Surprised by Jesus

When God Showed Up in Palestine, the Religious Experts Rejected Him. The Outcasts Flocked to Him. Why?

Because the grace Jesus offers is not what anyone expected. It is not the grace of the morally deserving. It is not the grace of the religiously qualified. It is not safe. It is not predictable. It is subversive — the open welcome of divine mercy thrown wide to anyone who will simply leave their moral résumé at the door.

Two thousand years later, nothing has changed. The grace of Jesus still confounds our law-marinated hearts. It still surprises us. And it is still the best news in the world.

In Surprised by Jesus, Dane Ortlund reflects on this subversive grace as it uniquely emerges in each of the four Gospel accounts — showing how the message and mission of Jesus is deeply, wonderfully, and repeatedly surprising in every one of them. In Matthew, the surprise of disobedient obedience. In Mark, the surprise of a king undergoing the fate of a criminal. In Luke, the surprise of insiders becoming outsiders and outsiders becoming insiders. In John, the surprise of the Creator of the universe becoming one of his own creatures.

Each surprise confounds our expectations. Each one reveals a grace that will not be tamed. And this book exists not merely to explain these surprises but to exult in them — and in the scandalous, lavish, unstoppable mercy that Jesus loves to pour out on needy sinners. On people like you and me.

What This Book Covers

Dane Ortlund works through each of the four Gospels, drawing out the unique and surprising way each one presents the grace and mission of Jesus:

• The subversive grace of Jesus — Why the grace Jesus offers is not predictable or safe — and why that is the most wonderful news possible for anyone who has ever felt too sinful, too broken, or too far gone to be welcomed
• Matthew: the surprise of disobedient obedience — How Matthew presents a Jesus who confounds the religious establishment's understanding of what obedience looks like — and why that surprise is good news
• Mark: the surprise of a criminal king — How Mark shows us a King who undergoes the fate of a criminal — and why this surprising reversal is the very heart of the gospel
• Luke: the surprise of insiders and outsiders — How Luke consistently shows Jesus welcoming the excluded and challenging the comfortable — and what that means for how we understand grace and belonging
• John: the surprise of the Creator becoming a creature — How John's Gospel presents the most staggering surprise of all — that the one through whom all things were made entered his own creation — and what that means for everything
• Scandalous mercy for needy sinners — Why the gospel that emerges from all four Gospels is not tame, domesticated religion but the wildly generous, unstoppable mercy of a Saviour who loves to welcome the undeserving
• Exulting in the good news — A call not merely to understand the grace of Jesus but to be genuinely astonished, moved, and transformed by it

What Readers Will Learn

• Why the grace Jesus offers consistently surprised, confounded, and subverted the expectations of those who encountered him — and why it still does
• What is uniquely surprising about Jesus in each of the four Gospels — and how reading all four together gives a richer, fuller picture of the one who is the same in all of them
• Why the gospel is not moralism in disguise — and why Jesus consistently welcomed those who had nothing to offer and challenged those who thought they had everything
• What the surprise of each Gospel reveals about the character of Jesus — his mercy, his humility, his solidarity with the broken, and his determination to save the unsaveable
• How law-marinated hearts — hearts that still, at some level, expect grace to be earned — are confronted, loosened, and set free by the subversive grace of Jesus
• Why exulting in the gospel — being genuinely, repeatedly surprised and delighted by what Jesus has done — is not just an emotional experience but a transforming one
• How the scandalous mercy of Jesus applies personally to the reader — however sinful, broken, or far from God they may feel

How to Use This Book

Surprised by Jesus is warm, accessible, and immediately enriching:

• Personal reading — Ideal for any Christian wanting a fresh, gospel-saturated encounter with the Jesus of all four Gospels — one that rekindles wonder and deepens delight
• Evangelistic gift — A compelling and accessible book for a friend or family member who is curious about Jesus but expects Christianity to be about moral performance and religious respectability
• Small group discussion — Rich enough to generate genuine conversation about what the grace of Jesus actually looks like — and how it challenges and transforms our assumptions
• New Christians — A warm, gospel-rich introduction to the four Gospels and the surprising, subversive grace that runs through all of them
• Personal devotions — A book to read slowly, one Gospel at a time, letting each surprise sink in and do its work

Who Should Read This Book

This book is for you if you are:

• A Christian whose sense of the gospel has grown familiar — and who needs to be genuinely surprised again by the grace of Jesus
• A new Christian wanting to understand how the four Gospels each present Jesus in a uniquely surprising way — and to be captured by the subversive grace that runs through all of them
• A person who feels too sinful or too broken to be welcomed by Jesus — and needs to encounter a grace that is genuinely subversive enough to reach them
• A Christian whose faith has become more about performance than grace — and who needs the law-loosening, heart-freeing surprise of the gospel to break through again
• Anyone who has encountered the Jesus of the Gospels and been struck by the persistent, surprising sense that he is not quite what they expected — and wants to understand why

About the Author

Dane Ortlund is the Senior Pastor of Naperville Presbyterian Church in Naperville, Illinois, and the author of several widely read books including the award-winning Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers — one of the most celebrated Christian books of the past decade. He holds a PhD in biblical theology from Wheaton College Graduate School and is widely respected for his combination of careful scholarship and genuine, infectious delight in the grace of the gospel. Dane writes with the warmth and wonder of someone who has been genuinely surprised by Jesus — and who cannot stop pointing others toward the same subversive, scandalous, life-transforming grace.