Saved By His Precious Blood

I have long appreciated James Packer . His book "A Quest For Godliness" remains a favorite of mine . Chapter 8 is the title of this thread . Packer details some aspects of John Owen's classic " The Death Of Death in the Death of Christ" . I will , with the permission of Crossway Books , quote some sections from this fascinating chapter .

... Owen shows with great cogency that the three classes of texts alleged to prove that Christ died for persons who will not be saved ( those saying that he died for 'the world ', for 'all' , and those thought to envisage the perishing of those for whom he died ) , cannot on sound principles of exegesis be held to teach any such thing ; and , further , that the theological inferences by which universal redemption is supposed to be established are really quite fallacious . The true evangelical evaluation of the claim that Christ died for every man , even those who perish , comes through at point after point in Owen's book . So far from magnifying the love and grace of God , this claim dishonors both it and him , for it reduces God's love to an impotent wish and turns the whole economy of 'saving' grace , so-called ( 'saving' really is a misnomer on this view ) , into a monumental divine failure . Also , so far from magnifying the merit and worth of Christ's death , it cheapens it , for it makes Christ die in vain . Lastly , so far from affording faith additional encouragement , it destroys the scriptural ground of assurance altogether , for it denies that the knowledge that Christ died for me ( or did or does anything else for me ) is a sufficient ground for inferring my eternal salvation ; my salvation , on this view , depends not on what Christ did for me , but on what I subsequently do for myself .


It is safe to say that no comparable exposition of the work of redemption as planned and executed by the Triune Jehovah has ever been done since Owen published his . None has been needed . Discussing this work , Andrew Thomson notes how Owen 'makes you feel when he has reached the end of his subject , that he has also exhausted it'. That is demonstrably the case here . His interpretation of the texts on the points of issue is sure ; his power of theological construction is superb ; nothing that needs discussing is omitted , and ( so far as this writer can discover ) no arguments for or against his position have been used since his day which he has not himself noted and dealt with . One searches his book in vain for the leaps and flights of logic by which Reformed theologians are supposed to establish their positions ; all that one finds is solid , painstaking exegesis and a careful following through of biblical ways of thinking . Owen's work is a constructive , broadbased biblical analysis of the heart of the gospel , and must be taken seriously as such . It may not be written off as a piece of special pleading for a traditional shibboleth , for nobody has a right to dismiss the doctrine of the limitedness , or particularity, of atonement as a monstrosity of Calvinistic logic until he has refuted Owen's proof that it is part of the uniform biblical presentation of redemption , clearly taught in plain text after plain text . And nobody has done that yet .

From "A Quest For Godliness : The Puritan Vision of the Christian Life " by J.I. Packer copyright 1990 , pages 135,136 . Used by permission of Crossway Books , a division of Goodnews Publishers , Wheaton , IL 60187 www.crossway.com

 

Whether we call ourselves Calvinists hardly matters ; what matters is that we should understand the gospel biblically . But that , we think , does in fact mean understanding it as historic Calvinism does . The alternative is to misunderstand and distort it . We said earlier that modern evangelism , by and large , has ceased to preach the gospel in the old way , and we frankly admit that the new gospel , insofar as it deviates from the old , seems to us a distortion of the biblical message . And we can now see what has gone wrong . Our theological currency has been debased . Our minds have been conditioned to think of the cross as a redemption which does less than redeem , and of Christ as a Saviour who does less than save , and of God's love as a weak affection which cannot keep anyone from hell without help , and of faith as the human help which God needs for this purpose . As a result , we are no longer free either to believe the biblical gospel or to preach it . We cannot believe it , because our thoughts are caught in the toils of synergism . We are haunted by the Arminian idea that if faith and unbelief are to be responsible acts , they must be independent acts ; hence we are not free to believe that we are saved entirely by divine grace through a faith which is itself God's gift and flows to us from Calvary . Instead , we involve ourselves in a bewildering kind of double-think about salvation , telling ourselves one moment that it all depends on God and next moment that it all depends on us . The resultant mental muddle deprives God of much of the glory that we should give him as author and finisher of salvation , and ourselves of much of the comfort we might draw from knowing that God is for us .

From "A Quest For Godliness : The Puritan Vision of the Christian Life" by J.I. Packer , copyright 1990 , page 137 . Used by permission of Crossway Books , a division of Good News Publishers , Wheaton , IL 60187 www.crossway.com

 

TCG : I like your conciseness !

 

RB , your math is a bit off ( though you said it with good intentions ) . Owen's classic was published in 1647 -- which was 360 years ago . The KJV came out 396 years ago . Let's see , 500 years ago Martin Luther was a young man of 24 years . John Calvin ( a big influence on Owen ) was born in Noyon , France in 1509 .

 

And when we come to preach the gospel , our false preconceptions make us say just the opposite of what we intend . We want ( rightly ) to proclaim Christ as Saviour ; yet we end up saying that Christ , having made salvation possible , has left us to become our own saviours . It comes about in this way . We want to magnify the saving grace of God and the saving power of Christ . So we declare that God's redeeming love extends to everyone , and that Christ has died to save everyone , and we proclaim that the glory of divine mercy is to be measured by these facts . And then , in order to avoid universalism , we have to depreciate all that we were previously extolling , and to explain that , after all , nothing that God and Christ have done can save us unless we add something to it ; the decisive factor which actually saves us is our own believing . What we say comes to this -- that Christ saves us with our help ; and what that means , when one thinks it out , is this -- that we save ourselves with Christ's help . This is a hollow anticlimax . But if we start by affirming that God has a saving love for all , and Christ died a saving death for all , and yet balk at becoming universalists , there is nothing else that we can say . And let us be clear on what we have done when we have put the matter in this fashion . We have not exalted grace and the cross ; we have cheapened them . We have limited the atonement far more drastically than Calvinism does , for whereas Calvinism asserts that Christ's death , as such , saves all whom it was meant to save , we have denied that Christ's death , as such , is sufficient to save any of them . We have flattered impenitent sinners by assuring them that it is in their power to repent and believe , though God cannot make them do it . Perhaps we have also trivalised faith and repentance in order to make this assurance plausible ( 'it's very simple -- just open your heart to the Lord ...' ) . Certainly , we have effectively denied God's sovereignty , and undermined the basic conviction of true religion -- that man is always in God's hands . In truth , we have lost a great deal . And it is , perhaps , no wonder that our preaching begets so little reverence and humility , and that our professed converts are so self-confident and so deficient in self-knowledge and in the good works which Scripture regards as the fruit of true repentance .

From "A Quest For Godliness : The Puritan View of the Christian Life " by J.I. Packer , copyright 1990 , pages 137,138 . Used by permission of Crossway Books , a division of Good News Publishers , Wheaton , IL 60187 www.crossway.com

 

Listen-up !

It is from degenerate faith and preaching of this kind that Owen's book could set us free . If we listen to him , he will teach us both how to believe the Scripture gospel and how to preach it . For the first : he will lead us to bow down before a sovereign Saviour who really saves , and to praise him for a redeeming death which made it certain that all for whom he died will come to glory . It cannot be overemphasised that we have not seen the full meaning of the cross till we have seen it as the divines of Dort display it -- as the centre of the gospel , flanked on the one hand by total inability and unconditional election , and on the other by irresistable grace and final preservation . For the full meaning of the cross only appears when the atonement is defined in terms of these four truths . Christ died to save a certain company of helpless sinners upon whom God had set his free saving love . Christ 's death ensured the calling and keeping -- the present and final salavation -- of all whose sins he bore . That is what Calvary meant , and means . The cross saved ; the cross saves . This is the heart of true evangelical faith ; as Cowper sang :

Dear dying Lamb , Thy precious blood
Shall never lose its power ,
Till all the ransomed church of God

From "A Quest For Godliness : The Puritan Vision of the Christian Life " by J. I. Packer . Copyright 1990 , page 138 . Used by permission of Crossway Books , a division of Good News Publishers , Wheaton , IL 60187 www.crossway.com
Be saved to sin no more .

 

Skypair has been grounded !