The New Life – Book Review

You can order The New Life here.

This book is pastoral help for those who look in the mirror and ask, “What’s holding you back?” Dan comes alongside the struggling Christian and help to ground us in what our new life is all about: Jesus, and His own life.

Our growth, holiness, Christlikeness, maturity, and so on will only be healthy and happy (not to mention real and not faked) when we understand that our new life is really more about him than about us.

What holds us back in the Christian life isn’t that we don’t try hard enough, or feel guilty enough for our sins and struggles. “…what most holds us back in the Christian life is not that we don’t give enough to God, but that we don’t fully enjoy what He has already given to us.”

Jesus’ solution to our spiritual death, and our struggles with sin, is not something we do for Him, but all that He has done for us already, is doing in us now, and will do soon. Chapter by chapter, Dan unfolds the truth of the new life in Christ, by the Spirit, with the Father.

• Chapter one lays out how the new life is grounded and centred on Christ: who He is, and what He has done for us.

• Chapter two is about how the new life is about our connection to God – not connection to God in a generic way, arm’s length way, but – as Father, as adopted as His sons in Jesus, sharing the life with His Father that Jesus has always enjoyed.

• Chapter three opens with the question “What do you think God wants most from you? And for you?” Hames’ answer? To trust in, enjoy, and respond to God’s love for us in Christ.

• Chapter four centres on the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit isn’t a thing we get spiritually juiced up on in order to serve God as we ought to. The Holy Spirit is a Person whose deepest desire is to point God’s children to Jesus, and lead them into knowing more deeply the Father’s love for us, changing our hearts in the flood of His affection.

• Chapter five is about growing in the new life. Because our new life is God’s own communion, Jesus’ love and trust in His Father is the kind of life we begin to want more and more.

• Chapter six focuses on the source of the struggle with our sins and growing up in our new life: missing the cross of Christ. Seeing the beauty of Christ causes the Christian to delight in the God who their sins drag them away from. Sin isn’t something to deny, hide, or conquer on our own. Sin is something we take to Christ and expose in light of the cross. Hiding it in darkness, putting up with it, or trying to take it on as our burden all leads the Christian away from Christ, who is their life. Trusting in Christ leads us to light and growth.

• Chapter seven is about living like God in His life. And chapter eight grounds us again in trust in Jesus – not just for today and tomorrow, but for eternity. While we know we will never be perfect in this life, we look forward to when Jesus – and not ourselves – will make us perfect.

The new life is a life of trust and enjoyment of God’s own life that He has shared with us!

I highly recommend this book. I plan to use it in mentoring/discipleship moving forward.

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"There are huge swathes of the world where there is so little in terms of gospel resources – and if we're not providing something for them, then we're consigning them to live in a half-light."@mike_reeves shares about the vital need for local language books to fuel gospel… pic.twitter.com/PkDdPKMkBP

— Union (@UnionTheology) December 29, 2025