Study Guides by
Dane Ortlund
2 discussion guides available
Deeper
Dane Ortlund's Deeper: Real Change for Real Sinners (2021) is a pastoral and theologically rich guide to the often-misunderstood question of how Christians actually grow. Ortlund's central thesis is disarmingly simple: genuine sanctification is not a matter of trying harder, doing more, or accumulating better spiritual habits. It is a matter of going deeper — deeper into the grace of Jesus Christ, deeper into the gospel truths that saved us in the first place. Drawing on the wisdom of figures such as John Owen, Jonathan Edwards, Thomas Goodwin, and Herman Bavinck, Ortlund argues that the engine of Christian growth is not self-improvement but an ever-expanding knowledge of and union with Jesus himself. The book is anchored in 2 Peter 3:18 — "Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ" — and unfolds what it looks like to do exactly that.
View Discussion GuideGentle and Lowly
Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers by Dane C. Ortlund is a book with one simple, stunning thesis: the deepest impulse of Jesus Christ's heart is not frustration, disappointment, or reluctant tolerance — it is tender, zealous, and inexhaustible love for sinners. Drawing on Matthew 11:29, where Jesus describes himself as "gentle and lowly in heart," Ortlund mines the Old and New Testaments and draws heavily on the Puritan writers — Thomas Goodwin, Richard Sibbes, John Bunyan, John Owen, and others — to show that the gospel does not merely change what God does for us; it reveals who God is toward us. The book is not primarily about what we must do but about what kind of Savior we actually have.
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