The main protagonist of Reflecting the Son (Zondervan 2026) is also the protagonist of the most popular book in human history, with over five billion copies in print. Pimps, prostitutes, addicts, slave traders, sex offenders, financial con artists and political power junkies all claim that he saved them from themselves. Millions credit him with healing their broken minds, broken hearts and broken bodies. From every inhabited continent, men and women of every skin shade and socioeconomic status are willing to die for him. Every month an average of 373 people are killed, while 395 are detained without trial, for following him [1]. His followers represent “the most diverse sociological phenomenon the world has ever seen [2].” Reformed convicts from Alabama and Wisconsin, celebrated philosophers from Alaska and Colorado, award-winning theologians from Nigeria and composers from Los Angeles (all of whom you will meet in this book), and those from countless other walks of life all identify him as their Lord and Savior.

“Between him and every other person in the world there is no possible term of comparison. He is truly a being by himself [3].” So said Napoleon Bonaparte about this man. He “enthralled” the pantheistic Einstein [4]. He was “easily the most dominant figure in all history” for the atheistic H. G. Wells [5]. Yale historian Kenneth Scott Latourette credited him with “the most influential life ever lived on this planet [6].” No one, after all, dates a check or writes computer code by referencing the birthday of Genghis Khan or Lady Gaga. Believing and unbelieving historians alike credit him with why we take equality, compassion, consent, enlightenment, science, freedom and progress seriously [7].

The impact of this man on our collective human consciousness is so singular that his name is invoked in our most raw emotive moments. No one shouts “Mahatma Gandhi!” or “Kanye West!” when they step on a Lego. The apparatus of his torture and execution — so shameful that Cicero said “the mere mention of them [is] unworthy of a Roman citizen and free man” — has become the most recognizable and celebrated symbol on planet Earth [8]. The fact that I don’t even need to state his name and you know exactly who I’m talking about tells you everything you need to know.

He painted nothing. Yet he inspired the Michelangelos, Leonardos, Rembrandts and Van Goghs of history. He put no ink to the page. But he moved the pens of everyone from Shakespeare, Dante, and Milton to Jane Austen, Flannery O’Connor and J. K. Rowling. He composed no music, yet artists from Handel, Bach and Mendelssohn to Blind Willie Johnson, Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan crafted soaring melodies to praise him. Dostoyevsky observed that “even those who have renounced Christianity and attack it, in their inmost being still follow the Christian ideal, for hitherto neither their subtlety nor the ardour of their hearts has been able to create a higher ideal of man and of virtue than the ideal given by Christ of old [9].”

Whether you count yourself a Christian, a non-Christian, an anti-Christian or Christ-curious, Reflecting the Son for you. It is not a dull theology book. Any book about the most fascinating person to ever live should, after all, be anything but boring. Reflecting the Son is a book of theology, pop culture, psychology, philosophy, science, literature, art, music, history, apologetics and more — all aimed at helping you behold the person of Jesus from dazzling new angles.

We focus on seven core dimensions of Jesus’s life and how we can reflect them ourselves:

Reason: The intellectual life of Christ and how it reshapes our own thinking.

Emote: The joy, compassion, and outrage of Christ and how they deepen our feelings.

Flip: The upside-down actions of Christ and how they add meaning to our lives.

Love: The radical relationality of Christ and how it cures our loneliness.

Elevate: The saving grace of Christ and how its pulls us up from darkness.

Create: The artistic genius of Christ and how it sparks our imaginations.

Transform: The supremacy of Jesus over all of life and how he changes everything.

Each part features calls to “Read,” “Reflect,” “Repent” and establish “Rhythms” for small group and personal study.

For many, Jesus is a synonym for “real nice guy,” while “Christlikeness” is vaguely synonymous with being “a good person,” whatever that means. The actual Jesus is so much more than that! I pray this discipleship resource helps you better Reflect the Son.

The book releases on September 22, 2026. Order a copy here.

Notes

[1] “World Watch List 2025,” retrieved September 1, 2025, https://www.opendoors.org/en-US/persecution/countries/.

[2] Glen Scrivener, The Air We Breathe: How We All Came to Believe in Freedom, Kindness, Progress, and Equality (The Good Book Company, 2022), 18–19.

[3] Cited in John Abbott’s History of Napoleon Bonaparte (New York: Harper and Bros., 1855), https://www.yamaguchy.com/library/abbott/bonapart_38.html.

[4] “What Life Means to Einstein: An Interview by George Sylvester Viereck,” Saturday Evening Post, 17, 110–117, retrieved October 29, 2025,

[5] Bruce Barton, “H. G. Wells Picks Out the Six Greatest Men in History,” American Magazine, July 1922.

[6] Kenneth Scott Latourette, “The Christian Understanding of History,” American Historical Review 54, no. 2 (January 1949): 259–76, https://www.historians.org/presidential-address/kenneth-scott-latourette/.

[7] From the non-Christian perspective see Tom Holland’s Dominion; Joseph Heinrich, The WEIRDest People in the World. Scholarly works from a more Christian perspective include John Dickson, Bullies and Saints, Glen Scrivener, The Air We Breathe, and D.B. Hart’s Atheist Delusions.

[8] M. Tullius Cicero, Speech Before Roman Citizens on Behalf of Gaius Rabirius, Defendant Against the Charge of Treason, ed. Williams Blake Tyrrell, retrieved October 29, 2025, https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0023%3Achapter%3D5%3Asection%3D16.

[9] Dostoyevsky puts these words in the mouth of Father Paissy in The Brothers Karamazov, retrieved October 29, 2025, https://www.ccel.org/ccel/dost....