Tim Keller’s ministry – sermons and books – have had a significant impact on both me and my wife Tammy’s life. Keller died on May 19, after a three-year battle with pancreatic cancer. Here is our brief tribute to Keller, written a few days after his death.

All of Keller’s sermons and talks were recently made available free on the Gospel in Life site. His sermons and books will continue to influence people for many years to come.

I recently wrote about the first six (of twelve) of my favorite books Keller wrote here. Below are reviews and favorite quotes from the remaining six of my twelve favorite books that he wrote:

The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Commitment with the Wisdom of God by Timothy Keller with Kathy Keller. Penguin Group. 288 pages. 2011.

This book had its roots in the early 1990’s when Keller did a sermon series on marriage because of the skepticism, fear and arguments that many of the singles in his church had toward marriage. He also wrote the book to share from his own experiences with his wife Kathy of 36 plus years. Most importantly he wrote the book to give a compelling vision of what marriage was designed to look like in the Bible from Genesis to Revelation.

Keller uses the classic marriage passage in Ephesians 5 as his primary text:
Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her,
having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. “Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband. (Ephesians 5:22-33 ESV)

A brief overview of each chapter follows:

Chapter 1
Keller discusses Genesis 2 and Ephesians 5, bringing Paul’s discussion into today’s context and demonstrating “why the gospel helps us understand marriage and how marriage helps us understand the gospel”. He lays out two of the most basic teachings of the Bible on marriage – that it was instituted by God and that marriage was designed to be a reflection of the saving love of God for us in Jesus Christ.

Chapter 2
Keller shows how the sin nature resulting in selfishness necessitates the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit in making the saving work of Christ operative in bringing two hearts to beat as one. He presents Paul’s thesis that all married couples need the work of the Holy Spirit in their lives. The work of the Spirit makes Christ’s saving work real to our hearts, giving us supernatural help against the main enemy of marriage: sinful self-centeredness. We need the fullness of the Spirit if we are to serve one another as we should.

Chapter 3
Keller gets to the heart of what marriage is all about – biblical love. He discusses the relationship of feelings of love to acts of love and the relationship of romantic passion to covenantal commitment.

Chapter 4
Keller addresses the question of what marriage is for – a way for two spiritual friends to help each other on their journey to become the persons God designed them to be – a new and deeper kind of happiness is found on the far side of holiness.

Chapter 5
Keller talks about the power of truth, and the power of love, via affection, friendship and service, all in the context of grace, through which we can help each other on this journey.

Chapter 6
This chapter is written by Kathy Keller and addresses gender roles in marriage. She discusses the Trinitarian roles and how they translate into gender roles in a marriage. She states that marriage is a place where the two sexes accept each other as differently gendered and learn to grown through it.

Chapter 7
This chapter is about singleness and marriage. Here, Keller helps singles use the material in the book to live the single life well and to think wisely about seeking marriage themselves.

Chapter 8
Keller looks at the subject of sex, why the Bible confines it to marriage, and how, if we embrace the Biblical view, it will play out in both the single life and in marriage. Keller looks at the realities and misperceptions of sex and the glory of it when it is practiced the way God designed it.

The book closes with a short epilogue with a helpful discussion on decision making and gender roles. Keller makes it clear that he will be looking at marriage from a biblical worldview. Early on, he defines marriage as being between a man and a woman. Throughout, he points to Jesus as the center and meaning of life
and marriage. He shows that God created marriage to bring us closer to him and to bring us more joy in our lives. He does not minimize the difficulties, or the effort and hard work involved in a marriage, but gives a compelling case for marriage in this book that should be required reading for anyone married or considering marriage.

Below are a few helpful quotes from the book:

• When over the years someone has seen you at your worst, and knows you with all your strengths and flaws, yet commits him- or herself to you wholly, it is a consummate experience. To be loved but not known is comforting but superficial. To be known and not loved is our greatest fear. But to be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God. It is what we need more than anything. It liberates us from pretense, humbles us out of our self-righteousness, and fortifies us for any difficulty life can throw at us.
• Wedding vows are not a declaration of present love but a mutually binding promise of future love.
• A marriage relationship unavoidably entails self-denial, even in the most mundane day-to-day living. It is impossible to have a smooth-running relationship with even one person, let alone two, always feeling that his or her desires should have preeminence because of all he or she has been through in life.
• If we look to our spouses to fill up our tanks in a way that only God can do, we are demanding an impossibility.
• Marriage has the power to set the course of your life as a whole. If your marriage is strong, even if all the circumstances in your life around you are filled with trouble and weakness, it won’t matter. You will be able to move out into the world in strength.
• It is the illusion that if we find our one true soul mate, everything wrong with us will be healed; but that makes the lover into God, and no human being can live up to that.
• Marriage is a major vehicle for the gospel’s remaking of your heart from the inside out and your life from the ground up.
• The gospel is this: We are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe, yet at the very same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope.
• Only if you have learned to serve others by the power of the Holy Spirit will you have the power to face the challenges of marriage.
• Whether we are husband or wife, we are not to live for ourselves but for the other. And that is the hardest yet single most important function of being a husband or a wife in marriage.
• In any relationship, there will be frightening spells in which your feelings of love dry up. And when that happens you must remember that the essence of marriage is that it is a covenant, a commitment, a promise of future love. So, what do you do? You do the acts of love, despite your lack of feeling. You may not feel tender, sympathetic, and eager to please, but in your actions, you must be tender, understanding, forgiving and helpful. And, if you do that, as time goes on you will not only get through the dry spells, but they will become less frequent and deep, and you will become more constant in your feelings. This is what can happen if you decide to love.
• Love without truth is sentimentality; it supports and affirms us but keeps us in denial about our flaws. Truth without love is harshness; it gives us information but in such a way that we cannot really hear it. God’s saving love in Christ, however, is marked by both radical truthfulness about who we are and yet also radical, unconditional commitment to us. The merciful commitment strengthens us to see the truth about ourselves and repent. The conviction and repentance moves us to cling to and rest in God’s mercy and grace.
• Our culture says that feelings of love are the basis for actions of love. And of course, that can be true. But it is truer to say that actions of love can lead consistently to feelings of love.
• The Christian teaching does not offer a choice between fulfillment and sacrifice but rather mutual fulfillment through mutual sacrifice. Jesus gave himself up; he died to himself to save us and make us his. Now we give ourselves up, we die to ourselves, first when we repent and believe the gospel, and later as we submit to his will day by day. Subordinating ourselves to him, however, is radically safe, because he has already shown that he was willing to go to hell and back for us. This banishes fears that loving surrender means loss of oneself.
• The reason that marriage is so painful and yet wonderful is because it is a reflection of the gospel, which is painful and wonderful at once. The gospel is this: We are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe, yet at the very same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope. This is the only kind of relationship that will really transform us. Love without truth is sentimentality; it supports and affirms us but keeps us in denial about our flaws. Truth without love is harshness; it gives us information but in such a way that we cannot really hear it. God’s saving love in Christ, however, is marked by both radical truthfulness about who we are and yet also radical, unconditional commitment to us. The merciful commitment strengthens us to see the truth about ourselves and repent. The conviction and repentance moves us to cling to and rest in God’s mercy and grace.
• The gospel can fill our hearts with God’s love so that you can handle it when your spouse fails to love you as he or she should. That frees us to see our spouse’s sins and flaws to the bottom—and speak of them—and yet still love and accept our spouse fully. And when, by the power of the gospel, our spouse experiences that same kind of truthful yet committed love, it enables our spouses to show us that same kind of transforming love when the time comes for it.
• Over the years you will go through seasons in which you have to learn to love a person who you didn’t marry, who is something of a stranger. You will have to make changes that you don’t want to make, and so will your spouse. The journey may eventually take you into a strong, tender, joyful marriage. But it is not because you married the perfectly compatible person. That person doesn’t exist.
• The deep happiness that marriage can bring, then, lies on the far side of sacrificial service in the power of the Spirit. That is, you only discover your own happiness after each of you has put the happiness of your spouse ahead of your own, in a sustained way, in response to what Jesus has done for you. Some will ask, “If I put the happiness of my spouse ahead of my own needs—then what do I get out of it?” The answer is—happiness. That is what you get, but a happiness through serving others instead of using them, a happiness that won’t be bad for you. It is the joy that comes from giving joy, from loving another person in a costly way.

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Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power and the Only Hope that Matters by Timothy Keller. Dutton. 2009. 211 pages.

Keller identifies a counterfeit god as “anything so central and essential to your life that, should you lose it, your life would feel hardly worth living”. He states that the only way to free ourselves from the destructive influence of counterfeit gods is to turn back to the true one.

Keller effectively uses stories from his church experience and Bible passages to illustrate his points in this book. He includes illustrations from the lives of Abraham and Isaac, Jacob and Esau, Jonah and Zacchaeus.

He states: “Every counterfeit god a heart can choose – has a powerful biblical narrative that explains how that particular kind of idolatry works itself in our lives”.
Keller writes that a good thing has become a counterfeit god when its demands on you exceed proper boundaries.

Keller writes of “deep idols”. These are idols that are within the heart beneath the more concrete and visible “surface idols”. He states that sin in our hearts effect our basic motivational drives so that they become deep idols. Examples of deep idols would be power, approval, comfort or control. Surface idols are things such as money, our spouse or children, through which our deep idols seek fulfillment.

Keller uses an illustration about tennis player Chris Evert when discussing success idolatry. He states that the main sign that we have a problem with success idolatry is that we cannot maintain our self confidence in life unless we remain at the top of our chosen field. He states that our contemporary culture makes us particularly vulnerable to turning success into a counterfeit god. This idol cannot be just expelled, it must be replaced.

Keller writes that: “One of the signs that an object is functioning as an idol is that fear becomes one of the chief characteristics of life. When we center our lives on the idol, we become dependent on it. If our counterfeit god is threatened in any way, our response is complete panic”.

In addition to personal idols such as romantic love, financial prosperity or political success, Keller says that there are other idols, idols that are harder to spot. These he refers to as “hidden idols”. They are not the idols of the heart, but of our culture and society. Included in Keller’s list of hidden idols is religion. This idolatry occurs for example when people rely on the rightness of their doctrine for their standing with God rather than on God himself and grace. Other religious idols that he calls out are those that turn spiritual gifts and ministry success into a counterfeit god, as well as moral living itself.

Keller writes: “When an idol gets a grip on your heart, it spins out a whole set of false definitions of success and failure and happiness and sadness. It redefines reality in terms of itself”.

Keller says that there is hope for us if we realize that idols cannot simply be removed: “They must be replaced. If you only try to uproot them, they grow back, but they can be supplanted. By what? By God himself, of course. But by God we do not mean a general belief in his existence. Most people have that, yet their souls are riddled with idols. What we need is a living encounter with God”.

Keller states that it is impossible to understand your heart or your culture if you do not discern the counterfeit gods that influence them. Looking at Romans 1:21, 25, he writes that idolatry is always the reason we ever do anything wrong.

In discussing how we can discern our idols, Keller gives the following examples:
• What do you habitually think about to get joy and comfort in the privacy of your heart?
• Look at how you spend your money.
• When you pray and work for something and you don’t get it and you respond with explosive anger or deep despair, then you may have found your real god.
• Look at your most uncontrollable emotions.

Keller tells us that idolatry is not just a failure to obey God; it is a setting of the whole heart on something besides God. Jesus must become more beautiful to your imagination, more attractive to your heart, than your idol. Keller says that this is what will replace your counterfeit gods. He goes on to state that the gospel asks: “What is operating in the place of Jesus Christ as your real, functional salvation and Savior? What are you looking to in order to justify yourself? Whatever it is, is a counterfeit god, and to make a change in your life, you must identify it and reject it as such”.
This is a very helpful, practical book by one of the most influential communicators in the church today.

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The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith by Timothy Keller. Dutton. 140 pages. 2008

Keller writes that his intention with this book is to lay out the essentials of the gospel. Thus, the book can serve as an introduction to the Christian faith for those who are unfamiliar with its teachings or who may have been away from them for some time. It has been written for both curious outsiders and established insiders of the faith, to those Jesus called “younger brothers” and those he called “elder brothers” in the Parable of the Prodigal Son.

Keller indicates that the foundation for his understanding of this parable was a sermon he heard preached more than thirty years ago by Dr. Edmond P. Clowney. He indicates that listening to that sermon changed the way he understood Christianity. Keller writes that the sermon is directed to the scribes and Pharisees who were listening to Jesus as he related this parable. He states that throughout the centuries the almost exclusive focus has been on how the father freely receives his penitent son. But he sees that the parable takes an extended look at the soul of the elder brother, and ends with a powerful plea for him to change his heart. Thus, the target of the parable is not wayward sinners, but religious people who do everything the Bible requires. Jesus teaches that both are spiritually lost, both life-paths are dead ends, and that every thought the human race has had about how to connect to God has been wrong.

Keller walks us through the parable, providing fresh insights. Keller focuses on both brothers, not just the “prodigal son”. He concludes by saying that the parable abruptly ends without Jesus finishing the story. Keller states that the parable takes place in two acts:

Act 1 – the younger brother
Act 2 – the elder brother

He writes that Jesus uses the two brothers to portray two basic ways people try to find happiness and fulfillment – through moral conformity and through self-discovery. The elder brother illustrates the way of moral conformity and the younger brother the way of self-discovery. Jesus’ message is that both of these approaches are wrong. His parable illustrates the radical alternative. He shows that the plotlines of our lives can only find a resolution, a happy ending, in him, in his person and work.

The parable contains three redefinitions. They are:

1. The redefinition of God
2. The redefinition of Sin
3. The redefinition of Salvation

Keller writes that by putting a flawed elder brother in the story, Jesus is inviting us to imagine and yearn for a true one.

Keller writes of three things that will lead us back to Christ:

1. The initiating love of the Father
2. The need to learn how to repent from something besides sin.
3. The need to be melted and moved by what it costs to bring us home.

I was moved by this statement from Keller: “If we say “I believe in Jesus” but it doesn’t affect the way we live, the answer is not that now we need to add hard work to our faith so much as that we haven’t truly understood or believed in Jesus at all”.

In explaining the importance of the local church, Keller writes: “I have explained in this book why churches – and all religious institutions – are often so unpleasant. They are filled with elder brothers. Yet staying away from them simply because they have elder brothers is just another form of self-righteousness. Besides that, there is no way you will be able to grow spiritually apart from a deep involvement in a community of other believers. You can’t live the Christian life without a band of Christian friends, without a family of believers in which you find a place”.

In the final chapter entitled “The Feast of the Father”, Keller states: “Jesus tells us that both the sensual way of the younger brother and the ethical way of the elder brother are spiritual dead ends. He also shows us there is another way: through him. And to enter that way and to live a life based on his salvation will bring us finally to the ultimate party and feast at the end of history. We can have a foretaste of that future salvation through means such as prayer, service to others, changes in our inner nature through the gospel, and through healed relationships that Christ can give us now. But they are only a foretaste of what is to come”.

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The Songs of Jesus: A Year of Daily Devotions in the Psalms by Timothy Keller, Kathy Keller. Viking. 375 pages. 2015

This was the second book that Keller he has written with wife Kathy, the first being The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Commitment with the Wisdom of God.

The authors write that theologians and leaders of the church throughout history have believed that the Psalms should be used and reused in every Christian’s daily private approach to God and in public worship. They state that we are not simply to read psalms, but are to be immersed in them so that they profoundly shape how we relate to God. The psalms are the divinely ordained way to learn devotion to our God. The psalms are written to be prayed, recited, and sung—to be done, not merely to be read. They tell us that most of all the psalms, read in light of the entire Bible, bring us to Jesus. The psalms were Jesus’s songbook.

This book is a daily devotional that takes the reader through every verse of the book of Psalms in 365 days, with each devotional providing the reader with a daily reading from a psalm. It also gives the reader a brief meditation on the meaning of the psalm and a prayer to help the reader to actually use it in our heart and as a way to approach God. The authors ask us to look at the prayers as what they call “on-ramps,” not as complete prayers. They ask us to follow the trajectory of the prayers and keep going, filling each prayer out with personal particulars, as well as always praying in Jesus’s name (John 14:13).

They write that the book is structured so that it can be used in three different ways:

1. The simplest way is to read the psalm and the meditation slowly, and then use the prayer to begin praying the psalm.
2. The second way is to take the time to look up the additional scriptural references that are embedded in the meditation and sometimes in the prayer.
3. The third way is to get a blank journal to use along with it. Read the psalm portion twice slowly. Then ask three questions and write out our own answers:

• Adore—What did you learn about God for which you could praise or thank him?

• Admit—What did you learn about yourself for which you could repent?

• Aspire—What did you learn about life that you could aspire to, ask for, and act on?

Once we have answered the above questions, we have our own meditation on the psalm. They state that we should then read the meditation in the book and incorporate its insights into our journal notes.

Lastly, we should turn our meditation—already categorized as adoration, confession, and aspiration—into personal prayer, using the provided “on-ramp” prayer as well. This will take us into the deep level of wisdom and insight the psalms can provide.

Here are a few helpful quotes from the book:

• Sin is cosmic ingratitude. It gives you the delusion that you have the ability to conduct and hold your life together.
• Idols are usually good things turned into ultimate things because we look to them to give us the significance and security that can come only from God.
• Affecting world events through prayer is not wishful thinking; we influence the course of current events through appealing to our Father in heaven to intervene.
• It may take a long time or a lifetime, but all prayer that engages God and the world as they truly are will eventually end in praise.
• There is ultimately no such thing as unanswered prayer. If the answer at first is “no” or “not yet,” it is because he gives us what we want in ways better than we asked.
• Our unfaithfulness in light of his faithfulness makes ours more heinous. But his faithfulness in light of our unfaithfulness makes his more wonderful.
• The more times we are in narrow straits and we see God bring us through, the more peace and courage we will have as time goes on.

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God’s Wisdom for Navigating Life: A Year of Daily Devotions in the Book of Proverbs by Timothy Keller and Kathy Keller. Viking. 395 pages 2017 

Tim and Kathy Keller follow The Songs of Jesus, their excellent devotional book on the Psalms, with God’s Wisdom for Navigating Life on the Proverbs.  The authors start out by reflecting on the differences between Psalms and Proverbs. They write that Proverbs calls us to study, to think, to learn the practical discipline of centering all our thoughts and actions on God. Proverbs is about how as believers we should live our faith out. They look at Proverbs as poetry, puzzle and pedagogy.
They suggest that readers use the devotional with a group of friends, and give helpful suggestions on a routine to follow:

• Choose one of more friends to read the devotional, each reading the same reflection individually on the same day.

• At the end of each reflection there is a question that helps you think more personally about how the teaching applies to your life. Write the answer to the question in a journal.

• Write answers to two additional questions about the day’s proverb(s) in the journal, unless your response to the first question has already included them. As an example, where in your life or the life of someone else have you seen this observation illustrated? How can you put this observation into practice—in thought, attitude, word, or deed?

• After completing your journal entry, pray the prayer at the end of each page. These short prayers are just “on ramps”—suggested ways to begin talking to God personally about what he is teaching you in his Word. You might want to put the prayer in your own words, and then continue speaking to him about how the particular Scriptural teaching should play out in your life.

• Then meet with your friends who are doing the same daily exercise as often as you can. Share your best insights, discuss them together, encourage one another to apply the insights to your lives, and report to one another on how your efforts are going.

The book is arranged as follows. The first weeks of the year examine the general teaching on the subject of wisdom in the first nine chapters of Proverbs. After that, the daily readings are grouped into sets of topics, enabling the reader to accumulate the various insights on a specific theme, piecing together the wisdom that the book offers on the subject.
For example, the reading for November 12 addresses leadership. The authors tell us that the most powerful kind of leader is one who uses his or her authority ultimately to serve the ones being led. The greatest leaders are the greatest servants. A probing question is “Thinking of the best leaders you have known, how have evident love and a servant heart been important to their effectiveness?”
The November 13 reading looks at what leaders do, specifically vision. They tell us that the best leaders are those who can paint a compelling picture of the future. A probing question is “Have you seen a leader cast a vision or paint a picture of the future in a compelling way? How was it done?”

Here are 30 helpful quotes from the book.

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Forgive: Why Should I And How Can I? by Timothy Keller. Viking. 271 pages. 2022

Forgive was the last book Keller released before his death on May 19, 2023. It is a thorough and practical treatment of all aspects of forgiveness. I’m certain that it will be a book that I’ll want to revisit again in the future.
Keller tells us that the ultimate purpose of forgiveness is the restoration of community. He writes that the concept of forgiveness is central to the meaning of the Bible, and that human forgiveness is dependent on divine forgiveness. From the very beginning, the Christian church was remarkable for its emphasis on and practice of forgiveness and nonretaliation.
He then looks at the approaches to forgiveness that have emerged in our secular society (cheap grace, little grace and no grace). He tells us that what these models have in common is the lack of any vertical dimension. They all contrast with the costly grace model of forgiveness assumed in the Bible, which has both a horizontal and vertical dimension to it. He adds that social media has only accelerated this movement toward a graceless culture.
Among the scripture passages that Keller addresses in the book are the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant (Matthew 18: 21-35), Matthew 5 (what you do when you believe you have – or may have – wronged someone else), Matthew 18 (what you do when you believe someone has wronged you), Luke 17: 11-19, and Psalm 51 (a model for repentance).
Among the many subjects included in the book include retaliation and revenge, false repentance, justice, reconciliation and healing, anger, shame and honor culture and cancel culture, the cross, guilt, trust, blame shifting, self-pity, and self-flagellation, and resentment.
The book is filled with stories about people such as Billy Graham and Corrie Ten Boom. The heavily footnoted book cites references from C.S. Lewis, Derek Kidner, D.A. Carson and Rachel Denhollander, among others.
The book concludes with four helpful appendices:
Appendix A: Forgiveness Principles
Appendix B: Biblical Texts on God’s Forgiveness
Appendix C: Forgiveness Practices
Appendix D: Reconciliation Practices
This is an excellent treatment of all aspects of forgiveness. Because it is so practical, it would be an excellent book to read and discuss with others. My only suggestion would be to include questions for reflection at the end of each chapter.
Here are 20 helpful quotes from the book:
• Forgiveness, then, is a form of voluntary suffering. In forgiving, rather than retaliating, you make a choice to bear the cost.
• Forgiveness means that, when you want to make them suffer, instead you refuse to do it. And this refusal is hard. It is difficult and costly, but through it you are absorbing the debt yourself.
• Forgiveness is seen now as radically unjust and impractical, as short-circuiting the ability of victims to gain honor and virtue as others rise to defend them.
• Divine mercy should change our hearts so that we are able to forgive as God forgave us.
• If we will not offer others forgiveness, it shows that we did not truly repent and receive God’s.
• The self-centeredness that grows when you stay angry at somebody, when you hold things against them, when you continue to regard them as if they’re liable to you and they owe you, is a prison.
• Forgiveness in the fullest sense, biblically, is not simply asking for a pardon or remission—it is always after restored relationship.
• The key to Christian forgiveness is the cross. It is the foundation of forgiveness because it not only makes it possible for God to forgive us without compromising his justice but it also provides both motivation and model for our own forgiveness to those who wrong us.
• God is not just a God of love or a God of wrath. He is both, and if your concept of God can’t include both, it will distort your view of reality in general and of forgiveness in particular.
• Christian forgiveness never undermines the pursuit of justice but promotes it.
• Forgiveness is often (or perhaps usually) granted before it’s felt inside.
• The only way to deal with true guilt is to take it to the grace and mercy of God.
• Real repentance involves an acceptance of God’s free mercy. To forgive is to give the perpetrator a gift they do not in any way deserve. In love you are absorbing the debt that they owe you. Here you are truly walking in Christ’s footsteps.
• A Christian is responsible to begin the process of reconciliation, regardless of how the alienation began.
• Almost always reconciliation is best done by both repenting and forgiving—by both admitting your own wrong and pointing out the wrong of the other.
• Only the gospel prepares you for both sides of the Christian reconciliation model. It humbles you enough to make you able to be a forgiver and, at the same time, affirms and fills you with such a sense of worth and love that it makes you able to be a repenter.
• It is hard to stay angry at someone if you are praying for them. It is also hard to stay angry unless you feel superior, and it is hard to feel superior if you are praying for them, since in prayer you approach God as a forgiven sinner.
• Forgiveness means giving up the right to revenge, the right to seek repayment from the one who harmed you.
• A lack of forgiveness toward others is the direct result of a lack of repentance toward God.
• God requires forgiveness whether or not the offender has repented and has asked for forgiveness.

This completes our review of twelve of my favorite books by Tim Keller. What were your favorite books that he wrote? Please share.