This week we welcome Michael Reeves to the podcast, filling in for John Piper. Michael is the author of several books, including "The Unquenchable Flame," "Discovering the Heart of the Reformation," along with "The Lighting in the Trinity," one of my favorite books of 2012. He just finished work on a beautiful book titled "Christ Our Life," which is scheduled to release on September 1st in the UK.

It will be titled "Rejoicing in Christ" and released in the US early next year, early in 2015. Anyone who has read his books know Michael as a gifted church historian, a theologian, and a keen and incisive writer. He lives in the UK and currently serves as the director of an online theology website, UnionTheology.org, and senior lecturer at Wales Evangelical School of Theology.

We are grateful for your time, Michael. You write so much about the glory of Christ. How does being Christ-centered, focusing ministry on the glory of Christ, how does this change someone's life? Well, let me tell you a story of Thomas Goodwin's conversion. Thomas Goodwin, he was a great Puritan theologian and preacher.

He was born in 1600. Now, he's born of Puritan parents, Puritan stock, and he grew up quite religious. And he even decided at quite a young age that he wanted to be a preacher. But without being a Christ-centered preacher who'd experienced the sovereign grace of God in his life, he had a ministry in those early days of battering consciences, that is, of seeking to get people to improve.

He then had a religious crisis, a meltdown, in which he listened to a sermon. He was about 20 years old. He heard a sermon that made him deeply concerned for his own spiritual state. And he had seven years of gloomy introspection. He was grubbing around inside himself to see if he had enough faith to merit salvation, to see if he was being meritorious enough.

And then an old pastor told him, at the end of those seven years, told him, "Don't trust to anything in yourself, whether performance or feelings. Look out and rest on Christ alone." And with that, he said he was freed. But what's so striking, I think, is not only was Goodwin's own life freed, his ministry profoundly changed because he now became a Christ-centered preacher.

And having seen through those seven years of introspection, having God's grace having shone into his heart, he began to have a very deep, a radically deep understanding of sin. So he couldn't simply tell people to try to improve because he saw now they can't do it. And instead, he began to have not a big view of our own ability to be able to sort ourselves out, but a big view of God's grace in Christ that can rescue those who are dead and enslaved in sin.

And so he became a Christ-centered preacher who would preach that gospel with compassion for those who are addicted to sin and entirely enslaved to it. He had a mentor, a great Richard Sibbes, who, when he was a young man, told Goodwin, "Young man, if ever you would do good, you must preach the gospel and the free grace of God in Christ Jesus." And I think an example of this would be in one of his most popular works called Christ Set Forth.

And in that work, he makes it very clear he's aiming simply to hold Christ before the eyes of his readership. And he makes it very clear why he wants to do it, because even in those days, which we often look back on the 17th century as a golden age of preaching, he believed that Christ simply wasn't well-known enough by people.

People were ignorant of him, or as he put it, barren in their knowledge of Christ. And therefore, they wouldn't look out of themselves to him, but they would trust in themselves. They'd either be imprisoned in their own guilt or dependent on their own performance, not looking out to Christ.

And so Goodwin, having seen the solution in the Saviour, wanted now for the rest of his ministry to set forth Christ with great clarity. Now, I'm someone who's had a similar experience to Goodwin of a crisis of depending on myself, not knowing where to go to, and then seeing the beautiful answer in Christ.

And still today, Goodwin, he was a man who helped me through his writings. He's a man who sets forth Christ in a way that changes the reader because you're liberated by God's grace and not your own potential. I think of maybe one other indication of how the man himself was changed.

Goodwin's dying words, he was 80 years old, were something like this. He said on his deathbed, "My bow abides in strength now. Is Christ divided? No, I have the whole of his righteousness. I'm found in Christ, not having my own righteousness, but his. The righteousness of Christ who loved me, gave himself for me." And then at the end, he said, "Christ cannot love me better than he does.

I think I cannot love Christ better than I do now." That is a beautiful testimony. Unfortunately, Thomas Goodwin is not very well known in the States. Many readers probably are hearing the name for the first time. Is there a better book for someone to start with if they haven't read Thomas Goodwin than his book, The Heart of Christ?

Yes. Next to Christ Set Forth, the writing I mentioned, there was a book he put alongside it that he called The Heart of Christ in Heaven Towards Sinners on Earth, where he's looking at how the ascended, glorified Jesus considers his beloved people today. It's one of the most striking reads.

It was always Goodwin's most popular book in his own lifetime. And you can see why today. It is extraordinary thing that Goodwin's being forgotten today. He's being called the greatest pulpit exegete of Paul that has ever lived. One of the reasons I think he is rather forgotten is he's slightly tough meat, rather like John Owen to read, and therefore people have left him.

But I think that's a mistake. Meat is worth eating because it helps you grow strong. And Goodwin is worth reading because he will present Christ to you with an extraordinary clarity. Wonderful. Yes, Goodwin was a master of presenting Christ with clarity. His book, The Heart of Christ, has been edited and made more readable by the Banner of Truth.

Thank you, Banner of Truth. And the book is available as a Puritan paperback as we're checking out this edition. If you love Christ, but you wonder if Christ loves you, this book will rock your soul. Kid you not. Again, it's titled The Heart of Christ by Thomas Goodwin. So how does theology fuel ambitious evangelism and world missions?

There's a story from church history to be told, and Dr. Reeves will share it tomorrow. I'm your host, Tony Ranke. Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John Podcast.