A ‘Holy Dissatisfaction’ with Anything Less than Gospel Grace: An Interview with Matt Smethurst about Tim Keller
As soon as I read Tim Keller on the Christian Life: The Transforming Power of the Gospel by Matt Smethurst (Crossway, 2025), I immediately bought a copy for my father and encouraged a friend to read it and discuss it with me. Since then, I’ve mentioned the book to others many times in conversations. It’s such a good summary of classic Keller: simple and profound, challenging and encouraging, relevant and transcendent.
Matt Smethurst is the lead pastor of River City Baptist Church in Richmond, Virginia, and the author of several books. He also cohosts The Everyday Pastor podcast for The Gospel Coalition. Before all of that, when Matt was an editor at TGC, he gave me my first chance to write for an online publication. I reviewed a book about preaching. That was over ten years ago. In the last decade I am thankful for how the Lord has used Matt to bless others through his broader ministry.
Here’s an interview with Matt about writing the book, how it changed him, and what he hopes readers take away from it. Please consider grabbing a copy.
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[Benjamin] Matt, I thought you did a great job including little-known details about Timothy Keller, while still also championing his most well-known themes. How did you balance writing for two audiences, those who are Keller nerds (like me and many others) and those who might know very little of his life and teaching?
Matt Smethurst (picture from River City Baptist Church website)
[Matt] I wanted the book to serve both people who have long appreciated Keller’s ministry and those who are less familiar with his work. There are plenty of Easter eggs in the endnotes for Keller fans, but I was mainly trying to distill and synthesize Keller’s best teaching on Christian living for any believer who wants to think better about applying all of the gospel to all of life.
[Benjamin] Each chapter in the book explores a significant theme in Keller’s writing and ministry. Which theme has been the most significant in shaping your own ministry? (For me, it’s likely Keller’s writing about idolatry in his book Counterfeit Gods.)
[Matt] Likely the way Keller described the gospel as “three ways to live.” There is one way to be saved, but there are actually two ways to be lost.
We see this not only in the parable of the prodigal sons in Luke 15, but in many other passages. Think, for example, about the beginning of Romans. While there is only one way to be saved (Rom. 3), there are actually two ways to be lost (Rom. 1 and 2). The first kind of lostness is obvious: unapologetic idolatry. I live for myself, and I’m proud of it. That’s Romans 1. The second way, though, is more subtle: religious hypocrisy. I live for myself, and nobody can find out. That’s Romans 2. In other words, you can avoid God through immorality, but you can also avoid God through performative morality. The first option is intuitive; the second is insidious.
In my preaching, I try to explain that you can avoid God by never coming to church, and you can avoid God by coming to church. As Keller points out, you can have two people sitting in the same pew, hearing the same sermons, singing the same songs, and serving in the same ministries—but there for completely different reasons. One is present to bring pleasure to the God who has saved him. The other is there to earn God’s favor or stay in his good graces. And the difference between these two people—even though outwardly everything looks the same—is the difference between heaven and hell.
[Benjamin] When a person does a deep study of a subject, that person is always shaped more than the readers. It might take an author 500 hours to write a book that someone can read in 5 hours. What will be the enduring legacy of this massive undertaking for your own life, maybe even at a more subconscious level of how Keller and the project shaped you?
[Matt] A holy dissatisfaction with anything less than experiencing the wonder of gospel grace. Keller was relentless in challenging us to take the truths in our heads and press them down into our hearts, until—by the power of the Holy Spirit—they catch fire. Keller invoked imagery from Jonathan Edwards, who said that it’s one thing to be an expert in honey and know all its properties, but it’s another to have tasted it. Rather than permitting us to move beyond the gospel, Keller beckoned us to move deeper into it—until we taste and see that the Lord is good.
[Benjamin] You were well acquainted with Keller’s ministry before this project, both his speaking and writing. Many of us are too. But you went down rabbit holes few have traveled, especially in the breadth of his preaching, and specifically his preaching before planting Redeemer Church in Manhattan. What is something new that you learned from his early preaching?
Matt: It was interesting to see how his preaching remained consistent in some ways but evolved in others. For example, I remember listening to a cassette tape of a 1977 sermon on Romans 5 in which 26-year-old Keller quoted from The Richmond Times-Dispatch, the local paper. In later decades, of course, he would be quoting from The New York Times. But that basic burden—to exegete not just Scripture but also the culture, in order to reach people’s hearts—was there from the early days.
In other ways his preaching developed over time. When he was serving in the small-town context of Hopewell, Virginia, his sermons didn’t hum with the theme of idolatry the way they would in Manhattan. Part of that is because he hadn’t yet read Martin Lloyd-Jones’s sermon on 1 John 5:21 (“Little children, keep yourselves from idols”) or David Powlison’s seminal essay “Idols of the Heart and ‘Vanity Fair.’” Around the time Keller was planting Redeemer in New York, he was awakening to the centrality of idolatry in Scripture and how, at bottom, sin is a worship problem. That realization transformed his preaching.
[Benjamin] I feel like people always ask celebrities and influencers about their “morning routine.” I assume this gets asked because people believe that if we can just copy this or that practice, then we’ll get the same results. Of course it’s never that simple. Still, what is one practice of Keller that you have tried to include more in your life, and what results are you seeing?
[Matt] I want to deepen my prayer life just as Keller did over the course of decades. He was disciplined in morning, midday, and evening prayer. And yet, a few months before he died, an interviewer asked him to look back over 50 years of ministry and share one thing he wished he’d done differently. “That’s easy,” he replied. “I wish I had prayed more.” So even though prayer was something he taught on eloquently—and even practiced himself—he still sensed his need for deeper communion with the living God. Immersing myself in Keller has been freshly motivating in this regard.
[Benjamin] Bonus question, Matt. Was Keller a better preacher or writer? Why?
[Matt] He was a better preacher (and he’d say the same). Keller was a preacher who wrote more than a writer who preached. Contrast him, for example, with C. S. Lewis—a generational talent as a writer. Though Keller was a good writer, he wasn’t as gifted as Lewis. That said, Keller was unparalleled in his ability to preach to the heart in simple and compelling ways, while remaining biblically faithful and culturally attuned.
[Benjamin] Thank you, Matt, so much for all the work to prepare this book. I hope your work invites many new readers to the blessings of Keller’s ministry.
