Rediscovering Holiness by J.I. Packer. 2021. 384 pages. [Source: Review copy]
First sentence: Our grandfather clock, which tells us not only the hours, minutes and seconds but also the days of the week, the months of the year, and the phases of the moon, is something of a veteran. Scratched on one of its lead weights is the date 1789—the year of the French Revolution and George Washington’s first term as President. Our clock was going before the great Christian theologian John Wesley stopped going, if I may put it so.
Rediscovering Holiness was first published in 1992. It has gone through several editions; the most recent edition being published in July 2021 by Crossway. According to the preface, the book "grew" out of four conference talks from the year before--1991. You honestly can't tell this book grew out of four separate conference sermons! The book is cohesive and seamless in its treatment of holiness. The book doesn't focus in on one aspect of holiness, it touches on the many, many aspects of holiness.
The context for the book is a growing concern (and rightly so using hindsight) that the contemporary church is failing to emphasize holiness--either God's holiness OR our need to grow in holiness (sanctification)--and to rightly teach and preach holiness. Packer saw a void--a big one perhaps--and decided to write a book on holiness. The subject was too important, too significant, too fundamental, too essential to ignore. This generation--and every generation--needs to be grounded on the doctrine of holiness. He writes, "To listen to our sermons and to read the books we write for each other and then to watch the zany, worldly, quarrelsome way we behave as Christian people, you would never imagine that once the highway of holiness was clearly marked out for Bible believers, so that ministers and people knew what it was and could speak of it with authority and confidence."
Packer points out that he doesn't need to "discover" new insights on holiness, but rather go back to previous teachings and writings. To go back to that "old time religion" if you will to discover what centuries of believers--theologians--have believed and taught about holiness.
The book has plenty of Scripture AND plenty of quotes. Packer does love his Puritans. (Yes, I know that Packer is dead. It's just harder--for me--to write a book review and switch verb tenses back and forth.)
Throughout the book, Packer groups together prayer and holiness. The practical aspects of "learning" and "growing" both are connected. He writes, "Holiness, like prayer (which is indeed part of it), is something that, though Christians have an instinct for it through their new birth, as we shall see, they have to learn in and through experience. As Jesus “learned obedience from what he suffered” (Heb. 5:8)—learned what obedience requires, costs and involves through the experience of actually doing His Father’s will up to and in His passion—so Christians must, and do, learn prayer from their struggles to pray and holiness from their battles for purity of heart and righteousness of life...Prayer and holiness are learned in a similar way as commitments are made, habits are formed and battles are fought against a real opponent (Satan, in this case), who with great cunning plays constantly on our weak spots...The process of learning to be holy, like the process of learning to pray, may properly be thought of as a school—God’s own school, in which the curriculum, the teaching staff, the rules, the discipline, the occasional prizes and the fellow pupils with whom one studies, plays, debates and fraternizes, are all there under God’s sovereign providence."
The book definitely has practical implications, but it is theology first and foremost. The holiness (of God) and the call to be holy (sanctification) is a WEIGHTY subject. Packer is thorough and solid.
I found myself highlighting PAGES because so much material was worthy of a second look--a dozen looks to be fair.
What you might not be expecting--and what I treasure most about it perhaps--is the RICHNESS of the chapters on SALVATION. Packer truly and clearly presents the gospel, and the gospel is beautiful, amazing, compelling. Though chapters two and three--the ones on salvation--are especially rich and wonderful, the book as a whole is worthy of your time, energy, and effort. Definitely worth a reread at some point.
Quotes:
We are all invalids in God’s hospital. In moral and spiritual terms we are all sick and damaged, diseased and deformed, scarred and sore, lame and lopsided, to a far, far greater extent than we realize. Under God’s care we are getting better, but we are not yet well. The modern Christian likes to dwell on present blessings rather than future prospects. Modern Christians egg each other on to testify that where once we were blind, deaf, and indeed dead so far as God was concerned, now through Christ we have been brought to life, radically transformed, and blessed with spiritual health. Thank God, there is real truth in that. But spiritual health means being holy and whole. To the extent that we fall short of being holy and whole, we are not fully healthy either. Measured by the absolute standard of spiritual health that we see in Jesus Christ, we are all of us no more, just as we are no less, than invalids in the process of being cured. Our spiritual life is at best a fragile convalescence, easily disrupted. When there are tensions, strains, perversities, and disappointments in the Christian fellowship, it helps to remember that no Christian, and no church, ever has the clean bill of spiritual health that would match the total physical well-being for which today’s fitness seekers labor. To long for total spiritual well-being is right and natural, but to believe that one is anywhere near it is to be utterly self-deceived.
The Bible, heard and read, preached and taught, interpreted and applied, is both the channel and the content of His communication. It is as if Jesus hands us the canonical Scriptures directly, telling us that they are the authoritative and all-sufficient source from which we must learn both what we are to do in order to be His followers and also what He has done, is doing, and will do to save us from the fatal sickness of sin. Think of your Bible, then, as Jesus Christ’s gift to you; think of it as a letter to you from your Lord. Think of your name, written in the front of it, as if Jesus Himself had written it there. Think of Jesus each time you read your Bible. Think of Him asking you, page by page and chapter by chapter, what you have just learned about the need, nature, method, and effect of the grace that He brings, and about the path of loyal discipleship that He calls you to tread. That is the way to profit from the Bible. Only when your reading of the written Word feeds into your relationship with the living Word (Jesus) does the Bible operate as the channel of light and life that God means it to be.
Packer's advice on reading/studying the Bible:
A helpful scheme of applicatory meditation on each passage is to ask ourselves: • What does this passage tell me about God? How does it describe God’s nature and power; His plan and purpose; His likes and dislikes; His works, ways, and will for His human creatures? • What does this passage tell me about living? What does it say about right conduct, wrong conduct, wise conduct, foolish conduct; different situations and relationships in which people find themselves; the way of faith with all its difficulties and delights; various emotional states and temperamental traumas; virtues to cultivate, vices to avoid, and values to hold on to; pressures from the world, the flesh, and the devil, and what to do about them? In short, what does it tell me about all the realities of belonging to a lost humanity in a spoiled world now touched by the powers of redemption, and involved in the ongoing conflict between Christ the conqueror and the defeated powers of darkness that are so desperately fighting back? What does all this say to me about my own life today? What does it tell me about the tasks, problems, opportunities, pitfalls, and temptations to sin that confront me day by day? What warnings and encouragements does it give me, and what wisdom and resources does it show me?
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