What is Wrong with the World? By Timothy Keller

Posthumous book of Keller's sermons is 'a theologically and biblically literate proclamation of good news, which must always start with the bad news... no message of 'cheap grace', but one of radical repentance'

What is Wrong with the World? The Surprising, Hopeful Answer to the Question We Cannot Avoid
By Timothy Keller
Hodder and Stoughton
ISBN: 978-1399829649
Reviewed by Paul Goodliff

 
In the 1990s Timothy Keller (1950–2023) preached a series of sermons on sin at Redeemer Presbyterian Church, New York City. His widow, Kathy has strived heroically to bring some order to his files, both digital and in paper, and one of the results is this posthumous book of sermons, transformed into chapters.

In her introduction she recounts how good members of his congregation took exception to being called 'sinners', and I suspect that the same avoidance of what the Bible clearly states is a universal human state remains rampant in the United States still.

The liberal secularist says sinners are those people who do what we disapprove of, while, if we are good cultural Christians, we do not come under that same category. But what Keller was preaching was pure Gospel — 'For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God' — even the reviewer of this fine book! Actually, as I enter my eighth decade of life, especially this reviewer. The older we get, the more convinced we become of our own sinful condition, and of the immeasurable grace of God that heals it again and again. To believe otherwise is the deepest of self-deception.
 
This book is not a theological discourse on sin, but a theologically and biblically literate proclamation of good news, which must always start with the bad news. We are sinners, under the judgement of a holy God. In Keller's estimation sin is self-deception, mistrust, self-righteousness and slavery. Each chapter (which I assume must have been an expansion of the original sermon, unless Keller's sermons lasted a long time) takes as its text an Old Testament passage, with the exception of chapter 3, 'Sin as Leaven,' taken from Mark 8:11–17. Samuel's dealings with Saul in 1 Samuel 15:12–23 (Sin as Self Deception), or two chapters on the story of Naaman from 2 Kings 5 that use the condition of leprosy as an image of the sickness of sin, and for its cure, the intervention of a slave girl, serve as examples. Here the heart of the sinful condition is pride.
 
The 'surprising good news' is evident throughout: our ability, and the necessity, to admit we are sinners, and the grace of God to forgive, heal and transform. The central theme of this book is to recognise what sin is and to be determined to face that, and repent of it, because there is forgiveness for those who do. This is no message of 'cheap grace' ("O, God will forgive anyway"), but one of radical repentance. "We follow Jesus because he's the One who taught us that the repenting soul is the triumphant soul, that to lose our lives, is to find our lives, that we behold his grace and glory in the dark valley, not on the mountaintop."(194)
 
I commend this book as a biblically-informed work of deep spirituality and apologetics, perhaps from a generation that has passed, but with enduring truth and relevance. Read the book and pray the prayers that close each chapter written by a master preacher and pastor. It will do your soul immeasurable good.
 

The Revd Dr Paul Goodliff, member of the Order for Baptist Ministry