We need more books about Jesus.

There are benefits to reading about topics related to the Christian life: marriage and singleness, suffering and joy, evangelism and prayer.

But if there’s one theme we ought to return to time and time again, surely it should be our Saviour Jesus Christ. We can never hear about Jesus too often, never plumb the depths of his goodness and glory.

We can never hear about Jesus too often, never plumb the depths of his goodness and glory.

 

Jonty Rhodes’s Man of Sorrows, King of Glory is a wonderful new book that helps us see Jesus more clearly.

Look Deeper at the Cross

What can we say about Jesus over a few hundred pages? That’s where we run into a problem. In our (rightful) quest to be cross-centred, we narrow our vision of who Jesus is and what he’s done. We say, “Jesus died for my sins on the cross,” and stop there—but we’re missing the riches of Christ when we don’t dig deeper into what this actually means. The solution is not to find a different focus than the cross, but instead to look deeper at the cross.

In Man of Sorrows, King of Glory, Rhodes helps us do just that by explaining the threefold office of Christ—a doctrine that has deep roots in church history but is largely neglected among Christians today. Rhodes explains how Adam failed in the Garden of Eden to fulfill the roles God had given him. He should have spoken truth in response to Satan’s lies to Eve, protected the holiness of his wife and the place where they dwelt with God, and exercised dominion by conquering the serpent. But he failed on all counts. Rhodes writes, “That’s why a second Adam was needed: a true prophet to open our eyes, a priest to cleanse us from sin, and a king to conquer death and the devil on our behalf” (24).