I know a thing or two about trying to summarize the life and work of Timothy Keller. It’s not easy. But it’s rewarding. No one has taught me more about the Christian life. And if there’s one person in the world I’d want to teach me about the late Tim Keller, it’s my friend and longtime colleague Matt Smethurst. And that’s just what we get in the new book Tim Keller on the Christian Life: The Transforming Power of the Gospel (Crossway).

Matt Smethurst is lead pastor of River City Baptist Church in Richmond, Virginia. He is the author of several books and cohosts, with Ligon Duncan, The Everyday Pastor podcast from The Gospel Coalition.

I can’t do a better job of summarizing the book than what Kathy Keller offers in her endorsement: “Matt Smethurst has researched an impressive amount of content for this book: sermons, books, papers, courses, articles, and unpublished conversations. He found resources even I wasn’t familiar with, and he has produced a work of scholarship that will long stand as the most thorough examination of the biblical themes that animated all of Tim’s ministry.”

Wow! Listen to our conversation as Matt compares Tim’s many contemporary critics to his actual sermons. And enjoy this explanation by Matt of Tim’s goals, the reason so many of us will listen to him and read his works for years to come: “Tim was at pains in his preaching and teaching, his writing, to bring us into this dynamic encounter with Christ and be renewed—inwardly, spiritually, vigorously by that encounter with gospel grace.”