The Character of Christ

Jonathan Landry Cruse

Reviewed by: Nathan P. Strom

The Character of Christ: The Fruit of the Spirit in the Life of Our Saviour, by Jonathan Landry Cruse. Banner of Truth, 2023. Paperback, 176 pages, $13.00. Reviewed by OP pastor Nathan P. Strom.

Most know Marcus Aurelius from the fictional blockbuster Gladiator. The real Marcus Aurelius wrote Meditations, a classic treasury of virtue and self-improvement—think of a Stoic version of Proverbs. My personal favorite is when Aurelius says life is like wrestling. We firmly fix our feet, ready to withstand life. In short, life and wrestling are about keeping your balance.

Take it from an old wrestler—ministry mimics the push and pull of life. Pastors use truth to push and pull hearts where God intends them to go. Occasionally, we get people off balance to move them in the right direction.

Jonathan Landry Cruse’s book, The Character of Christ, illustrates this push-and-pull dynamic well. Cruse scores a reversal—toppling our “stoic” intuitions about the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:16–24, esp. 22). We assume it’s a list of virtues we pursue. Cruse wisely shows they are something, or better put, someone else first. “Since the fruit of the Spirit is not a to-do list, this is not a how-to book. This is a he-did book. This is a he-is book. This is a book about the sheer unmatched beauty of Christ” (9).

Cruse advances the thesis that beholding Jesus’s magnificence produces the fruit of the Spirit, quoting 2 Corinthians 3:18: “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.” Cruse states, “When we look to our Saviour, we start to look like our Saviour” (149, emphasis original). These are glorious truths—worship is root and transformation is fruit.

I worshiped as I read. Enjoy this sample from the second chapter. Children’s love for Jesus proves the joy in the God-man’s heart. “Children were drawn to him and he to them. It takes a spark of joy to enter the world of children.” Whose heart isn’t softened by seeing the elderly and young laughing together? Imagine Christ brightening a schoolboy’s day with a nudge and a wink! Consider his gentleness: “Others see that same child and have the opposite reaction: the helplessness of the baby draws them to it. . . . Precisely because it is weak and delicate, they want to protect and cherish it. . . . He [Jesus] is drawn to us” (124).

Cruse means to elicit worship in our hearts so we might become the radiance of Christ’s beauty. I experienced the former, and pray the latter happened as well.

The book also calls for saving trust in Christ while Christ’s return looms (71). As a busy church planter, I need books that woo sinners to the beauty of Christ. This short book does this with crisp, energetic prose. I will be giving copies away in my church and neighborhood.