Of all the words of Jesus, why do his words in Matthew 11 reflect his heart for sinners?

This is the only place in all four Gospels where Jesus tells us what his heart is like. We learn a lot about his teaching, his prayer life, how he understood the Old Testament, and where he traveled. But in only one place does he open up his innermost core, his deepest animating center. And he says that heart — wonder of wonders — is “gentle and lowly.”

The passage presents Jesus in striking contrast to the Jesus we often project. How is Jesus unlike what we expect?

We assume that Jesus is a bigger, better version of us, and without even realizing what we’re doing, we’re looking at a distorted picture of him. We tend to think his deepest heart is one of assessment, not one of embrace. This is why we need to insistently let the Scripture correct our distorted assumptions about what he must be like.

What would you want to say to post-2020 christendom that you didn’t get to in your book?

Anyone can be angry and loud. That doesn’t take power. It’s natural to us. What takes power is calm, composure, humility, gentleness. And we belong to a master who is the supremely gentle one. We are united to him. So one way to understand our calling each day as Christians is to seek by God’s grace to be a little living, walking, breathing reflection of the gentle and lowly Christ. It will not appear impressive from a worldly perspective. But we will look back on such a life and see miracles everywhere, as the Spirit has worked through us.

What can it mean for Christians to be Christlike in the way of gentleness and lowliness?

It means we breathe more deeply. It means we think before speaking. It means we consider that every single person we come across today is fighting a hard battle, harder than we know. It means we rehearse often our own sinfulness and God’s provision of mercy for all that sinfulness. It means we slow down. It means we give ourselves permission to laugh more and to cry more. It means we treat all people as bearing the resplendent glory of God, because they do, and we especially treat Christians as worthy of all dignity and honor, because they are saints and worthy of it.