Dane Ortlund Jr., author and founding pastor of Immanuel Church Nashville). Dane was the Chief Publishing Officer for Crossway Books for ten years, and in 2020 he released Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers, which presented the heart of Jesus in a deeply loving way; the book has had worldwide impact and has sold well over one million copies. 

With his writing, and in this conversation, Dane presents a perspective on how Jesus wants to relate to his people in a kind, refreshing, life-giving way many people don't hear enough.

Dane has also written Deeper: Real Change for Real Sinners, and has an upcoming book (due October 2026) called Finally Home: The Christian Hope of Heaven. Dane pastors Naperville Presbyterian Church in Naperville, Illinois, where he lives with his wife Stacey and their children.

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Dane's books on Amazon

Dane's website

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Transcript

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Dane Ortlund: Intro

Dane Ortlund 0:00

It is more kind of intuitive and natural and feels safer to us to hold up the holiness of Christ, the standards of Christ, the standards of discipleship. We must do that. We must do that. But that appeals to our performance mentality that we all have. What does not appeal to the performance mentality inside all of us is reflexive open-handedness and open-heartedness from the Lord Jesus at our worst. His heart going out to us all the more. And so I want to spend my life correcting people's bad theology about Jesus that does not see him in that way.

Welcome, Celebrating Two Years

Announcer 0:42

Welcome to What We Really Want. Conversations about connection. Settle in and get ready for a great conversation. Let's talk about what we really want.

Greg 1:02

Thank you for having us, Bobby. We're really excited to be here.

Stacey 1:07

So glad you invited us on the podcast today. You did really well with that opening, though.

Greg 1:12

Yeah, that was professional, polished, quality stuff.

Stacey 1:18

Do you plot what you're gonna say? Because I don't. I just say stuff. And sometimes people laugh.

Bobby 1:23

If I say something funny, it's usually because I've thought about it for like a little bit. Like if you if y'all were if y'all said something that was kind of that I wanted to kind of say a joke about, like I would wait probably a minute and then kind of say it.

Greg 1:37

You remind me of something that Nate said on Ted Lasso when everybody was making confessions, and he's like, Sometimes I share a good idea and I make it sound like I just spontaneously made it up in the moment, but it's really a good idea I had a long time ago and I've just been waiting for the right time to reveal it. That's funny. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Bobby 1:55

I could really I could relate to that a lot.

Greg 1:57

Yeah. So sitting here today compared to sitting at our house the very first time we did this two years ago, comfort level now versus comfort level then.

Stacey 2:09

I mean, sometimes I do feel some anxiety because it's if we're talking with somebody we don't know, which is a lot, that can be anxiety inducing. But like the idea of speaking into a microphone and then, oh, what do I sound like? That is like gone. What about you? Have you calmed down from being nervous from the beginning?

Greg 2:29

You know, I think that my nerves at the beginning two years ago were more nerves of excitement. And I think probably a little bit like this feels like a good idea, but is it gonna go anywhere? And I mean, here two years later, the answer has clearly been yes. This is episode 64, and we've really done more than that because we've had some bonuses, the little extra helping episodes and things like that. So we're we're getting close to having really 70 different conversations. Yeah, it's it's almost like there's there's no exhausting the list of good things to talk about. And hopefully, for those of y'all who are listening, it's been not only interesting, it's not only been a way to make your car ride seem shorter, but it's but it's really been something that's made you feel pulled in and invited and engaged, like you were sitting down with us as a part of the conversation.

Bobby 3:22

That's sure what we hope for. I have to admit, I'm a uh I'm a podcast cheater. I do listen to other podcasts besides ours. And like the really good ones, yeah, the ones like that are my favorite, it doesn't matter what they're talking about. Like I always get something out of it. Yeah. Like I'll just listen to it and I enjoy the hosts. And if they have guests, like enjoy I enjoy the the conversations. So I hope that's what ours is or is becoming.

Talking About Dane

Greg 3:46

One thing that I definitely think that people who are listening right now are gonna find interesting is who this conversation is with. A person that has been so helpful for me. I've been wanting to meet him for a long time and finally got to it's Dane Ortland. And if that name sounds familiar, it's probably because at some point in the last six years you've been exposed to his book, Gentle and Lowly. It just seems like there's always a Christian book that everybody's reading. Wild at Heart, Purpose-driven Life. You know, there's just some books that you're like, okay, every Prodigal God. And for a while it seemed like everybody that I would see carrying around like a Bible and another book, the other book would be Gentle and Lowly. I tell Dane in this conversation that I was a little late to the party. I didn't read Gentle and Lowly until it had been out two or three years. And then once I read it, I realized what all the hype was about because it totally lived up to ever all the good things that people had said about it.

Bobby 4:40

I know for me, it it it has shaped my view of who God is. Something I heard on another podcast recently. The guy was talking about, he's a theologian, he's talking about how a lot of people have this idea of God, the father, as like the CEO. And then you have like Jesus and the Holy Spirit like under him. And he's like, that's not at all what it's what it's like. He's like, we you went, we we want to know who God is. Look at Jesus. That's who the that's who the father is. That's who God is. You know, that's what I I think Dane gives us in this book, in his book, Gentle and Lowly, just this understanding of man, that this is who our God is.

Stacey 5:19

Yeah, there were two things I was just kind of looking over. It was talking about just really what gentle and lowly mean. Jesus is not trigger happy, not harsh, kind of what you were saying, Greg. We've seen people acting this way, but not harsh, reactionary, or easily exasperated. He's the most understanding person in the universe. The posture most natural to him is not a pointed finger but open arms. And then the point in saying that Jesus is lowly is that he is accessible for all his resplendent glory and dazzling holiness, his supreme uniqueness and otherness. No one in human history has ever been more approachable than Jesus Christ.

Greg 5:57

And I love that Dane, through the influence of the Puritan writers that he's been reading for over a decade, has taken one verse and expanded that, blown it up into an entire book because we need to be reminded of it over and over again. We talk a lot about identity, you know, and it's so easy to define ourselves by either our greatest accomplishments or our greatest failures. That this is who I am. But no, that's not who we are. It's what we do. Who we are has been decided for us if we are a child of God by what the Bible says that God did and what Jesus did. Dane has such a pastoral, accessible way of reminding us of things that I don't think we get reminded of enough. So yeah, we're really excited to be able to celebrate two years of what we really want with this great conversation with Dane Ortland, author of Gendelyn Lowly, Deeper, and a new book coming out in October 2026 called Finally Home: The Christian Hope of Heaven. It's episode 64. It's called Everything Is Going to Be All Right. Our guest is Dane Ortland, and the conversation starts right now.

What Dane Really Wants

Greg 7:10

Hey Dane.

Dane Ortlund 7:11

Good morning.

Greg 7:12

You live in, is it Naperville?

Dane Ortlund 7:14

Naperville.

Greg 7:15

That's in the Chicago area, right?

Dane Ortlund 7:16

Yep, that's right.

Greg 7:17

Last week we had 80 degrees one day, and then I had an inch of snow on my grass the next day. And it melted in 30 in about 30 minutes. What's it been like around Chicago? Typical Chicago spring, kind of like that.

Dane Ortlund 7:31

You know, Saturday was 75. So I was sermon prepping outside of my backyard with my shirt off the entire day. Because once you get through the death, the five months of death and darkness and gray in Chicago, you're just panting for some sun and warmth. But you know, today I'm looking out there, it's gray and 48 degrees or something like that. So uh until you get to kind of late April, it's really up and down.

Greg 7:55

How much time have you spent in Chicago?

Dane Ortlund 7:57

I haven't spent very much at all. A lot of my life, Greg. I mean, I I was born in California, spent some time in Scotland, Oregon, Augusta, Georgia. But from fifth grade on, I was in the on the north side of Chicago, Libertyville. Then I went to Wheaton College, which is the next town north of Naperville, here in the western suburbs. Yep. And then after bouncing around Connecticut and St. Louis, we came back about 20 years ago to Wheaton. And I went to grad school there, as you mentioned, and then spent 10 years at Crossway. So that was that was 13 years between grad school and crossway in Wheaton. And then this church called me and we we moved up 10 miles south.

Greg 8:36

Well, Dane, I'm looking forward to talking not just about gentlemen lowly, but certainly including that. That's probably what most people know your name from, but there's a lot of other things to know too. But as we get started, I'd love to hear from you. What do you really want out of our conversation?

Dane Ortlund 8:51

What a great question that gets at our hearts' longings, Greg. I love that. What I want is what I was praying five minutes ago, that this time would be an encouragement. Encourage is one of my favorite words in the English language. And we live in a famine of encouragement in the church today. We are in an encouragement desert. We know how to analyze, we know how to criticize, we know how to assess, we know how to correct, we know how to snipe. But looking, especially for men, looking another man in the eye and saying, I want to honor you because of what I see of the glory of God in you.

Greg 9:31

Yeah.

Dane Ortlund 9:32

When we do that, almost certainly that man does not know it. And um and so uh actually just this past Friday night at our church, uh, all the men of the church gathered to do only that, to encourage one another. It was awesome. So what I'm hoping is this little time together, for anyone who listens to this, on the other end of listening, they are given courage, hope. They're they're thinking, you know, maybe I can make it after all in my life with Jesus.

Greg 10:00

That sounds great. Love to have that conversation with you. By the way, I forgot to mention this earlier, but it was really cool to hear you with Shane and Shane on the Sing Devotional recently. That was a great morning, great song, and your thoughts on Psalm 42 were really cool.

Dane Ortlund 10:15

What a joy. That psalm and their song about it have deeply ministered to me in recent years and recent heartaches. So that meant a lot to me to be able to serve with them.

Greg 10:26

If people aren't familiar with that, I'll I'll try to remember to throw a link to how you can sign up for that Sing Daily Devotional. That's through the worship initiative, and you can get it delivered through text message every day. Well, Dane, I was doing

Dane's Story & Career

Greg 10:40

a little bit more reading on you yesterday in preparation for today. And on your website, you've got a bio, but then you've got a link where you can you can download a more comprehensive CV of some of your professional accomplishments and some of your publications and things like that. But there's a section in there where you list some of your significant influences. And that list includes your dad and your grandfather. There are a lot of people who come into our recovery fellowship and they were born into generations of ministry like you were, but they have a lot of horror stories, and others have gratitude stories. And I'm just curious, what was it like for you growing up in that lineage of ministry? I know I've heard you say really wonderful and kind things about your dad, but what was that like for you? It can be hard being a PK.

Dane Ortlund 11:28

Yes, it can. And a lot of pastors, a lot of preachers are great pastors and great preachers and not great dads. I had the experience of having a great dad and a great preacher as a dad. It was a both and no family's perfect, of course. We don't even need to say that, but I am so thankful for my dad and for his dad. My dad's dad, if I had my preaching Bible with me here in the office, I would hold it up. I don't have it. I've got a I've got a an eight and a half and eleven of this picture right here. I know those who are listening won't see it, but that's my grandfather. And that's Ray Ortland Sr. Ray Sr. Yeah. He passed in Pasadena, California for years. Psalm 34, those who look to him are radiant. When you look at God, you get brighter. People can see it on your face. That was my grandfather.

Greg 12:21

Wow.

Dane Ortlund 12:21

And my dad is my dad's the greatest guy I've ever known. He's he's a real Christian. He was always the same guy inside and outside of the home. So I I am so thankful for both of those men and just long in some way to live up to the just the radiance that both of them have always displayed.

Greg 12:42

We interviewed, gosh, over a year ago now, I think, but Barnabas Piper was on the podcast, and he was telling his story about kind of what was going on in his life when he first kind of set foot inside Emmanuel Church, where he's now one of the pastors, and had just gone through a divorce, and he had a meeting set up with your dad. You may have heard this story. The way I remember it is they met out at a coffee shop and your dad came straight from a hunting stand. I think he still had mud and blood on his camel. Probably so. But Barnabas just had was one of many, many people who experienced his care. And so it's not surprising to hear you talk about your dad in that way, but it's really encouraging to hear Barnabas is a great guy.

Dane Ortlund 13:25

He's one of hundreds who have benefited from my dad's large heart when Jesus told Peter, I think it's towards the end of Luke's gospel, when you have turned again, after you've screwed up, when you've been restored, strengthen your brothers. Beautiful final parting exhortation to Peter. That real that verse really captures my dad's ministry, especially in these later years of his, a ministry of strengthening other men, especially younger men. Yeah. Like Barnabas.

Greg 13:54

Well, hey, you mentioned a few minutes ago that you spent about 10 years with crossway publishers. I'm wondering what was it after working and publishing for a decade that shifted your focus to what you're doing now, which is pastoring a church?

Dane Ortlund 14:09

Oh, thank you for that, Greg. And before I answer that, totally unrelated to that question. Thank you, Greg Oliver, for your life and ministry.

Greg 14:18

Oh, wow.

Dane Ortlund 14:19

Of ministering to comforting, strengthening, helping many, many sexually broken men and women, which is all of us to some degree. And so you are your life is leaving this world a brighter place. And so I'm so proud of you. I loved working at Crossway. It was, I I have very fond memories of it. I cried like a baby on August 13th at 5 p.m. 2020, driving off that parking lot at 1300 Crescent Avenue in Wheaton for the last time because I just loved being there. I do not regret the decision to leave, but I I just loved being there. I believe in the mission of what they are doing to get good books and Bibles out into the world. But I had to leave. I believed that God was telling me to leave because my 17 elders unanimously told me we believe you should be the next pastor of the church that Stacy, my wife, and I and our family had been a part of for 13 years. Just an ordinary member for three years of grad school at Wheaton and 10 years at Crossway, and there's a pastoral transition, and my elders say, I mean, this is about a year and a half process, but to put it in one sentence, they said, We think you should do this. And when my my theology of my polity is if I'm a member under the care of my shepherds, and they tell me unanimously, we think that this is God's call on your life, I believe that it is saying no to the Lord to say no to them, because I can't find chapter and verse in my Bible that says, Dane, in summer of 2020, here is what you should do vocationally. I wish there was. I wouldn't have to live by faith then. But there is Hebrews 13. There is Hebrews 13, 17. Obey your leaders as those who will give an account. And I I do believe that. So I didn't want to, I was scared to do it, Greg. I was scared to leave Crossway and go into the ministry, pastoral ministry. But I didn't want to die one day and look the Lord Jesus in the face and know I had said no to him in that major life transition. I have said no to him plenty of times and will still continue to. But for that big decision, I wanted, I really wanted to do what he wanted me to do. I was more afraid of letting him down than I was of taking the call. So I said, great, let's do it. Now, in the 10 years of Crossway, I had had a growing, inexorably growing sense that pastoral work was ahead. And we explored with a couple of local churches in that decade going to serve pastorally. So I thought that was going to happen at some time. What was a surprise was where it was. I never thought it would be my own church.

Greg 17:02

Yeah.

Dane Ortlund 17:03

Okay. But what, but, but uh, what was not a surprise was that I wound up in the ministry. I love preaching, I love discipling, and I love encouraging, I love leading. Yeah, so that part of it was not a surprise.

Greg 18:24

I would imagine that spending 10 years in publishing, you learned an awful lot about how the process worked. And then since then, you have released two very well-known books, one of them I think that sold over a million copies, and then you have another one coming out later this year. Knowing how the sausage gets made in publishing, did that motivate you more or did that seem more daunting when you started the work on what would eventually become Gentleman Lowly?

Dane Ortlund 18:52

It didn't motivate me or change me in any way. Okay. I had done a couple of smaller projects well before Jen and Lowly came out in 2020. My first book was 2008.

"Gentle And Lowly" Reception

Dane Ortlund 19:03

And I wrote three or four between 2008 and 2020. None of them sold. And so when we did Gentilin Lowly, I thought it would just be another kind of, you know, good book that 3,000 people read.

Greg 19:17

Yeah.

Dane Ortlund 19:17

And thank you, Lord, for the ministry to those 3,000 people.

Greg 19:20

Yeah.

Dane Ortlund 19:21

Lo and behold, God had a surprising ministry in mind for that project that he, out of his own gracious initiative, 100% wanted to send to people far and wide to encourage them. So I I loved writing and and uh even before being at Crossway, I wanted to write books here and there throughout my life, but I I never thought that something would do as well as that one had done. And I I still haven't picked myself up off the ground in surprise at what God has been doing through it.

Greg 19:55

It was probably out for at least two years before I finally read it. By that point, I had talked to so many of my friends who had read it and had been really very positively impacted by it. And it was one of those things where I was a little bit afraid that, like, is it going to live up to the hype? And for me it did. And it was just so, well, it was so congruent with the way that I had been experiencing Jesus in recent years in my life, since my life had blown up and then I had kind of rediscovered the gospel in recovery. And and it just seemed like a very, very important way to shine light on Jesus' character. I I want to read a couple of things from early in the book that you wrote and then ask you a question about it. So near the beginning of the book, you say he is the most understanding person in the universe, he being Jesus. The posture most natural to him is not a pointed finger, but open arms. And then you said, for all his resplendent glory and dazzling holiness, his supreme uniqueness and otherness, no one in human history has ever been more approachable than Jesus. And I would say amen to that. But why do you think it's so revolutionary to people when they read things like that? I mean, when Jesus has presented himself in this way, it seems like there are

Why Grace Feels Revolutionary

Greg 21:18

a lot of pastors and spiritual leaders who don't talk about him in that way. Why do you think that is?

Dane Ortlund 21:23

Why do you think that is? I don't know, man. I all I know is I have trouble accepting that. I mean, when you read that just now, 15 seconds ago, it moved me. Well, because I do I do not think of the Lord Jesus Christ. When I rolled out of bed today, five years after writing that, 13 years after first discovering it in 2013, when I rolled out of bed today, I did not reflexively believe that the Lord Jesus Christ, the high and holy, dazzling Lord Jesus Christ, is the most understanding and approachable person in the universe. And I I it's almost like I have to get reconverted back into that every day. And every time I open up my Bible and every time I get ready to preach or to counsel someone in my office, I think that we, I think, Greg, and I welcome your thoughts, brother. I think we deep down so deeply, without even really self-consciously doing it, so deeply believe that the Lord Jesus is a a bigger, nicer version of us. That is that we we love others, we love sinners, we we we show mercy to the brokenhearted within reason and in in a in a cautious and calculating way. And I think that in our generation, and probably in every generation in church leadership, it is more kind of intuitive and natural and feels safer to us to hold up the the holiness of Christ, the standards of Christ, the standards of discipleship. We must do that. We must do that. But that appeals to our performance mentality that we all have. What does not appeal to the spring-loaded performance mentality inside all of us, the Pharisee within all of us that we're all trying to work our way out of. What doesn't appeal is reflexive open-handedness and open-heartedness from the Lord Jesus at our worst.

Greg 23:37

Yeah.

Dane Ortlund 23:38

At our worst, his heart going out to us all the more. But the Puritans convinced me of that working with the scripture. And so I I want to spend my life correcting people's bad theology about Jesus that does not see him in that way. Yeah. That's just what I want to do with my life.

Greg 23:57

Yeah. Well, as you're saying that, it's it's taken me way back to Bible college. I had a theology professor. One of the things I remember him saying, and this was more than 35 years ago when I was sitting in his theology class, he talked about one of the most consistent threads in the history of mankind is that we will go to any length to live our lives without needing God's help. And I don't know if his emphasis was more that that was driven by pride. But I think for me, in the times that I've tried to do it myself, it's probably sometimes been driven by pride, but other times more driven by shame and fear because of the way that I think God is wanting to relate to me in my imperfection and in my failure. I know what an unbelievably life-changing experience it was for me at the season that my life had fallen apart to have people showing that compassion and support that didn't seem to have an asterisk on it, right? Like I love you, but don't get crazy, right? I think there's a lot of me and a lot of people that I encounter in the church that that will rush over to, you know, Romans 6, 1, shall we continue in sin that grace might abound? May it never be. But like that's an option. If we really, if we really rest in grace, we might go too far with it, abuse it. I think there could probably be 50 reasons that we cite for why people don't portray Jesus the way that you did in that book. And a lot, I mean, they all make sense in a in a way, don't you think?

Dane Ortlund 25:25

Very much, yeah. Yeah. Just as I'm listening to you, Greg, I'm I'm I'm agreeing and thinking fear, shame, and guilt are powerful. They're actually very effective motivators to behave rightly in a in a in a heart crowbarring, not a heart melting and changing kind of way.

Greg 25:48

Yeah.

Dane Ortlund 25:48

I can live an amazing to out to those who look at me, an amazing Christian life if I just uh if I just disbelieve the gospel enough and believe that I actually need to achieve a certain level of productivity and work and tithing and evangelizing. I can be a very, very powerful Christian. I will be self-righteous, I'll look down on others who aren't the same way. But those mindsets that are operating in gospel deficit can actually produce apparent great Christian lives. But that's that's not Christian health. So yeah, I agree with what you've been saying.

Greg 26:28

Several minutes ago, you mentioned the year 2013. And so I, in context of what you were saying, I take that to be when you were maybe more deeply exposed to Thomas Goodwin and some of the other Puritan writers who so influenced what became Gently and Lowly. What was it when you kind of dove into Goodwin's writing and the other Puritans that felt either new or deeper or clarifying in some new way that affected you so much personally?

Dane Ortlund 26:58

Yeah, thank you. What a great question. I knew that the Puritans were Orthodox in their theology. I knew that they were faithful pastorally. I knew that they were persecuted by the Church of England. I knew that they held up Orthodox notions of the person of Christ, Nicene Orthodoxy, truly God, truly man. I knew that they held up Orthodox doctrine with regard to the work of Christ, the atonement and redemption, justification, and how we get saved. I had no idea what they would say, not only about the person and the work, but the heart of Christ. So Thomas Goodwin, yeah, he has we have 12 volumes of his uh collected works. Each one is 560 or so pages. Wow. And he never strays far from the theme of the heart of God or the heart of Christ. For example, the most recent volume that I read, I don't read them in order, but I recently worked through volume nine, which is all on election. Now, what do you think a Puritan,

Pandemic Anxiety And Politicized Jesus

Dane Ortlund 27:58

a Calvinistic Puritan, is gonna say about election for 560 pages? We probably think, oh my gosh, this is gonna be so painful. This is gonna be so like uh cold and austere, you know, and kind of like uh just like like like bad bad tasting medicine. He loops back in 500 pages on election to the theme of God's heart as what fuels his electing love. He he just could he never got over God's and Christ's heart. And so he wrote in volume four, he wrote a little book called The Heart of Christ, who is in heaven for sinners who are on earth. And he based it on Hebrews 4, 15, which speaks of Christ being a sympathetic high priest who can relate to us in every way except for sin. And you know, the Puritans would take one verse and they would wring it dry, and out come 300 pages, and they send it off to the publisher on one verse. So it was that one verse that he wrote that book on. And I read that book, that was the it was my my gateway drug into a good one for me, and captures the heart of his ministry. And Greg, I didn't know you could talk about Jesus like that without being a raging liberal. I mean, I I know people who okay, let's throw out everything the Bible says about hell and wrath and retributive justice, and then let's lift up the love of God and the heart of God. I knew that was out there. I didn't know you could believe in all of those harder truths that the Bible gives us and have the thing most to glow in your mind and heart be how God feels about you. I didn't know you could talk about, I didn't know you could talk about Jesus like that. I thought that was irreverent. Well, here's good when do you and then I found it in Owen and Sibbs and Bunyan, Baxter, and others. And I thought, oh, maybe you can be an Orthodox Christian and talk about Christ in this way. And so it's been life-altering for me.

Greg 29:52

Maybe to be an Orthodox Christian truly is to talk about Christ in that way, since he talked about himself in that way.

Dane Ortlund 30:00

Man, we are less than Orthodox if we don't. Love that.

Greg 30:03

Yeah, yeah. I mean, just last night, we're recording this on a Tuesday. Last night at my Monday night recovery meeting, one of the men in there, we were talking about step three, you know, made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him. And, you know, acknowledging that the way that a lot of us understand God early in recovery is fearfully or as someone who's out to get us. And the man who was sharing was talking about something that was influenced by gentlemen lowly, because he said, I mean, if we really want to look at the way Jesus described himself, and he quoted from the verse in Matthew, he said he describes himself as gentle and lowly of heart. Why wouldn't we want to turn our will and our lives over to the care of someone like that? And so just it's so cool that in all different types of context texts, people who are weary just in general in life, people who are beaten down by addiction. I mean, the the message of of the Puritans that that you channeled in the book, it's getting to people. That's got to be encouraging for you, I would think.

Dane Ortlund 31:07

Oh, big time. Big time. Yeah, that that we are all together getting traction with the wondrous surprise that the real Jesus Christ, not the theoretical Jesus Christ, and not the one that we tend to imagine is there, but the one who let him make his own claims about himself in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, that Christ is more eager to embrace us in our messiness than we are to go to him. He he is more eager than we are. And to say that does not say that he is lowering his standards in some way.

Greg 31:39

Yeah.

Dane Ortlund 31:40

But I mean, there is there is judgment and wrath for those who do not bow the knee to him, those who do not come to him. Right before Matthew 11, 28 to 30, he's walking around in the previous paragraph, he's walking around pronouncing woes, which is basically saying you're going to hell to cities that were impenitent. But to those who are penitent, to those who come to him, you know, not don't clean yourself up first. Just come to him the way you are, but actually go to him. To those who do that, he is not an assessing savior. He is not a furrowed brow cat. He just loves picking us up, embracing us, cleaning us up, walking with us. That's not a that's not a footnote to his job description. That is the top line thing on his job description. It's what gets him out of bed in the morning, it's what he loves to do. It's so obvious because you see him walking around in the four gospels, and what is pouring out of him is precisely this uh moving towards touching, hugging, comforting, putting at ease those who are penitent.

Greg 32:40

I have taken care of it and I will take care of it for you. All you have to do is admit that you need me to take care of it. Yeah, that's right. Well, it didn't occur to me, Dane, until getting ready for today that Gentleman Lowly, when it released, I mean, it was right when the pandemic really hit. I mean, it was April of 2020. And as we're talking today in 2026, I'm also thinking about the way that Jesus is being talked about and represented in cultural and political context, you know, right now. And it just seems like we need a message like is in that book, maybe more than ever in recent history. You know, is that something that you've thought about, like the way that Jesus is being represented when he's politicized versus the way that he talks about himself in the Bible?

Dane Ortlund 33:28

Absolutely. And I do get indignant actually on his behalf when everyone in public discourse, it seems, wants to claim Jesus as on their side, propping up their agenda. Number one, number two, Greg, it did God God chose to put that book out there as we were all descending into this strange pandemic. And he has his own good reasons for that, that I won't pretend to know all of them or even any of them. Number two, number three, at the same time, I believe the real Christ is always the central healing solution for every cultural more and cultural trend. We we see ways in which our need to know who Jesus is was heightened and exacerbated in the pandemic. But that just heightened a condition that is always there. Yeah. We are always, all of us in our own way, stumbling our way through our messy life, needing to know what the real Christ is like for the real me.

Greg 34:33

Well, it's like the filter for everybody came off, you know, in the pandemic, and the things that we maybe typically wouldn't have said out loud because of fear or reactivity, we said them out loud. And so, you know, you got a glimpse under the hood of what where a lot more people

Performance vs. Resting In Grace

Greg 34:48

were coming from.

Dane Ortlund 34:48

Oh, 100%. Yeah, I believe that.

Greg 34:51

So you said you wouldn't begin to to understand all the reasons why it worked out that the release happened at the beginning of the pandemic. It seems very providential to me because anything that was a calming message or a peace-inspiring voice in the midst of so much chaos, it just seemed to be welcome. And I wonder if that was kind of providential that it came out then because so many people maybe were more willing to say this is a message I need to pay attention to.

Dane Ortlund 35:20

I'm sure you're right. I have a couple of a handful of counselors in my church here in Naperville, and they have told me how the need for counseling has gone through the roof since 2020.

Greg 35:32

Yeah.

Dane Ortlund 35:32

We were already living in a digital age and a social media age and an anxiety and depression age. And all for all of us, the internal RPMs for about the last 15 or 20 years have been cranked up higher just through regular daily living, just the text messages constantly coming in and the everything, the way we currently live life, which is a chaotic, non-calm inner life, is normal for most of us. And then the pandemic came along. And so to have a to have a message about a savior, a message that is like what do you call the little thing that an asthmatic uses? Oh, you know, nebulizer, albuterol. There you go. Thank you. Inhaler. Inhaler, yeah. So you can like like you're having trouble getting on top of your breath. Our souls do that. Yeah, our hearts do that, not just our lungs, but neath our lungs. It's like, oh my gosh, how do I how do I calm down, do another day, given everything that's coming at me? And so to climb inside the wondrous truth and great surprise that Jesus Christ is walking through us through this wilderness of a world with his arm around us as we stumble our way forward, and that we are going to be okay for in Christ. Everything is going to be all right. Therefore, calm down. Like the psalmist says, like a weaned child with his mother, just calm down. Yeah. And yeah, we did need that these these last few years.

Greg 36:55

Well, and I think that what I experience people needing as I'm rubbing shoulders with people coming into a recovery context, and and I keep coming back to that, obviously, what we're talking about has much broader reach than that. But I'm just thinking with what I keep hearing, people are coming in confused about every part of life, including spirituality. And a lot of them are coming out of just this existence that was primarily lived in isolation, which is, you know, addiction grows in isolation, but they're actually trying to do recovery now in a community, but sometimes they're very apprehensive about involving God in it because of some of the painful or abusive spiritual messages that they've carried. And they just kind of shift from one form of performing to a different form of performing. And one of the things we focus on a lot is this concept of being as opposed to doing, you know, living as a human being, not a human doing. And I think that both gentlemen lowly, but maybe even more so deeper, do such a good job of showing us how much performance effort we bring to our faith. How do you personally deal with in your own life and then talking to other people who about their lives, the tension between performance and obedience versus resting, trusting, receiving?

Dane Ortlund 38:18

Well, that's a profound question. And you have three or four accurate and deep premises built into that little reflection and question, Greg. Let me pick up one or two of them. Okay. And you tell me your thoughts. You you you began by talking about God and wrong views of God and how that messes us up and makes us throws us off in terms of how we want to stay in isolation and not open up to others and even to him. A.W. Tozer, the old Chicago preacher of the 20th century, said, What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us. I believe that.

Greg 38:48

Wow.

Dane Ortlund 38:48

So if uh all of our relational dysfunctions are downstream of dysfunctions in how we relate to God. So let's say that you you observe a very resentful and bitter person who cannot forgive someone who wronged them. I believe that what is upstream of that in some way, what is upstream of that is that person way down deep, no matter what they tell you, what their theology is, way down deep, they believe that God resents them. They believe that God is disappointed in them and has not forgiven them. That's why we cannot release forgiveness to others. So I'm just, I'm just right now connecting the dots between the vertical and the horizontal, how we relate to others and how we're relating to God. And I'm agreeing with that first premise of your question. Now, then you said human being and human doing. I love that. I I love that difference, drawing attention to the fact that we are human beings. I think that is very consoling, comforting, and true. And we need to keep pressing refresh on that in our self-understanding and as we're talking with others.

Greg 39:48

Yeah.

Dane Ortlund 39:49

At the same time, we are called to do, we are called to work, we are called to produce, we are called to bear fruit, would be the biblical language. Yeah. And we're called to obey God. And so here's one way I put it. Sometimes I'll say in a in a sermon to my people, now let me just talk to the kids in the room for a minute. So, hey, all you nine and eleven and 14-year-olds who have checked out, can I just have your attention again? And what I've learned is when I say that, that's when all the adults tune in again, too. So I got everyone. Yeah. And what I'll say to them is picture three three by five note cards. And now I'm answering your question. How do I deal with the tension between performance and grace?

Greg 40:32

Yeah.

Dane Ortlund 40:33

Picture three three by five note cards. On one three by five note card, it says, God loves me. On another three by five note card, it says, I obey God. On the third three by five note card, there's an arrow. How do you put together in your heart, not your theology? You all are pretty much going to get this right in your theology. In what sequence do you put those three note cards in your heart and it functionally how you're thinking about yourself and God?

Greg 41:01

Yeah.

Dane Ortlund 41:02

And the point of it is, of course, you know where this is going, and your listeners do too. We were kind of hardwired, not kind of, we are hardwired to say, I obey God. Arrow, God loves me.

Greg 41:15

Yeah.

Dane Ortlund 41:16

God's smile gets a little brighter over my life. Now, I do believe God is pleased with us when we obey him. Okay. But really, the the heart of the Christian life is understanding God loves me, totally apart from my obedience and performance, bracket all of that out as his son, as his daughter. God loves me, arrow, I obey God. Antinomianism would be God loves me, arrow, nothing. Live any old way I want. So we're not saying live any old way you want, but legalism is I obey God, arrow, God loves me. And so getting it. But only if I obey him the right way and enough. Exactly. Exactly. Right. So so C. F. D. Moole, an old British New Testament scholar, said that sanctification, growing in godliness, is a strangely relaxed kind of strenuousness. It is a strenuousness. I mean, there is spiritual sweat. I toil, struggling with all his energy, Colossians 1. I worked harder than any of them, 1 Corinthians 15. Work out your salvation, Philippians 2. Okay, so we're told to do this. But it's a very relaxed work. Way down deep, the fuel for it is calm down, dude. You are perfectly accepted on the merits of Jesus Christ alone. You're robed in the righteous white robes of Jesus Christ. When God looks at his sons and daughters, he's he sees them as spotless as his own son.

Greg 42:44

Yeah.

Dane Ortlund 42:45

As unorphanable as his own divine son. In order for God to kick Greg Ordain out of his family, Jesus would the logic of the New Testament is Jesus would have to be kicked out of heaven and put back in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea. We are that safe.

Greg 43:02

Yeah.

Dane Ortlund 43:02

So that's a thought or two on how we think about performing.

Greg 43:06

Well, I love that you mentioned Philippians too, because to me, that passage is what is it in verses 12 and 13 have have helped me the most in sitting in uh in recognizing the tension between between being and doing. Because, you know, I I never studied Greek, but I've had it explained to me that there are different verb

God Works In Us And Through Us

Greg 43:28

tenses, and there's the indicative and the imperative, and the imperative that you quoted, which was work out your own salvation. And when I was like, you know, drowning in addiction and nobody knew about it, I would read that and I would just heap condemnation on myself and said, I've tried, I can't do it. But then the phrase continues, for it is God in you to will and to act for his good pleasure. And that's the indicative. So the imperative is do something. The indicative is here's something you need to know. And the thing you need to know is if you're gonna do it, I'm even making you want to do it. And my power is giving you the ability to do it. And so, like, if you're doing obedience, it's because I'm doing it through you. And your main job is let me do it. What an unbelievable relief it is to say, I don't have to figure out the right formula because what I have to do is just draw close to God and allow him to live and work in my life.

Dane Ortlund 44:24

We really don't. I I love that, Greg. I think that's profound. We don't need to overcomplicate this. God has given us That's what we do, though. We do, we do, yeah, uh, but God has given us the power to trust him, love him, worship him, adore him, and follow him and obey him. It's like when Jesus would walk up to a a cripple or a you know, a lame man and say, Get up. What happened in that moment? Well, the guy got up. He had to actually use his muscles to stand up, but it was Jesus who had given him the Jesus had healed him. Yeah. So he didn't, he he had to actually use his quads and his abs and stand up. Okay. But he but that was only because he Been healed. Well, that's a picture of what you just described, and of the Christian life. Sexual sin can feel, as so many other sins, feel so much like we're just in its grip. It's got us in a headlock. We are trapped, we're in handcuffs, we cannot get out. I am stuck. Well, uh, addiction has many layers. There are neurological and physiological layers. I understand all that. But if you're in Christ, no. The devil wants you to think you are stuck and cannot get out. Jesus wants you to know you do actually have the power to walk out of that. You do, because the Holy Spirit is the strongest person in the universe and he is within. So that that text there from Philippians 2 gets at that.

Greg 45:52

It really, really does. And when people begin to not only glimpse it, but slow down enough to say, what would that look like if I really believed that and it worked out in my life? I mean, that's when you start seeing some real change that people have been trying to manufacture on their own. It's really, it's very rewarding and fulfilling to see people start believing God.

Dane Ortlund 46:13

Amen. Amen. And if I could just throw in a little footnote to that, brother, the uh we've been talking about God and right view of God and Jesus and one another. And what I have found in my own life is that one vital ingredient, non-negotiable ingredient in putting to death areas of defeat in my life, is having one trusted brother who knows the real me, who knows what is where I am most defeated.

Greg 46:41

Yeah.

Dane Ortlund 46:41

And just most discouraged and and like my life is not working right here, or I am acting really stupid right here, and I don't know what to stop. I need, I I will, you mentioned isolation. So you already touched on this, brother. But first John 1 7, walking in the light. If there's one other trusted person, not doesn't have to be more than one, but if one person knows where I am really at, that is a powerful assistance in getting traction in moving out of that area of being stuck.

Greg 47:15

Yeah, 100%. Well, hard to believe, at least for me, we've been talking close to an hour. I don't want to let our conversation end without mentioning that you have another book that's coming out later this year. And I was reading a little bit about that this morning called Finally Home. It's about heaven. And I wondered if you could take a few

The Hope Of Heaven

Greg 47:38

minutes and give us a glimpse of what we can look forward to in that book.

Dane Ortlund 47:41

Oh, thank you, Greg. I cannot wait to be there. Lord, take me now. I'm ready. Okay, maybe not yet. I got five kids at home, but I cannot wait. I I have been under, I've been underdeveloped in drawing strength from what you and I and everyone in Christ is going to enjoy forever. Forever. And so I just again looked at the the great thinkers of the past who have had their minds in heaven while their feet were on earth and who wrote accordingly, and who help us plunge our own hearts into the wonders of what is coming just around the next bend in the road. I mean, it's very soon. We're two seconds away compared to eternity. We are two, two seconds away. We are five steps left in this 26.2 mile marathon of a life. There's just a few more, and uh, we're almost there, we're almost home to ponder what we will experience for a short time in the intermediate state when we're with Christ, without bodies. Better by far, Paul says Philippians 1, but not the best because we don't have bodies. But then Jesus is going to come back to earth and everyone's gonna get a new, invincible, ageless, perfectly youthful body that can run real fast and is very strong and has a perfect brain and no lower back pain and is at perfect relational ease with every other person. And Jesus Christ is the shining. We don't have any need of the sun to shine down on us because he is the sun, Revelation 21 says. And we are basking in that and working and playing and laughing and eating and drinking, experiencing Eden 2.0, but in an escalated and invincible and unfallible way. I mean, this is this is really worth pondering and thinking about.

Greg 49:27

And so what got you pondering about it now?

Dane Ortlund 49:30

You know, brother, I don't know. All I know is it it grew in my mind that I want to think more about this. And I think my fellow Christians in our current cultural moment as a church are are underdeveloped in it as well. And so I said, Hey, Crossway, what do you think? And they said, Let's do it. And so I did it. I don't really remember the exact genesis of it. But the crossway has been such a joy, as always, to work with. And I just hope, as I said at the top of the hour, I hope that it is an actual encouragement to to struggling saints.

Greg 50:04

Yeah, I mean, there's like some some ideas you conceive and some ideas you seem to receive. And if you don't really know where the idea came from, then you know, if if you believe in the wisdom that comes from the Holy Spirit, maybe maybe that's him telling you this is something that people need to hear about.

Dane Ortlund 50:20

Yeah, that's right. And if a publishing committee says votes will do it, then I take that as the Lord's lead and threw myself into it. So yeah, thank you for mentioning that, Greg.

Greg 50:31

And it, if I'm not mistaken, I think it's due to release in October of 2026. And so if you're listening to this when it when it first comes out, you probably got about six months to wait. But yeah, if it's anything like the other books, it'll definitely be worth the wait.

Dane Ortlund 50:44

Thank you for that. It is available for pre-order now on Amazon and in other outlets. So yeah, hope it has a ministry.

Greg 50:50

Well, Dane, as we wrap up, are there any other things you would just love to have said before we wrap up our time?

Dane Ortlund 50:58

Just that I'm thankful for you. I'm so glad. I I hope whatever you're doing, you keep doing it. Whatever you're eating for breakfast, keep eating it and carry on. I think it's so easy for us to to view our lives as just never measuring up to what they should be. And at one level, I suppose that's true, but we beat ourselves up with it.

Greg 51:14

Yeah.

Dane Ortlund 51:15

And I think that most Christians do not know how well they are doing. I believe it's also true we don't know how depraved we are, and it's because of our sinfulness that we don't see how sinful we are. I believe that too. But I I just I want Christians, I want the little couple of hundred people I'm shepherding here in Naperville to know you are doing way better than you think you are in the Christian life. That is almost certainly true of the vast majority of your listeners here. If they are tuning in to listen to you, that's the Holy Spirit in them, wanting them to help them grow and they're they're feeding good content. I mean, something's working in their life. So I I would just say to you and to anyone listening, take heart. You're doing great. Obviously, you're you're living out God's call in your life in your own messy, stumbling way, as I am. So hopefully this hour has has encouraged our fellow saints. And I do mean saints.

Greg 52:09

Yeah.

Dane Ortlund 52:09

Okay, because every Christian is clean

Wrapping Up & Thanks

Dane Ortlund 52:12

100% objectively, not yet subjectively, but we are clean in God's sight. That is, we are sanctified. We're also being sanctified. We are sanctified, though, the Bible says, and therefore we are saints. So I actually tell the people, I call them Saint Judy, Saint Dennis, Saint Grant around here. And they've picked that up too, which is a wonderful, wonderful way to dignify one another.

Greg 52:34

So maybe that would be the first thing I'd want to say. Yeah. Well, thank you, Saint Dane. Uh for yeah, you said you wanted encouragement, and and I I can't imagine a context in which people who listen to any part of this, especially all the way through, haven't received some encouragement. You know, this show is all about encouraging deeper, authentic connection with God, with ourselves, with other people. And I I believe that this conversation is gonna give some people some ideas of how they can go about that. So thanks for spending some time with us, Dane.

Dane Ortlund 53:06

May it be what a joy to talk with you, Greg. God bless you.