“Let me suggest that you consider the possibility that your current mental idea of Jesus is the tip of the iceberg. That there are wondrous depths to Him, realities about Him, still awaiting your discovery.

I’m not disregarding the real discipleship already at play in your life and the true discoveries of the depths of Jesus Christ you have already made.

But let me ask you to open yourself up to the possibility that one reason you see modest growth and ongoing sin in your life– if that is indeed the case– is that the Jesus you are following is a junior varsity Jesus, an unwittingly reduced Jesus, an unsurprising and predictable Jesus.

I’m not assuming that’s the case. I’m just asking you to test yourself, with honesty.

When Christopher Columbus reached the Caribbean in 1492, he named the natives “Indians,” thinking he had reached what Europeans of the time referred to as “the Indies” (China, Japan, and India).

In fact he was nowhere close to South or East Asia. In his path were vast regions of land, unexplored and uncharted, of which Columbus knew nothing.

He assumed the world was smaller than it was. Have we made a similar mistake with regard to Jesus Christ?

Are there vast tracts of who He is, according to biblical revelation, that are unexplored?

Have we unintentionally reduced Him to manageable, predictable proportions?

Have we been looking at a junior varsity, decaffeinated, one-dimensional Jesus of our own making, thinking we’re looking at the real Jesus?

Have we snorkeled in the shallows, thinking we’ve now hit bottom on the Pacific?”

–Dane Ortlund, Deeper: Real Change for Real Sinners (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2021), 22-23.