Review by Jared C. Wilson
J. I. Packer wrote that we ought to constantly meditate on the four Gospels “over and above the rest of our Bible reading: for gospel study enables us both to keep our Lord in clear view and to hold before our minds the relational frame of discipleship to him” (Keep in Step with the Spirit [2d ed.; Grand Rapids: Baker, 2005], 61). An abundance of works have filled the evangelical catalogs on the Gospels, each seeking in its own way to help us follow Packer’s wise advice, but the vast majority of them have trended toward the explicitly apologetic or the purely didactic. There are of course ample commentaries on the Gospels and plenty of entries in the category of “historical Jesus” studies. But Dane Ortlund’s little book Defiant Grace fills a big gap.
Neither apologetic argument for the historicity of Christ or the veracity of his miracles nor a series of lessons from Jesus’ life, Defiant Grace is a short but powerful exultation in the gospel at the heart of the proclamation of the four Gospels. Setting his course straightaway in the introduction, Ortlund shows us his “Packerian” aim with the work:
Like a bad back that needs to return repeatedly to the chiropractor for straightening out, our understanding of Jesus needs to be straightened out over and over again as our poor spiritual posture throws our perception of him out of line—domesticating himself and conforming him to our image, rather than transforming us into his. (p. 11)And yet Defiant Grace does not serve up this straightening out in as sober a fashion as a chiropractic treatment might indicate. Indeed, “the grace that comes to us in Jesus Christ is not measured” (p. 11), Ortlund goes on to say, and while his book is no longer than necessary, Ortlund’s exhilaration in highlighting the measureless grace in the life and ministry of Jesus is measureless as well. The effect is one of worship, a quality sorely lacking in far too many Christian books. If “grace feels like moral vertigo” (p. 13), Defiant Grace feels like the discombobulation of the self-interested hearts and minds Jesus keeps confronting and comforting in the stories of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. What we have in this book is four shots of doxological whisky.
Read more at http://thegospelcoalition.org/themelios/review/defiant_grace_the_surprising_message_and_mission_of_jesus