Living Well

I heard the news that J I Packer went to be with the Lord last night. I have a huge personal appreciation for Packer’s writings and ministry. I was 17 when I first read Knowing God, on a train journey up to Durham to see the university then. A significant day, as I first absorbed the challenge of Packer’s writings and then fell in love with Durham.

That book, and especially its chapter on God’s wisdom and ours has resonated with me repeatedly at difficult and perplexing moments in life (see here: https://rozandmark.wordpress.com/2019/08/31/wisdom-for-life/).

Also vital for me was his introduction to J C Ryle’s “Holiness”. In this introduction he talks about how important Ryle and the Puritans were in his own journey, particularly in rescuing him from ideas of ‘perfectionism’ and giving him a sense of the reality and inevitability of struggle in the life of the Christian.

For me the problem was not ‘perfectionism’, instead it was a certain type of Christian youth meeting where leaders talked of how they could sense the spirit at work powerfully, while I sat not feeling anything. At points I wondered what was wrong with me, and it was reading people such as Packer, and some great positive teaching in most youth contexts I found myself that helped me to realise the problem was not with me.

Packer’s books “Among God’s giants” on the Puritans, and “Keep in Step with the Spirit” addressing life in the Spirit were also vital for me. They reminded me that genuine Christianity is about more than just the mind. In a university CU context where the emphasis was on correct doctrine and personal evangelism almost to the exclusion of any other area of the Christian life they kept reminding me that historically evangelicals were much more aware of the life of the Spirit, and a concern for all of life than the conservative evangelical world of England in the 1990s appeared to be.

I loved the graceful way that Packer presented truth – unpacking the Bible as a whole, standing firmly for truth, and yet being generous to those whose view differed. Fundamental here is the opening section of his essay on penal substitution where he robustly defends that doctrine he criticises some defenders of the doctrine with these words:

They made the word of the cross sound more like a conundrum than a confession of faith – more like a puzzle, we might say, than a gospel.

and then later on:
The passion to pack God into a conceptual box of our own making is always strong, but must be resisted. If we bear in mind that all the knowledge we can have of the atonement is of a mystery about which we can only think and speak by means of models, and which remains a mystery when all is said and done, it will keep us from rationalistic pitfalls and thus help our progress considerably.

(there is one small part of his essay where I think he falls into his own trap, but that is a discussion for another time…)…

This analysis, if correct, shows what job the word ‘penal’ does in our model. It is there, not to prompt theoretical puzzlement about the transferring of guilt, but to articulate the insight of believers who, as they look at Calvary in the light of the New Testament, are constrained to say, ‘Jesus was bearing the judgment I deserved (and deserve), the penalty for my sins, the punishment due to me’ – ‘he loved me, and gave himself for me’ (Gal 2:20 ). How it was possible for him to bear their penalty they do not claim to know, any more than they know how it was possible for him to be made man; but that he bore it is the certainty on which all their hopes rest.

JI Packer “What did the cross achieve”

For Packer theology was about worship of God, and drawing others to worship that God. He was a Puritan in the best sense of the word – and his book “Among God’s giants” is a good one to see what the best sense of that word means – especially the chapters on Marriage and Family, Work and Leisure, and Revival. I’m grateful to have heard him speak in person on Richard Baxter as part of a course in the Pastor in Historical Perspective.

While I didn’t take any courses from J I Packer when I was at Regent I count it one of the great privileges of going to Regent that I heard him give one or two lectures, and take part in a number of panels (of which this was one).

I posted these notes on this blog 4 years ago now – and they seem a fitting personal tribute. They are notes I scribbled down from a Q and A session with J I Packer one Regent lunchtime.  

It was wonderful to hear him speak (which he does in sentences as carefully crafted as his books), and sense that the writing comes from a life lived with God.  Here are the notes I took:

To be a Christian is to be fully human – rather than acting.
Watch the heart
Let God search me often
Look hard at the Lord Jesus, read the gospels.  He is our Saviour, Lord and Friend.
Keep on begging the Trinue God to make me real, spontaneous, outgoing, sharing my heart with others, vulnerable.  (I remember this striking me vividly – and it still does – I think it is a particularly good prayer for those of us who are “marginally” more introverted than average.)
Live into circumstances other than resisting.  Keep quality of covenantal relationships – family.

Spiritual Disciplines – most profound, daily practice of bible reading.  Reading scripture, so that at critical moments is direction.

Tension between academic study and personal – pray about study, pray in what is learnt, don’t let brain work outstrip personal communion with the Lord.  Praying needs to match learning.  All truth is beneficial, yet also dangerous if used wrong.   Time and space to praying around learning.

Artificial environment of theological college, lots of input, less output.  Ideas about life.  Seduction of the spirit in academy – keep the heart with all diligence.  Grace in relationships.

Doctrine not to be taught without reflection on how it should change our lives.  Teacher of doctrine must be a pastor too.  Theology in context of worship and community

Vision often leads to risk.

“To be Christian is to be fully human”.

I am so grateful for the witness of Dr JI Packer, as for so many who have gone before him – and I want in my life to live up to so much of what I jotted down in that lunchtime session.