J. I. Packer - Rediscovering Holiness: Know the Fullness of Life with God

Rediscovering Holiness

2009 J.I. Packer

Published by Baker Books
a division of Baker Publishing Group
P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
www.bakerbooks.com

Baker Books edition published 2014

ISBN 978-1-4412-2430-9

First edition published by Servant Publications in 1992.
Second edition published by Regal in 2009.

Ebook edition originally created 2011

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meansfor example, electronic, photocopy, recordingwithout the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved.

Other versions used are:

KJVKing James Version . Authorized King James Version.

NASB Scripture taken from the New American Standard Bible , 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

NKJV Scripture taken from the New King James Version . Copyright 1979, 1980, 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

PhillipsThe New Testament in Modern English , Revised Edition, J. B. Phillips, Translator. J. B. Phillips 1958, 1960, 1972. Used by permission of Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 866 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10022.

RSV From the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1946, 1952, and 1971 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. Used by permission.

To

Jim and Rita Houston

who also care
about holiness

This book has grown out of four talks that I gave at a conference in 1991. This conference was sponsored by the Alliance for Faith and Renewal, an interdenominational organization that seeks to empower pastors and other Christian leaders in building the kingdom of God and in strengthening those they serve in the Christian life. The shape this book has taken reflects my belief that there is need to blow the whistle on the sidelining of personal holiness that has been a general trend among Bible-centered Western Christians during my years of ministry.

It is not a trend that one would have expected, since Scripture insists so strongly that Christians are called to holiness, that God is pleased with holiness but outraged by unholiness, and that without holiness none will see the Lord. But the shift of Christian interest away from the pursuit of holiness to focus on fun and fulfillment, ego massage and techniques for present success, and public issues that carry no challenge to ones personal morals, is a fact. To my mind it is a sad and scandalous fact, and one that needs to be reversed.

With the fading of interest in supernatural holiness, interest has grown in supernatural healing and in the supernatural powers of evil with which Christians must battle. My hope is that this heightened awareness of the reality of the supernatural will soon reconnect with what Walter Marshall, the Puritan, long ago called the gospel mystery of sanctification. If this book helps in that reconnection, I shall think myself fully rewarded.

This second edition of the book includes a new afterword titled Holiness in the Dark: The Case of Mother Teresa, which deals with the issue of spiritual desertion using, as the title suggests, the much-discussed case of Mother Teresa. Also included in this new edition is a study guide for use in exploring the principles discussed in this book.

I am enormously grateful to my daughter Naomi, who labored at some inconvenience to herself to put the book on computer, and to my wife, Kit, who was willing to be neglected for a time so that it might be born.

J.I. Packer
January 2009

Just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do;
for it is written: Be holy, because I am holy.

1 PETER 1:15-16

Make every effort... to be holy; without holiness
no one will see the Lord.

HEBREWS 12:14

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 1789the year of the French Revolution and George Washingtons first term as President. Our clock was going before the great Christian theologian John Wesley stopped going, if I may put it so.

It is a musical clock, too, of a rather unusual sort. Not only does it strike the hour, but it also has a built-in carillon (knobs on a brass cylinder tripping hammers that hit bells which play a tune for three minutes every three hours). Two of its four tunes we recognize, for we hear them still today. However, the other two, which sound like country dances, are unknownnot just to us but to everyone who has heard them played.

Over the years they were forgotten, which was a pity, for they are good tunes; and we would like to know something about them.

In the same way, the historic Christian teaching on holiness has been largely forgotten, and that also is a pity, for it is central to the glory of God and the good of souls.

It is nearly 60 years since I learned at school the opening verse of a poem by Rudyard Kipling, titled The Way through the Woods. It goes like this:

They shut the road through the woods

Seventy years ago.

Weather and rain have undone it again

And now you would never know

There was once a road through the woods.

I suppose it is because I love walking through woods that these lines move me so deeply. Again and again, when I find myself mourning the loss of a good thing that has perished through stupidity, carelessness, or neglect (and I confess that, both as a conservationist and a Christian, I have that experience often), Kiplings verse jumps into my mind. It haunts me now, as I contemplate the Churchs current loss of biblical truth about holiness.

There was a time when all Christians laid great emphasis on the reality of Gods call to holiness and spoke with deep insight about His enabling of us for it. Evangelical Protestants, in particular, offered endless variations on the themes of what Gods holiness requires of us, what our holiness involves for us, by what means and through what disciplines the Holy Spirit sanctifies us, and the ways in which holiness increases our assurance and joy and usefulness to God.

The Puritans insisted that all life and relationships must become holiness to the Lord. John Wesley told the world that God had raised up Methodism to spread scriptural holiness throughout the land. Phoebe Palmer, Handley Moule, Andrew Murray, Jessie Penn-Lewis, F.B. Meyer, Oswald Chambers, Horatius Bonar, Amy Carmichael, and L.B. Maxwell are only a few of the leading figures in the holiness revival that touched all evangelical Christendom between the mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries.