In October of 2025 a new book considering the nature of sin and the remedy for it by Tim Keller was published. This is how that came to be.
When faced with 16 file drawers worth of papers, sermon manuscripts, talks, sketches for talks, and other content that Tim left in our apartment, I was flummoxed/appalled/elated. The gift that God gave Tim in expositing the Scripture is one that I long to see shared as broadly as possible, so when the opportunity came to turn some of Tim’s sermons into a book, I jumped at it.
What’s Wrong With The World? began as a collection of sermons exploring the topic of sin from a number of angles—examining the variety of ways sin uses to disguise itself and so deceive us. There is a famous anecdote told about the author G.K. Chesterton.
The story is told that The Times of London at one point early in the 1900s posed this question to several prominent authors: “What’s wrong with the world today?” The well-known author G.K. Chesterton is said to have responded with a one-sentence essay:
Dear Sir,
I am.
Yours,
G.K. ChestertonHis witty reply is unnerving and unexpected. But it is also very biblical. [] [1] https://learn.ligonier.org/devotionals/dear-sir-i-am
Each chapter in What Is Wrong with the World? takes a biblical text as its starting point and uses it to consider one of the many facets of sin. As Tim’s long-time oral-to-written editor, I found myself convicted at many points. Typically, however, Tim never leaves an exposition of the scripture without pointing to Jesus as its fulfillment, antidote, redemption and/or savior, so I was never left with a feeling of despair, but one of hope.
And what do we need more in our world today than hope? Not just hope that THOSE people over THERE would behave themselves, but that WE ourselves can find in Jesus the solution for our own sin (because of the insidious nature of sin in all of us) and become agents of grace in a world gone quite wrong.
