Book Review: Tim Keller on the Christian Life by Matt Smethurst
Matt Smethurst, Tim Keller on the Christian Life: The Transforming Power of the Gospel. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2025. 240 pp. $27.99 (hardcover). ISBN 978-1-4335-9619-3.
As a best-selling author and pastor in the heart of New York City, Tim Keller modeled a faith not threatened by intellectual inquiry but enriched by it. In this short, approachable volume, Tim Keller on the Christian Life, Matt Smethurst distills the key themes of Keller’s long ministry into clear, informative chapters. At its best, the book captures Keller’s most enduring insights and repackages them in a form that is fresh and accessible for laypeople (plus immediately useful for pastors).
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Turn on almost any TV show or movie with a Christian character, and chances are they’ll be portrayed as naïve at best, or outright stupid at worst. While I did not grow up fully immersed in the anti-intellectualism and academic suspicion that Mark Noll describes in The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, the Christian circles I moved in were certainly close, if not directly adjacent to it. There was an emphasis on faith, and an attitude that the academy and intellectualism was to be mistrusted, feared, and potentially conquered, with that same faith.
Of course, there is nothing wrong with a strong and resilient faith. After all, as disciples of Christ, we are called to trust in God against the cultural currents around us. So, you can imagine, as a teenager trying to navigate the world of faith vs. the academy, it was astonishing to encounter the voice of Dr. Timothy Keller.
A Ministry Worth Digesting
In Keller’s writings and sermons, I found a person that was marrying the two worlds of faith and the intellect. Instead of fighting the culture around him, he was exegeting the culture. Then, with that cultural exegesis, he was presenting the Gospel in a way that was both compelling and faithful to the text of scripture. Keller’s approach presented a way forward. Thus began a long journey of myself reading, marking, learning, and inwardly digesting his books, sermons, podcasts, lectures, and anything else I could get my hands on. Time and time again the words and ideas of Keller have been helpful for me as I navigate through a wide range of questions asked from the curious teenager, the grieving widow, and everyone in between.
If you’re anything like me, you probably haven’t revisited The Reason for God or Generous Justice (just two among Keller’s many works) in years. You remember the impact they had, but the finer details have likely faded. That’s where Matt Smethurst’s Tim Keller on the Christian Life proves so helpful. He traces Keller’s Christ-centered reading of Scripture, his reflections on sin and grace, and his vision for how the gospel reshapes relationships, work, justice, prayer, and even suffering—each chapter building naturally on the last.
Wisdom for Ministry in Practice
Crafting and writing a book that seeks to synthesize the works of a person is no easy feat. In my own life I have often read books similar to Smethurst’s where the chapters feel disjointed, leaving my brain reeling from intellectual whip lash. Not so with, Tim Keller on the Christian Life. Chapter one seamlessly flows to two, and so one. Additionally, it is an incredibly powerful resource book and has already paid dividends in my own ministry! For example, as I prepare my own sermons, newsletters, and for conversations with parishioners, I have turned to it as I consider how the ideas of Keller can further the work Christ has called me to enter into. Recently, while counseling a parishioner struggling with unanswered prayer, I recalled this line from Keller, collected by Smethurst from one of his many sermons in New York:
God will either give you what you ask for or give you what you would have asked for if you knew what he knows.
That single quote not only strengthened my own faith but also deeply encouraged my parishioner’s. It is just one example of Smethurst’s skill in distilling, summarizing, and analyzing Keller’s ministry and teaching.
Reading Keller with Anglican Eyes
As an Anglican, I cannot help but notice what is absent in Keller’s vision. He was a faithful Presbyterian, and it is no surprise that the sacramental and liturgical dimensions of the Christian life remain less developed in his thought. For Anglicans, discipleship is profoundly sacramental: the Prayer Book orders our common life, the sacraments are the ordinary means of grace, and episcopal leadership grounds us in the wider Body of Christ. Where Keller emphasizes the gospel primarily in preaching, we would add that the gospel is also tasted, touched, and received at the Lord’s Table week by week. Where Keller highlights the importance of personal faith and gospel-centered community, Anglicans also stress the formative power of daily prayer and the liturgical calendar.
Yet this absence does not lessen the value of Smethurst’s book or of Keller’s ministry. It simply reminds us that Keller walked a Presbyterian road, while we walk an Anglican one. Still, he remains a faithful fellow traveler, his example continuing to encourage us as we journey toward Christ. I am grateful for the companionship of Reformed Baptists like Smethurst, for our partnerships with Presbyterians and Lutherans at Trinity Anglican Seminary, and, above all, for the reminder that though our paths may differ, our destination is one. Now that Keller has entered glory, we follow after him by following Jesus—not by retracing every step he took, but by keeping to the same way, learning to live the Christian life with our eyes fixed on Christ, our true and final guide.
A Companion for the Christian Journey
Tim Keller on the Christian Life is a wonderful resource that you will reference time and time again. It deserves to be on the bookshelf of pastors who Keller’s mind and heart have blessed. Having said that, for the person who has never read his work, it might also serve as a solid introduction to Keller’s ideas and thought. Of course, to that same person I would quickly encourage them to go read Keller for themselves, and not just depend on Matt Smethurst’s book. Smethurst’s book serves best as a doorway into Keller’s own writings. It is a guide I am grateful to have as I continue to draw wisdom and encouragement from Keller’s enduring witness.
Image: cover of Tim Keller on the Christian Life. © Crossway.
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