Praying for God to Save the Lost

I want to introduce this article by taking us back some forty-one years to the initial publication of what soon became an evangelical classic: J. I. Packer's Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God (IVP, 1961). The book was an expansion of the address Packer delivered to The London Inter-Faculty Christian Union (LIFCU) on October 24, 1959, at Westminster Chapel. What makes Packer's book so instructive for us today is the utter incredulity on his part, in 1961, regarding a theological perspective that today, in 2002, is widespread and pervasive in its influence.   

Packer begins his defense of divine sovereignty in salvation by appealing to what he believes is, or at least should be, an evangelical consensus on the practice of prayer. He appears to assume that no one who embraces a high view of Scripture could possibly think otherwise. It is more than simply that we pray, but also how and what we specifically ask God to do that Packer believes supports his understanding of the activity of God in saving a human soul.    Continue at Sam Storms

A Word About J. I. Packer on Charismatics

A brief aside from the series on the Strange Fire conference:

J. I. Packer provides a perfect example of exactly what John MacArthur, everyone else, and I have pointed out for years.

Packer is a man who earned a good name for himself by some excellent works such as his introduction to Owen's Death of Death in the Death of Christ, such as Knowing God, such as Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God, and such as Fundamentalism and the Word of God.

Then Packer took that good name and lent it to providing a lot of covering fire for the Charismatic movement in his book Keep in Step with the Spirit.

It is that book that is being triumphalistically quoted all over the blogosphere just now — by writers who, I would wager, to a man have no idea that they are perfectly illustrating the whole point of the Strange Fire conference.  Continue at Dan Phillips

Sham Unity is Not Worth Working For

A couple years back, while at a big leadership conference for church leaders, I was listening to a statistician discussing the state of the church in Canada. He explained that he believes Roman Catholics and Protestants need to come together if we’re going to find any success in turning Canadians back toward Christ. After all, he said, the more discussions he had with Catholics, mainline Protestants and Evangelicals, the more he found we had in common (which, basically amounted to “all of them pray and take their faith seriously”).

Sitting in this session, I was kind of annoyed, and more than a little depressed. I mean, seriously? This is the best advice that could be offered to church leaders wanting to impact their communities? Hook up your carts to the United Church and Mainline Presbyterianism (both of which are haemorrhaging members) and bury the hatchet with the Roman church?

Sadly, this is the same advice that’s been given to Evangelicals for decades—dating back to the 1940s and earlier. J.I. Packer addresses how we should respond to this sort of thinking well in his 1958 release, “Fundamentalism” and the Word of God. He writes:   Continue at Aaron Armgstrong

Too Many Churches in North America Are Playing the Number Game

J. I. Packer: “I have found that churches, pastors, seminaries, and parachurch agencies throughout North America are mostly playing the numbers game—that is, defining success in terms of numbers of heads counted or added to those that were there before. Church-growth theorists, evangelists, pastors, missionaries, news reporters, and others all speak as if:

(1) numerical increase is what matters most;

(2) numerical increase will surely come if our techniques and procedures are right;

(3) numerical increase validates ministries as nothing else does;

(4) numerical increase must be everyone’s main goal.

I detect four unhappy consequences of this.

First, big and growing churches are viewed as far more significant than others.

Second, parachurch specialists who pull in large numbers are venerated, while hard-working pastors are treated as near-nonentities.

Third, lively laymen and clergy too are constantly being creamed off from the churches to run parachurch ministries, in which, just because they specialize on a relatively narrow front, quicker and more striking results can be expected.   Continue at  Peter Cockrell

The Biblical Doctrine of Regeneration (eBook)

This eBook comes complete with an active linked Table of Contents, making navigation quicker and easier.  

Read it in your Kindle, Nook, Sony eReader, iPad or hand-held device. Font enlarged on ePub for optimal reading at medium setting on the Nook. Some other versions of this book may not have active link technology built into them. We can guarantee that if you buy this version of the book it will be formatted perfectly on your hand held device.

Note: This eBook is the second edition of an eBook that was entitled, The Work of the Trinity in Salvation (eBook). This updated and revised edition contains additional content.

Description:   In a recent interview,  J.I. Packer was asked "which theological issues he would commend young Christian leaders to study in order to be prepared for the next fifty years." His number one answer was Regeneration. "He said that the doctrine of regeneration has not been fully appreciated by many who do not understand that to be born again with a new heart and new nature means that we have at our deepest level a new identity and new passionate desires for God’s Word and ways. He commended to all young Christian leaders a thorough study on the doctrine of regeneration." This eBook has aggregated the following resources with this very thing in mind. The following are carefully selected essays on the doctrine of regeneration from the history of the church.   Continue at Monergism

If I Were the Devil…

One of the most common—and frustrating—reasons I hear many Christians offer for not reading their Bibles is, “The Bible’s too hard to understand.” But there are tons of other excuses we make for how we approach (or rather, don’t) the Scriptures. Some pastors have seemingly given up preaching the BIble. Many Christians debate the extent of the Bible’s truthfulness and authority. On and on I could go. But where do these ideas come from, ultimately?

According to J.I. Packer, from no less a source than the Devil himself. I love the way Packer addresses this in his foreword to Knowing Scripture:

If I were the devil (please, no comment), one of my first aims would be to stop folk from digging into the Bible. Knowing that it is the Word of God, teaching people to know and love and serve the God of the Word, I should do all I could to surround it with the spiritual equivalent of pits, thorn hedges and traps, to frighten people off. With smug conceit, no doubt, as if receiving a compliment, I should acknowledge that wise old Jonathan Edwards (1703- 1758) had me absolutely pegged when he wrote:   Continue at Aaron Armstrong

Unconditional Election

MR: Dr. Packer, what exactly do people mean by unconditional election?

Packer: It is a phrase which folk use to express this thought: that because we sinners are helpless, God has to take all the steps that are necessary in order to bring us to faith and fellowship with himself and finally to eternal life. Unconditional election is the name for the choice God makes to do that in any particular case, and it has to be unconditional because if God waited for man to merit it, he would wait forever.

MR: Dr. Packer, why do we need an election?

Packer: Because we will never be saved unless God chooses to save us. Election leads to the saving action of God in his lordship, and if we were left to ourselves we would never respond to God on our own at all. This is what people don't seem to appreciate, that all of us by nature are anti-God in our deepest instincts (see Romans chapter 3). We don't always realize this because many of us think we are seeking God, and frankly, people want a God they can manage and manipulate and have as a safety net. Those are facts about human life, and very familiar facts. But when it is a matter of responding to the real God and responding in a way that he calls for --that is by humbling ourselves before him, learning to trust his word absolutely, turning from sin, taking our hands off of the reins of our own life and letting him be in control --we wake up to the fact that we don't like this at all and we shy back from it. That is our nature. So you see, God has to take action otherwise we shall never come to him at all because that is the state in which fallen humans find themselves.

MR: Doesn't this detract from our responsibility to respond to the gospel? If I'm one of the elect, God will save me, and if I'm not I cannot be saved anyway so why worry about it?

Packer: No, that isn't the way to look at it because God has made us folk who act of their own will and he keeps us that way. And so he takes account of us for the things that we have done because they really were our own actions. The fact that we haven't got it in us to respond to God in a positive way doesn't mean that we don't choose not to respond to God. We do choose not to respond to God, and it's for that choice that we're responsible before him. The truth about us is that we are like drowning folk who can't swim and left to ourselves would just go under and eventually not come up again. God takes action, as it were, to dive in, swim to us, grab hold of us and save us. Election, as we said a moment ago, is his decision to do that, and in his lordship and power he does it, and so our salvation is entirely due to him. But all the time we are responsible for being the people that we are, drowning in our own moral mess.  Continue at Modern Reformation

Reforming Youth Ministry

For too long we have blamed the rebellion of our young people on such things as our school system, broken homes and the influence of the media. As a pastor and youth worker I refuse to point the finger at society anymore. I am not saying the declining morality of our society and the break down of our family structure has not affected our kids. It definitely has had a large impact, but part of the blame is a little closer to home than we like to admit. It is time we stop pointing the finger at our world and point it right back at the church. 

J. I. Packer wrote, "Disregard the study of God, and you sentence yourself to stumble and blunder through life blindfolded, as it were, with no sense of direction and no understanding of what surrounds you. This way you can waste your life and lose your soul." Without a proper understanding of God, our youth will "stumble and blunder" their way to hell. What truths do we want to instill in our kids when they attend our church youth groups? Sex, drugs, peer pressure, dating and other such topics are OK, but are we really meeting our kids' needs or are we just applying a Band-Aid to a gaping wound? If our church youth group is not attempting to teach our kids the attributes and actions of God our Father, then it is we who are at fault for the rebellious acts of our young people.

Paul reminds us, "There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one (Rom 3: 10b-12)." If no one is seeking after God, why are we afraid to offend the non-believer with our message? If no one is seeking after God, then the students in your youth group are there because God has drawn them (Jn 6:44). Unless God changes their heart, there will never be a true outward change.

We must be faithful to preach it!

 

The Holy Spirit will help your students with even the most difficult passages (Jn 14:26). We must be faithful to study and present the complex truths of God's Word and allow the Holy Spirit to use it and apply it to their life. We must be faithful to preach all of God's Word on their level!

It is time we teach our students the heart of God's Word. I am not talking about Christianity 101, but the no-holds-barred approach to the truth. It is time our youth groups tackle issues such as: the holiness of God, the total depravity of man, divine sovereignty, justification and sanctification. Some people feel these issues are too lofty for our young people, but I think it is the cure for which we have begun searching. Until we begin to tackle a proper study of God and the deep, rich truths of His Word, we are guilty of sentencing our kids to a life with no direction and no understanding.   Continue at David Fields

Is Bibliolatry the Real Danger?

Which poses the bigger risk of idolatry–a high view of the Bible that sees Jesus submitting to the Scriptures or a low view of Scripture that sees Jesus standing apart from the Scriptures? Some Christians fear that if they have a high view of the Bible they will end up denigrating Jesus and being guilty of bibliolatry. But what if the danger of idolatry is much more likely when you try to place Jesus above the Bible?

J.I. Packer explains:

Others tell us the final authority for Christians is not Scripture, but Christ, whom we must regard as standing apart from Scripture and above it. He is its Judge; and we, as His disciples, must judge Scripture by Him, receiving only what is in harmony with His life and teaching and rejecting all that is not.

But who is this Christ, the Judge of Scripture? Not the Christ of the New Testament and of history. That Christ does not judge Scripture; he obeys it and fulfills it. Certainly, He is the final authority of the whole of it. Certainly, He is the final authority for Christians; that is precisely why Christians are bound to acknowledge the authority of Scripture. Christ teaches them to do so.  Continue at Kevin DeYoung

The Elements in True Reformation

In his excellent (though unlikely titled) book Hot Tub Religion, J. I. Packer asks “What would a work of divine reformation in our churches today look like?” Great question, and I loved the six answers Packer—one of my all- time favorite people—offers.

First, there would be a sense of biblical authority—that is, an awareness that biblical teaching is divine truth and that the invitations and admonitions, threats and warnings, promises and assurances of Scripture still express the mind of God toward mankind. The Bible would be honored again as the Word of God, and the perverse, pluralism of liberal theology, which addles the brains and blinds the hearts of many, would wither and die. The root of this pluralism is that teachers feel free to ignore some of the things the Bible teaches and to pull others out of context. The fruit of it is that God’s people are led astray into dry places and the Holy Spirit of God is completely quenched. Reformation always begins as a call from God to “come out of the wilderness” of subjective speculation and spiritual impotence and learn again in humility the true teaching of the written Word about grace and godliness, knowing that the secret of power for living lies here. Thus, unhappily, reformation always leads to controversy for some resist the message.

Second, there would be a spirit of seriousness about eternal issues. Heaven and hell would be preached about, thought about, and talked about once again. Life in this world would once again be lived in the light of the world to come, and the Philippian jailer’s question, “What must I do to be saved?” would be seen as life’s basic question once more. For most of this century the church, liberal and conservative, in all denominations, has been so occupied with this world that minds turned to eternity have been the exception rather than the rule. Sociopolitical, cultural, sporting, and money-making interests have dominated Christian minds rather than the laying up of treasure in heaven. A work of reformation would change that, not by withdrawing Christians from these fields of action, but by radically altering their perspective on what they are doing so that God’s glory and eternal values would become the chief concerns.  Continue at Randy Alcorn

Evangelism and the Extent of the Atonement

At the time in my spiritual life when I began to embrace the doctrines of grace, the one that was hardest to swallow was the L in our beloved TULIP acronym: limited atonement—or perhaps better stated (though ruining the acronym): particular redemption, or definite atonement. To make a long story short, I eventually came to see that the doctrine was biblical. Both the intent and extent of the atonement was divinely ordained to infallibly secure the salvation of all those whom the Father had chosen from before the foundation of the world (John 6:39; 10:11, 14–15; Ac 20:28; Eph 5:25). Jesus’ death didn’t simply make salvation possible, and then leave the appropriation of the cross’s benefits to the sovereign will of the sinner. No, it actually purchased the salvation of God’s elect (1Pet 2:24; Rev 5:9).

Interestingly, one of my chief objections to the doctrine wasn’t so much on textual or exegetical grounds. It was that it contradicted the way I had always heard the Gospel preached in evangelism. All around me, I heard the Gospel preached as if it was merely: “Jesus died for you, so you should believe in Him.” Evangelism boiled down to telling people that Jesus died specifically for them, and that, if He loved them so much that He would die for them, the least they could do was live for Him.  Continue at Mike Riccardi

Unconditional Election

MR: Dr. Packer, what exactly do people mean by unconditional election?

Packer: It is a phrase which folk use to express this thought: that because we sinners are helpless, God has to take all the steps that are necessary in order to bring us to faith and fellowship with himself and finally to eternal life. Unconditional election is the name for the choice God makes to do that in any particular case, and it has to be unconditional because if God waited for man to merit it, he would wait forever.

MR: Dr. Packer, why do we need an election?

Packer: Because we will never be saved unless God chooses to save us. Election leads to the saving action of God in his lordship, and if we were left to ourselves we would never respond to God on our own at all. This is what people don't seem to appreciate, that all of us by nature are anti-God in our deepest instincts (see Romans chapter 3). We don't always realize this because many of us think we are seeking God, and frankly, people want a God they can manage and manipulate and have as a safety net. Those are facts about human life, and very familiar facts. But when it is a matter of responding to the real God and responding in a way that he calls for --that is by humbling ourselves before him, learning to trust his word absolutely, turning from sin, taking our hands off of the reins of our own life and letting him be in control --we wake up to the fact that we don't like this at all and we shy back from it. That is our nature. So you see, God has to take action otherwise we shall never come to him at all because that is the state in which fallen humans find themselves.

MR: Doesn't this detract from our responsibility to respond to the gospel? If I'm one of the elect, God will save me, and if I'm not I cannot be saved anyway so why worry about it?

Packer: No, that isn't the way to look at it because God has made us folk who act of their own will and he keeps us that way. And so he takes account of us for the things that we have done because they really were our own actions. The fact that we haven't got it in us to respond to God in a positive way doesn't mean that we don't choose not to respond to God. We do choose not to respond to God, and it's for that choice that we're responsible before him. The truth about us is that we are like drowning folk who can't swim and left to ourselves would just go under and eventually not come up again. God takes action, as it were, to dive in, swim to us, grab hold of us and save us. Election, as we said a moment ago, is his decision to do that, and in his lordship and power he does it, and so our salvation is entirely due to him. But all the time we are responsible for being the people that we are, drowning in our own moral mess.  Continue at Modern Reformation

Puritan Evangelism by J.I. Packer

In the report of the Archbishop’s Committee on Evangelism, published in 1945 under the title: Towards the Conversion of England, the work of evangelism is conveniently defined as follows: “so to present Christ Jesus in the power of the Holy Spirit, that men shall come to put their trust in God through Him, to accept Him as their Savior, and serve Him as their King in fellowship of His Church.”

 

Did the Puritans tackle the task of evangelism at all? At first sight, it might seem not. They agreed with Calvin in regarding the “evangelists” mentioned in the New Testament as an order of assistants to the apostles, now extinct; and as for “missions,” “crusades” and “campaigns,” they knew neither the name nor the thing. But we must not be misled into supposing that evangelism was not one of their chief concerns. It was. Many of them were outstandingly successful as preachers to the unconverted. Richard Baxter, the apostle of Kidderminster, is perhaps the only one of these that is widely remembered today; but in contemporary records it is common to read statements like this, of Hugh Clark: “he begat many Sons and Daughters unto God;” or this, of John Cotton, “the presence of the Lord…crowning his labors with the Conversion of many Souls” (S. Clarke, Lives of 52…Divines, pp.131, 222, etc.) Moreover, it was the Puritans who invented evangelistic literature. One has only to think of Baxter’s classic Call to the Unconverted, and Alleine’s Alarm to the Unconverted, which were pioneer works in this class of writing. And the elaborate practical “handling” of the subject of conversion in Puritan books was regarded by the rest of the seventeenth-century Protestant world as something of unique value. “It hath been one of the glories of the Protestant religion that it revived the doctrine of Saving Conversion, and of the New Creature brought forth thereby…But in a more eminent manner, God hath cast the honor hereof upon the Ministers and Preachers of this Nation, who are renowned abroad for their more accurate search into and discoveries hereof.” (T. Goodwin and P. Nye, Preface to T. Hooker, The Application of Redemption, 1656).

The truth is that two distinct conceptions and types of evangelism have been developed in Protestant Christendom during the course of its history. We may call them the “Puritan” type and the “modern” type. Today we are so accustomed to evangelism of the modern type that we scarcely recognize the other is evangelism at all. In order that we may fully grasp the character of the Puritan type of evangelism, I shall here set it in contrast with the modern type, which has so largely superseded it at the present time.  Continue at Refocusing Our Eyes

Why and How to Read Calvin’s Institutes

If you haven’t yet read C. S. Lewis’s introduction to Athanasius’s On the Incarnation, I’d highly recommend it.

He wants to refute the “strange idea” “that in every subject the ancient books should be read only by the professionals, and that the amateur should content himself with the modern books.”

Lewis finds the impulse humble and understandable: the layman looks at the class author and “feels himself inadequate and thinks he will not understand him.”

“But,” Lewis explains, “if he only knew, the great man, just because of his greatness, is much more intelligible than his modern commentator.”

Lewis therefore made it a goal to convince students that “firsthand knowledge is not only more worth acquiring than secondhand knowledge, but is usually much easier and more delightful to acquire.”

I suspect this holds true with respect to evangelical Calvinists and Calvin’s Institutes. Are we in danger of being a generation of secondhanders?

Let me forestall the “I don’t have time” objection. If you have 15 minutes a day and a bit of self-discipline, you can get through the whole of the Institutes faster than you think. Listen to John Piper: Keep Reading >>>

Evangelical Annihilationism in Review

Evangelicalism is variously defined by various people. I define it as the religion of Trinitarian Bible-believers who glory in Christ’s Cross as the only source of peace with God and seek to share their faith with others; and I note that in the West (to look no further) evangelicalism, like Protestant liberalism, Roman Catholicism of all stripes, and Eastern Orthodoxy, has a communal mindset of its own. Factors shaping that mindset during the past half-century include the dogmatic, devotional, apologetic and activist nurture given in evangelical churches and parachurch movements; the reading matter (books, journals, magazines) that evangelicals produce for each other; the feeling of superior faithfulness to the Bible, its God and its Christ, which evangelical institutions cultivate; a sense of being threatened by the big battalions of the liberal Protestant, Roman Catholic, and American secular establishments, leading to bluster when these ideological power bases are discussed; a passion for effective evangelism; and an idealizing of scholars and leaders as gurus, whence a sense of betrayal and outrage surfaces if any of these are felt to be stepping out of line. Within the distinctive corporate identity of evangelicalism an awareness of privilege and vocation, a siege mentality, a low flashpoint in debate, a certain verbal violence, and a tendency to shoot our own wounded — all obtrude.

Whether the movement’s recent recovery of confidence and burgeoning intellectual life¹ are mellowing this raw mindset is not yet clear; certainly, however, the rigidities hinted at above have been apparent as evangelicals have intramurally debated annihilationism during the past ten years.   Keep Reading...

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God’s Sovereign Election and Human Responsibility

“The Lord has made the heavens his throne; from there he rules over everything” (Psalm 103:19)

 

Scripture teaches that God “works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will” (Eph. 1:11).

“I am the LORD, and there is no other. I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the LORD, do all those things” (Isa. 45:6-7).

This is a subject that has both intrigued and confused those who know what the Bible teaches about it.

A framework:

It is very important to address the subject in the way that the Bible does and to avoid forcing it to conform to theological traditions. In Scripture, “the sovereignty-responsibility tension is not a problem to be solved; rather it is a framework to be explored” (D. A. Carson, Divine Sovereignty and Human Responsibility: Biblical perspectives in tension). Keep Reading...

Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God by J. I. Packer

J. I. Packer’s Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God remains a staple in the field of evangelism fifty years after it was first published.  Packer walks the line between an overemphasis on God’s sovereignty, which leads some to deny any need for evangelism, and an overemphasis on human responsibility, which rests the eternal destiny of individuals on the persuasiveness of a gospel presentation.  A correct understanding of God’s sovereignty and human responsibility provides the proper motivation and approach to evangelism.

Packer begins the book by disarming any potential objections to God’s sovereignty.  He explains that all Christians believe that God is sovereign as evidenced by their prayers.  Thankfulness for personal conversion and prayer for the conversion of others also demonstrate the all Christians hold to the sovereignty of God in salvation.  No Christian can take credit for his or her conversion, and no Christian claims that others will be converted apart from a miraculous work of God.  Our actions demonstrate a belief in God’s sovereignty even if our lips do not.

God’s sovereignty does not relieve humans of responsibility with regard to evangelism.  Packer carefully details how God’s sovereignty and human responsibility form an antimony.  These two truths work together in perfect harmony despite apparent contradiction.  Packer urges, “Accept it for what it is, and learn to live with it” (21).  Appropriately, maintaining both of these realities proves crucial to biblical evangelism. Keep Reading...

JI Packer on Regeneration and Sanctification

The concept [of sanctification] is not of sin being totally eradicated (that is to claim too much) or merely counteracted (that is to say too little), but of a divinely wrought character change freeing us from sinful habits and forming in us Christlike affections, dispositions, and virtues.

Sanctification is an ongoing transformation within a maintained consecration, and it engenders real righteousness within the frame of relational holiness.

Relational sanctification, the state of being permanently set apart for God, flows from the cross, where God through Christ purchased and claimed us for himself (Acts 20:28; 26:18; Heb. 10:10).

Moral renovation, whereby we are increasingly changed from what we once were, flows from the agency of the indwelling Holy Spirit (Rom. 8:13; 12:1-2; 1 Cor. 6:11, 19-20; 2 Cor. 3:18; Eph. 4:22-24; 1 Thess. 5:23; 2 Thess. 2:13; Heb. 13:20-21). God calls his children to sanctity and graciously gives what he commands (1 Thess. 4:4; 5:23).

Regeneration is birth; sanctification is growth. Keep Reading...

Adding to the Word?

Here’s one more great section from Packer’s Fundamentalism and the Word of God. In the concluding section Packer mentions how salvation from sin is a gift of divine grace alone through faith alone, “and faith is no more than an activity of reception, contributing nothing to that which it receives.”  Since Christ’s work is perfect and completed, there is nothing for the Christian to add.  However, pride creeps in and we often want to find a way to claim credit in salvation by some sort of contribution.  Sometimes we start to think our works play a part in our justification, which should lead us to repent and remember Paul’s sharp words against such unchristian thoughts (see Galatians for example).  Packer notes another way we may want to contribute something to our salvation: by “explicating and qualifying God’s revealed truth.”  What does that mean?  He uses the liberalism of 100 years ago for an example. Keep Reading....

How To Know What Real Revival Looks Like

In 1972 I heard J. I. Packer lecture at my seminary. One simple sentence of his has echoed in my mind ever since: “Do not neglect the revival dimension in your ministry.” Revival is powerfully Christ-exalting. That is what I desire. And I am guessing that you, as you follow The Resurgence, feel the same passion.

What is a true revival?

But how can we distinguish true revival from false? Not everything labeled “revival” can be trusted and welcomed. Fortunately, we have guidance from a master theologian, Jonathan Edwards, who studied the Bible profoundly and experienced revival personally. Keep Reading>>>