John Piper Interviews J.I. Packer

00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)

00:00:02.580 | Dr. J.I. Packer recently passed into glory.

00:00:08.560 | It was about a year ago that we began to get updates

00:00:10.900 | indicating that his race on earth was nearing its end.

00:00:14.640 | And I had a short list of topics I wanted to talk with him

00:00:17.480 | about over the telephone,

00:00:18.560 | and he very kindly agreed to a series of three phone calls

00:00:23.000 | to answer various questions that I had about the Puritans

00:00:25.520 | and specifically his thoughts on a Puritan theologian

00:00:29.080 | named Thomas Goodwin.

00:00:30.640 | These were not formal interviews,

00:00:32.120 | just informal chats that we had.

00:00:34.640 | However, I knew at the end of that third call,

00:00:37.280 | it would be the final time that I would speak with him.

00:00:39.920 | And I wanted to voice my gratitude to God

00:00:42.200 | for his life and ministry and to voice it to him.

00:00:46.240 | And the final minute of that last call I did record,

00:00:49.300 | here's how it ended.

00:00:50.300 | - The world of Puritan studies is waiting

00:00:54.680 | for someone to focus on Owen, sorry, on Goodwin

00:00:59.680 | as a life's work.

00:01:01.560 | - Yes, amen. - All right.

00:01:02.680 | That's Packer sticking his neck out.

00:01:05.520 | And now I must say over to you.

00:01:08.160 | - Yeah, excellent.

00:01:09.400 | Dr. Packer, thank you for your time.

00:01:11.400 | I am grateful to God for your works

00:01:14.040 | and all of the books that you've written over the years.

00:01:16.320 | And God has used you in a mighty way in my life,

00:01:20.480 | and I'm grateful to God for you.

00:01:22.160 | Thank you.

00:01:23.080 | And when next you see John Piper,

00:01:26.120 | give him my greetings and assurance

00:01:29.160 | that though my productive days, I think,

00:01:33.080 | are over, my position on everything

00:01:37.120 | which we've shared views in the past,

00:01:42.120 | my position remains where it was.

00:01:44.720 | For general assurance, God be with you and bless you.

00:01:48.960 | - All right, Dr. Packer, God bless you.

00:01:50.800 | Thank you. - Bye now.

00:01:52.640 | (static crackling)

00:01:54.840 | - Although Dr. Packer's formal ministry had ended

00:01:57.040 | and he would no longer preach or sit at his typewriter

00:02:00.760 | to write books or articles, he wanted Pastor John

00:02:04.040 | to know that the shared convictions that he had with us,

00:02:07.800 | the convictions that drove his public ministry,

00:02:10.160 | convictions about Christ and imputation

00:02:13.280 | of personal holiness and of the nature of scripture,

00:02:16.280 | those convictions were all convictions

00:02:18.520 | that he was still clinging to privately.

00:02:21.200 | I love that, that's precious.

00:02:23.360 | And I know friends close to him in his final weeks and days

00:02:26.040 | and hours on earth confirmed the very same thing.

00:02:29.320 | Until the very end, Dr. Packer talked

00:02:31.880 | about the preciousness of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

00:02:36.040 | And those shared convictions that we had with him

00:02:38.880 | bring us back to an earlier date, five years ago.

00:02:41.400 | It was in April of 2015, Pastor John traveled

00:02:44.840 | from Minneapolis to Vancouver to interview Dr. Packer

00:02:47.960 | about life, doctrine, and ministry.

00:02:50.240 | What resulted from their time together

00:02:51.600 | is a 72 minute conversation.

00:02:53.920 | This interview has never been released until now.

00:02:57.400 | Here it is.

00:02:58.480 | - Dr. Packer, in 1988, you came

00:03:03.480 | to the Bethlehem Conference for Pastors.

00:03:06.800 | You may not even remember that we started as a church.

00:03:10.400 | It's been going on now for, what's that, 27 years or so.

00:03:15.080 | And you didn't know anything about this.

00:03:19.080 | It was the very first one.

00:03:20.120 | I didn't know if anybody would come.

00:03:22.840 | And I wanted to publicly thank you for coming.

00:03:27.200 | And I mention it because you have, I think,

00:03:32.200 | assumed that lowly, risk-taking servant role

00:03:37.840 | for more than one ministry.

00:03:40.800 | Getting our little conference off the ground

00:03:43.520 | with your presence was a gift to us.

00:03:47.560 | So thank you, and the legacy has been significant.

00:03:52.160 | There's another thing.

00:03:54.960 | If you wanna respond, you can in just a minute.

00:03:56.920 | There's another thing.

00:03:57.760 | Two years before that, and I'm almost sure

00:03:59.880 | you won't remember this, I wrote a book

00:04:03.800 | called Desiring God, first popular book.

00:04:08.640 | My dissertation doesn't count

00:04:10.080 | because it didn't get any blurbs.

00:04:11.720 | And you wrote a blurb for it, first blurb,

00:04:14.520 | right at the top, and you said,

00:04:16.440 | "The ghost of Jonathan Edwards

00:04:20.960 | "walks through the pages of this book."

00:04:24.840 | (laughs)

00:04:26.280 | And you added, to my amazement,

00:04:29.400 | "I think he would be pleased with his disciple."

00:04:34.400 | It really did bring tears to my eyes.

00:04:37.120 | That you would write it, that you would say that,

00:04:40.880 | moved me deeply.

00:04:41.880 | So for those two reasons, a blurb on my first popular book,

00:04:46.400 | and the first speaker at the Bethlehem Conference

00:04:50.360 | for Pastors has endeared you to me

00:04:54.240 | in some pretty significant ways.

00:04:57.760 | - Well, that's a very gracious way

00:04:59.480 | for you to start this conversation.

00:05:01.960 | I appreciate it, and you remind me of things

00:05:05.960 | which are very happy memories, as a matter of fact.

00:05:10.640 | Nothing that has happened since I made those gestures

00:05:15.640 | has changed my mind about any of the things

00:05:19.400 | that we had in common then.

00:05:21.840 | And, well, it's just a great joy to be talking to you now,

00:05:27.960 | after so many years,

00:05:30.320 | and realizing that all of this stays firm.

00:05:35.080 | - Yeah.

00:05:35.920 | So here's the way I wanna turn that ghost comment

00:05:39.680 | into a question.

00:05:41.360 | So Jonathan Edwards is walking through John Piper's writings

00:05:44.240 | like a ghost, and I'm happy with that.

00:05:47.000 | And to be called a disciple

00:05:48.280 | who would be pleasing to the master,

00:05:50.160 | that sub-master is pleasing to me.

00:05:54.000 | You have different ghosts walking through your pages.

00:05:59.000 | And if I were to guess what they are,

00:06:02.160 | I think it's pretty clear.

00:06:03.160 | They are English Puritans from the 17th century.

00:06:09.160 | - You're right.

00:06:10.560 | - You have called them Redwoods in the book,

00:06:13.600 | "The Quest for Godliness."

00:06:17.280 | So the question is kind of twofold.

00:06:20.460 | What, speaking now to younger people

00:06:25.200 | who may be very marginally familiar

00:06:28.280 | with that group of Redwoods,

00:06:31.140 | what was it about them that took you,

00:06:33.560 | took hold of you, and have stayed hold of you,

00:06:37.880 | that would be useful for us today?

00:06:40.920 | And subordinately, does Edwards walk at all

00:06:45.440 | through the pages?

00:06:46.880 | In other words, did Edwards have a little place

00:06:50.500 | in the shaping of J.I. Packer?

00:06:53.100 | Just take those one at a time.

00:06:54.160 | If you forget the Edwards piece, I'll bring you back.

00:06:56.760 | Talk about the Puritans for a minute.

00:06:59.160 | - Well, the first thing to say, I think,

00:07:01.560 | is that the Puritans broke into my life

00:07:05.680 | when I was still a young Christian.

00:07:07.700 | I became a believer at Oxford,

00:07:10.720 | and I was put in charge of a library

00:07:14.520 | that had been left to the university chapter,

00:07:18.560 | and in that library were uncut volumes

00:07:22.240 | of the works of John Owen, who by general consent,

00:07:25.640 | of course, is the top Puritan.

00:07:27.920 | And I was interested, simply, I suppose,

00:07:34.600 | because I'm that sort of person.

00:07:37.360 | I like to know about the past of anything

00:07:40.720 | that I'm interested in in the present.

00:07:43.480 | And at that time, in the present,

00:07:46.280 | I was interested in, well, more than interested,

00:07:49.920 | I mean, I was committed as a disciple of Christ.

00:07:52.760 | I was a new disciple.

00:07:54.560 | I was trying to catch up for all those years

00:07:57.640 | during which I hadn't been a believer,

00:08:00.000 | and from that standpoint, it was time wasted.

00:08:04.440 | And I had heard that the Puritans

00:08:08.720 | were something rather special.

00:08:10.380 | So I cut the pages, the uncut pages,

00:08:15.680 | of a volume of John Owen and started reading.

00:08:19.120 | Now, I hadn't expected what happened.

00:08:24.920 | I was reading him on indwelling sin in believers

00:08:29.660 | and the mortification of sin in believers.

00:08:33.800 | I hadn't realized that I had a major problem at that point

00:08:38.800 | until Owen showed me that I did,

00:08:42.600 | showed me what it was, showed me how to understand myself,

00:08:47.520 | and showed me what the Lord would do for me

00:08:52.520 | and what I must do for him to deal

00:08:57.880 | with the sin that was still operating in my life.

00:09:04.640 | So unexpectedly, John Owen, for a time, became my pastor.

00:09:09.640 | And I moved out from John Owen to various of his friends.

00:09:17.880 | Richard Baxter was another great Puritan

00:09:22.680 | whom I began to read and was thrilled by.

00:09:27.400 | And I read for the first time seriously

00:09:34.560 | Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, both parts.

00:09:38.040 | And, well, there were quite a number, actually,

00:09:42.960 | of other Puritans of almost equal stature

00:09:46.600 | whom I read because Owen,

00:09:50.440 | although actually he's difficult in style,

00:09:53.880 | Owen gave me a taste for a reality

00:09:57.280 | which now I think I'd describe

00:10:00.400 | in terms of the recognition of God, quite simply.

00:10:05.400 | The Puritans carried a tremendous sense of God with them,

00:10:09.960 | and Owen, with his awkward style,

00:10:13.600 | was able to communicate that sense of God.

00:10:16.720 | And it took me a little time to recognize

00:10:19.480 | what it was that was coming across.

00:10:22.240 | But in fact, during those months

00:10:26.640 | when I was doing my first exploration of the Puritans,

00:10:31.560 | I was also able from time to time

00:10:33.520 | to listen to the great Martin Lloyd-Jones

00:10:36.200 | preaching the gospel.

00:10:37.600 | And Martin Lloyd-Jones, more than any preacher

00:10:41.400 | whom I have ever sat under, brought God with him.

00:10:46.000 | That's the only way to say it.

00:10:47.320 | Brought God with him into the pulpit.

00:10:51.160 | And from being in worship that he was leading,

00:10:57.160 | I got to the point where I recognized

00:11:01.360 | the reality of God is what's impacting me from the Puritans.

00:11:06.360 | >> Is that--

00:11:07.760 | >> And that stays with me today.

00:11:10.640 | >> Is that what you mean by Redwoods?

00:11:13.680 | >> That's one of the things that I mean by Redwoods.

00:11:19.240 | It isn't all.

00:11:23.160 | The Redwood image is intended to conjure up

00:11:28.160 | the thought of stability and strength

00:11:35.920 | and the capacity to stand firm under pressure.

00:11:41.520 | Actually, I'm not sure that in terms of botany

00:11:46.680 | that actually works for Redwoods.

00:11:48.800 | I've been told that they have shallow root systems.

00:11:51.960 | And that isn't part of the picture at all.

00:11:54.240 | The Puritans were very strong

00:11:57.600 | because they had very strong root systems.

00:12:00.680 | But yes, they became my example, as they still are,

00:12:06.920 | of folk who lived slowly enough

00:12:13.480 | to be able to think deeply about God.

00:12:19.520 | And they did.

00:12:22.240 | And what they thought, they expressed.

00:12:27.240 | Some of them were quite eloquent, actually,

00:12:31.360 | in the ordinary sense of the word.

00:12:33.080 | Bunyan, for instance, is a very pleasant writer to read.

00:12:38.920 | >> Who did you say?

00:12:39.760 | >> Bunyan.

00:12:40.600 | >> Okay.

00:12:41.680 | >> Quite a poet from the fact that, in my estimate,

00:12:44.440 | at any rate, Pilgrim's Progress

00:12:46.640 | is simply magnificent as Christianity.

00:12:49.240 | >> Yeah.

00:12:50.080 | >> Well, anyway, have I given you the idea

00:12:56.040 | of what I mean by Redwoods?

00:12:57.640 | I hope so.

00:12:58.480 | And you asked about Jonathan Edwards.

00:13:00.320 | >> Right, in other words, he does not figure in your thinking

00:13:05.320 | the way he figures in my thinking.

00:13:06.720 | He's prominent.

00:13:08.280 | They are prominent for you.

00:13:10.160 | >> He did for you what John Owen did for me.

00:13:13.280 | >> Yes, that would be very true.

00:13:16.920 | He was for you the first exponent

00:13:20.520 | of the strong sense of God,

00:13:24.960 | the strong thinking about God's reality,

00:13:29.480 | and the strong perception

00:13:32.560 | of what a healthy relationship with God is like.

00:13:35.920 | >> Right.

00:13:36.760 | >> I'm not telling you anything you don't know.

00:13:40.360 | You wrote about that again and again,

00:13:44.080 | very clearly and strongly,

00:13:46.760 | and I thought rightly from every standpoint.

00:13:50.600 | And I was writing, and still I suppose from some,

00:13:55.600 | every now and then, I am writing still,

00:13:58.800 | things about the Puritans which are intended

00:14:02.800 | to highlight those particular Puritan virtues,

00:14:06.660 | which I learned from Owen, Baxter, Bunyan,

00:14:09.280 | and the rest of them.

00:14:10.120 | >> Would it be accurate to say

00:14:13.480 | that the pattern of pastoral theological life

00:14:18.480 | that you have developed for decades

00:14:23.920 | is profoundly, it seems to me,

00:14:27.360 | affected by the way Puritans live their lives?

00:14:30.240 | In other words, they were pastors,

00:14:32.560 | mostly not university professors.

00:14:35.680 | You have been a professor,

00:14:37.080 | but your writing ministry and your church ministry

00:14:42.080 | has seemed to be marked by a more pastoral bent than many.

00:14:47.200 | >> Well, as far as I'm concerned,

00:14:50.640 | the two things come together and bond.

00:14:55.380 | I mean, as a matter of history,

00:14:58.880 | those Puritans who worked in universities,

00:15:02.800 | and quite a number of them did for more or less time,

00:15:07.080 | they saw themselves in that situation as pastors.

00:15:12.080 | They preached, they catechized,

00:15:16.260 | they pastored the young men

00:15:18.560 | who were passing through their hands.

00:15:21.640 | It was understood in those days

00:15:23.840 | that a university tutor would do that.

00:15:26.500 | The gulf between academic theology

00:15:33.540 | and personal devotion didn't exist in those days.

00:15:38.540 | And it seems to me that that was a much healthier

00:15:43.020 | state of affairs than you can match

00:15:45.900 | in most universities nowadays.

00:15:48.480 | But certainly, that's how they saw their vocation.

00:15:53.480 | And I equally certainly, yes, well, it's true,

00:16:02.660 | I equally certainly, equally strongly

00:16:05.920 | have believed myself called to pastor,

00:16:10.920 | to shepherd, to guide folk as best I can

00:16:15.960 | in their relationship with God, in their service of God.

00:16:20.280 | And, well, that I suppose has a lot to do

00:16:25.840 | with what we were talking about,

00:16:27.220 | the fact that the Puritans pastored me at an early stage.

00:16:32.560 | But it's beyond, behind that and beneath that,

00:16:37.560 | it's rooted in the Bible.

00:16:41.220 | I mean, if you think of the apostles,

00:16:43.700 | think particularly of Paul, followed by John,

00:16:47.540 | and the para-apostles,

00:16:49.660 | people like the writer to the Hebrews,

00:16:51.960 | they were persons with tremendously strong minds.

00:16:59.700 | That, by the way, really does include the apostle John.

00:17:03.180 | He had a marvelously simple way of expressing

00:17:07.260 | the marvelously profound things that he has to communicate.

00:17:12.260 | Paul is more obviously, how can I say it,

00:17:20.020 | a very strong-minded man and a very articulate man.

00:17:25.580 | And, well, Hebrews the same.

00:17:29.680 | As far as I'm concerned, these things belong together.

00:17:34.680 | >> Yeah, the Bible running like a massive stream

00:17:40.200 | underneath your work and the Puritans.

00:17:48.520 | In 1978, you were happy to be a part

00:17:52.360 | of the battle for the Bible.

00:17:53.900 | You helped move beyond the battle for the Bible

00:17:56.880 | of the book by that title.

00:17:59.080 | It was about inerrancy.

00:18:01.040 | Here we are 30 some years later,

00:18:04.960 | and are you as equally committed

00:18:09.960 | to the doctrine of inerrancy today?

00:18:12.920 | And why should young people embrace,

00:18:17.920 | defend, minister out of a conviction like that?

00:18:24.120 | >> Well, first of all, as a matter of personal effect,

00:18:27.240 | yes, my commitment to the inerrancy of Scripture

00:18:30.640 | is as strong as ever it was.

00:18:34.880 | And the basis of it is a recognition

00:18:38.960 | that Scripture according to the Lord Jesus,

00:18:43.960 | there's no higher authority than he,

00:18:47.320 | Scripture according to the Lord Jesus

00:18:50.740 | is precisely the word of God,

00:18:53.860 | the word of his heavenly father,

00:18:55.660 | the word of authority to which he models obedience

00:19:00.660 | to show his disciples amongst other things,

00:19:04.940 | the way that they must go.

00:19:06.400 | And it seems to me as the years go by

00:19:12.740 | that the gulf between those who do

00:19:18.780 | and those who don't recognize the,

00:19:22.660 | what I would call if I'm left to choose my own phrase,

00:19:26.700 | the divinity of the Scriptures,

00:19:28.800 | the gulf is deeper than it was.

00:19:34.220 | I hoped that the result or one result

00:19:38.540 | of the public controversy about inerrancy

00:19:42.100 | during the late '70s and on

00:19:45.440 | would be that the hollowness,

00:19:48.880 | and I think that's the word that fits,

00:19:52.160 | the hollowness of liberal claims

00:19:56.960 | to insight and authority and spiritual things

00:20:00.920 | would appear and the next generation of liberals

00:20:04.680 | would quietly dissociate themselves from it

00:20:08.400 | so that they wouldn't need to be labeled liberals anymore.

00:20:12.840 | It hasn't been like that.

00:20:14.740 | And if I'm asked to diagnose what's happened,

00:20:18.740 | I would say, well, one thing that has happened

00:20:24.120 | is that the intellectual pride

00:20:27.920 | that produced liberalism in the first instance,

00:20:32.700 | challenging the Bible, you see,

00:20:34.880 | and professing, at least in their own hearts,

00:20:39.600 | these people did professing to be wiser than the Bible,

00:20:42.960 | that pride has strengthened its grip, I think,

00:20:50.520 | so that the non-inerrantists in the church

00:20:57.720 | are further from the truth and the wisdom

00:21:07.400 | that comes of acknowledging the divinity

00:21:09.640 | of the word of God than their predecessors were.

00:21:14.240 | Well, all right, sin in the world often wins victories,

00:21:20.640 | which one would have hoped they wouldn't win

00:21:24.200 | and one wouldn't have expected them to win,

00:21:26.400 | but I was telling another group of people only yesterday

00:21:30.960 | with as much emphasis as I could manage,

00:21:33.240 | Satan, who stands behind all the unbelief in the world,

00:21:38.240 | he is a very cunning operator,

00:21:41.800 | and, well, he doesn't give up.

00:21:47.960 | He devises new ways of establishing his grip

00:21:53.480 | in the lives of people whose positions are shown

00:21:58.400 | to be flimsy, intellectually flimsy, as they stand.

00:22:03.400 | Satan doesn't say, well, all right,

00:22:06.940 | then you'd better become orthodox again.

00:22:10.040 | Satan says, I've got a better idea for you

00:22:13.040 | along the line that you've been following,

00:22:17.480 | and the better, supposedly better idea emerges,

00:22:23.720 | and away they go.

00:22:26.200 | >> Within those who embrace the divinity,

00:22:31.200 | inerrancy of scripture,

00:22:34.800 | there emerge differences of the way they read it.

00:22:39.640 | Another theme through your writings is a love for,

00:22:47.200 | a defense of, an exposition of the doctrines of grace,

00:22:52.180 | as the Puritans probably would have called them

00:22:55.920 | as opposed to, say, the five points of Calvinism,

00:22:59.080 | but the question is very simply,

00:23:01.080 | if you take the gospel,

00:23:03.800 | and I'm thinking of 1 Corinthians 15,

00:23:06.180 | and you take the five points,

00:23:09.280 | soteriological, Calvinism, doctrines of grace,

00:23:13.500 | what's the relationship between those two?

00:23:16.560 | How do you like to describe the specificities

00:23:21.080 | of reformed theology over here

00:23:23.080 | in the center of the gospel?

00:23:27.120 | If that's even the correct way to set it up.

00:23:30.040 | >> Well, let others be the judge of that,

00:23:34.280 | but as far as I'm concerned,

00:23:38.120 | the five points of Calvinism are a secondary concern,

00:23:43.720 | not a primary one.

00:23:45.400 | They are the reformed answer to the five points

00:23:49.120 | of classical early 17th century Arminianism,

00:23:54.120 | and if there had never been an Arminian version

00:24:00.040 | of reformation theology,

00:24:04.560 | there never would have been five points at all,

00:24:07.960 | but there would have been the doctrines of grace,

00:24:10.720 | and that's the conception that I like to pursue

00:24:16.280 | and the category in terms of which I like to speak.

00:24:20.280 | >> So did you mean the doctrines of grace are secondary

00:24:24.160 | or the structure of the five points are secondary?

00:24:25.880 | >> Well, no, no, the five points are secondary.

00:24:28.180 | No, no, you have to talk, I think,

00:24:32.040 | about the doctrines of grace

00:24:34.000 | if you're going to talk about

00:24:35.560 | the teaching of scripture at all,

00:24:37.600 | or the teaching of Paul,

00:24:40.120 | or the teaching of the Lord Jesus.

00:24:45.760 | >> So they are definitions of the gospel,

00:24:50.040 | expansions of the gospel, elaborations,

00:24:52.840 | insights, elucidations.

00:24:55.160 | I'm thinking of Spurgeon who said

00:24:58.280 | his robust reformed theology,

00:25:01.420 | or maybe even Warfield, I think,

00:25:02.880 | said this is the gospel in its purest form.

00:25:06.360 | >> Well, that sounds like Warfield,

00:25:08.680 | but it's a sentiment that Spurgeon would have,

00:25:13.760 | well, did agree with 100%.

00:25:16.760 | >> Does Packer?

00:25:17.600 | >> Oh, yes, yes.

00:25:20.760 | Packer belongs to that tribe by the grace of God.

00:25:25.080 | I have nothing that I've not received,

00:25:29.360 | and I'm just profoundly thankful

00:25:31.640 | that God in his providence has led me this way

00:25:34.800 | 'cause this is the truth.

00:25:36.500 | And, well, ultimately, the quest for truth

00:25:42.880 | and its reality is what it's all about.

00:25:47.160 | >> So would another way to say it would be,

00:25:48.720 | and I don't want to go too far

00:25:50.680 | because we have brothers who don't agree with us

00:25:53.720 | about some of these things.

00:25:55.960 | Would it be fair to say that the proper elaboration

00:25:59.360 | of the doctrines of grace is good for the gospel?

00:26:03.360 | It is a deepening of the gospel,

00:26:05.520 | a preservation of the gospel, an advancement,

00:26:08.200 | not a distraction from the gospel?

00:26:10.760 | >> No, I would use the word elucidation, I think.

00:26:15.320 | And I would point to places, passages,

00:26:21.880 | in the New Testament where these doctrines

00:26:27.960 | are laid out and used in the course of pastoral exhortations

00:26:32.760 | and simply say, as indeed I think I've already said

00:26:37.280 | in one way, and now I will say in another,

00:26:40.320 | this is the scriptural path, which is all that concerns me.

00:26:45.320 | I want to go where the scriptures take me.

00:26:50.480 | Why?

00:26:51.560 | Because the teaching of scripture is the word of God,

00:26:56.120 | the truth of God, the gospel of God,

00:26:59.400 | and that's where I cast anchor.

00:27:03.120 | God has taught me that, and I stay with it.

00:27:06.000 | >> Amen.

00:27:07.400 | Another place where the scripture has seemed

00:27:09.960 | to take the church for the last, well,

00:27:13.120 | 2,000 years, I hope, but 500 years,

00:27:16.520 | concerning justification, about 15 years ago,

00:27:19.320 | a prominent New Testament scholar in America

00:27:21.920 | wrote a couple of articles in which he said,

00:27:24.760 | "The doctrine of the imputation of the righteousness

00:27:27.760 | "of Christ is not a New Testament doctrine.

00:27:31.680 | "Justification should be understood without,"

00:27:34.760 | more in terms of the forgiveness of sins,

00:27:37.280 | "not the positive imputation of the righteousness of Christ."

00:27:41.880 | In your own experience of the word

00:27:45.320 | and in your relationship with Christ,

00:27:48.940 | what's the place of that particular aspect

00:27:53.440 | of the doctrine of justification,

00:27:54.840 | namely the imputation of the righteousness of Christ?

00:27:58.600 | >> That's a very fair question,

00:28:02.480 | and I know that you're a committed man on that subject.

00:28:05.600 | You wrote against an English scholar

00:28:09.400 | whom I know quite well, as a matter of fact,

00:28:12.200 | to try and put the record straight,

00:28:14.640 | when in your estimate he had muddled it up a little.

00:28:19.200 | Seriously, now,

00:28:21.960 | I think the reality

00:28:28.280 | that we are called to elucidate,

00:28:34.320 | and indeed that the scriptures go ahead of us elucidating,

00:28:39.320 | the reality of salvation,

00:28:42.680 | if the question is asked,

00:28:43.920 | what sort of a reality is salvation?

00:28:46.760 | This is the answer.

00:28:47.900 | It is union with the risen Christ

00:28:52.280 | in the life that is his,

00:28:55.400 | and that he, through the Holy Spirit, communicates to us

00:29:02.680 | so that we are one with him in terms of union of life,

00:29:07.680 | even though, of course, we remain distinct from him

00:29:12.680 | in terms of personal identity.

00:29:16.480 | But union with Christ is the central category

00:29:23.820 | for apostolic thinking, it seems to me,

00:29:28.160 | about the substance, the reality of the salvation

00:29:33.160 | that is ours when we put faith in Christ.

00:29:37.360 | This is Paul and this is John,

00:29:40.720 | and this is where, I think, Peter points

00:29:46.800 | in both his letters,

00:29:49.000 | although he's not so explicit as Paul and John.

00:29:53.240 | Never mind, he's pointing in the same direction

00:29:56.160 | and he's on the same wavelength.

00:29:58.560 | Well, now, within that relationship,

00:30:03.560 | the language of the imputing of righteousness,

00:30:10.880 | which is Paul's phrase in Romans 4,

00:30:15.640 | that language is very properly extended.

00:30:22.800 | Now, I think one has to say this is going a little beyond

00:30:26.920 | what any particular New Testament phrase does,

00:30:31.240 | but it's entirely on wavelength

00:30:36.600 | with the New Testament phraseology.

00:30:39.000 | It's a slight extension of what Paul says

00:30:43.480 | about God imputing righteousness,

00:30:47.000 | to say, "And the righteousness imputed

00:30:50.360 | "is the righteousness of Christ."

00:30:52.480 | What does that mean?

00:30:54.000 | It means that God judges us as he sees us in Christ.

00:30:59.000 | It means that Christ, in a real substantial sense,

00:31:06.180 | by virtue of our union with him,

00:31:11.520 | casts his, I have to be pictorial here,

00:31:18.880 | I don't know any other way of saying it,

00:31:22.280 | casts his righteousness, his status, that is,

00:31:27.280 | as the one who has perfectly done the will of God,

00:31:31.520 | pleased God, and so is accepted by God,

00:31:35.480 | he casts that status over us like,

00:31:40.280 | what shall I say, a cloak, McIntosh, if you like,

00:31:46.200 | covering us and shielding us

00:31:50.320 | from what would otherwise be ours,

00:31:52.920 | namely the clash between our sinfulness,

00:31:57.120 | which, well, it is sinfulness,

00:32:01.000 | as well as a track record of sins.

00:32:03.760 | The sins are the fruits of the sinfulness.

00:32:07.600 | Satan is seen to it, that sinfulness

00:32:11.080 | runs right through our system as children of Adam and Eve.

00:32:16.320 | But no, we are accounted righteous in Christ

00:32:21.320 | because of what Christ is, has been,

00:32:31.320 | continues to be, the righteous one.

00:32:34.600 | And the Father sees us in that way.

00:32:42.880 | And this is our fundamental identity

00:32:47.800 | as new creatures in Christ.

00:32:49.800 | So I would say, indeed I often have said,

00:32:56.720 | and Douglas will say again,

00:32:59.240 | that though the imputing of Christ's righteousness

00:33:04.720 | isn't a scriptural phrase, it's a scriptural thought

00:33:09.880 | and a very fundamental scriptural thought.

00:33:13.000 | And I wouldn't, therefore, want to discourage

00:33:19.240 | reformed people from using it simply on the grounds

00:33:23.720 | that it isn't exactly a New Testament thought,

00:33:27.800 | which I don't think it is, as I said.

00:33:31.120 | The substance of it, the substance of the meaning

00:33:35.260 | is 100% New Testament.

00:33:38.720 | And when we talk about our life in Christ,

00:33:43.720 | well, the first thing we have to talk about

00:33:50.920 | is the standing, the status, the position

00:33:55.920 | in relation to Christ and the Father.

00:34:01.560 | We're united with Christ, and so we are welcomed

00:34:05.060 | by the Father in Christ.

00:34:08.060 | We have to understand that that phrase,

00:34:10.680 | that little phrase which we so often pass over

00:34:14.080 | and so rarely explain in the pulpit or in books

00:34:17.240 | or anything, the phrase in Christ,

00:34:20.440 | that's a phrase of tremendously weighty meaning,

00:34:23.840 | saying everything about justification

00:34:27.440 | and everything, actually, about sanctification.

00:34:29.680 | >> Exactly, which is the next,

00:34:31.400 | so I want to just keep you going by sharpening it.

00:34:35.120 | You have written about holiness a lot.

00:34:38.140 | >> Yes, it's true. >> You care

00:34:39.620 | about personal holiness and corporate holiness,

00:34:42.980 | and your book, "Keep in Step with the Spirit,"

00:34:45.580 | was a profoundly helpful book to me.

00:34:48.500 | So here's my simple question to keep us going

00:34:50.900 | from justification, rootedness in Christ,

00:34:53.900 | identity in Christ, to walking by the Spirit.

00:34:58.600 | That's a biblical phrase, walk by the Spirit.

00:35:00.980 | Now, that's a very paradoxical phrase,

00:35:02.940 | or Owen, on put to death the deeds of the body

00:35:05.600 | by the Spirit. >> Yes.

00:35:08.080 | >> So how does a human being

00:35:11.360 | act with his will

00:35:15.000 | in such a way that it can be said,

00:35:19.360 | the Holy Spirit has acted?

00:35:21.400 | 'Cause I assume that's what walk by the Spirit

00:35:23.840 | or put to death the deeds of the body by the Spirit means.

00:35:27.520 | There's something I do, and yet it is not I,

00:35:30.120 | but Christ, or something.

00:35:32.080 | So can you just describe the dynamics,

00:35:34.540 | and I mean as practically and as personally as you can,

00:35:37.820 | 'cause I personally find it strange language

00:35:40.740 | that I have to adapt to, it's biblical language,

00:35:43.620 | for me to act by the Spirit or walk by the Spirit.

00:35:48.620 | What does that look like?

00:35:51.380 | How do you do that?

00:35:52.500 | >> Well, the starting point as far as I'm concerned

00:36:00.480 | is where we were in the last paragraph of Packer

00:36:05.480 | that you pulled out of me.

00:36:07.520 | The starting point is the relation

00:36:11.460 | that the apostles express in the phrase, in Christ.

00:36:16.460 | It's a relation of union without identity

00:36:23.900 | in the sense of one person being absorbed into the other.

00:36:30.120 | It's a relation actually in which the human partner

00:36:35.120 | becomes more fully a person than ever he or she was before,

00:36:42.880 | because that's one of the things

00:36:45.680 | that resurrection life in Christ

00:36:48.540 | and the gift of the Holy Spirit working within us

00:36:52.140 | brings about.

00:36:55.140 | And there isn't to my mind any obvious analogy

00:37:00.140 | that one can use to express it.

00:37:03.760 | One simply has to talk all the time

00:37:06.560 | about two things between which one moves,

00:37:11.040 | on which one brings the changes,

00:37:16.480 | but of which both are vital and central.

00:37:21.660 | One is the discipleship relation,

00:37:26.580 | which we learn about from the gospels

00:37:31.360 | where we are shown how Jesus started

00:37:36.260 | the discipleship relation going with his 12.

00:37:40.260 | And the other aspect of the matter

00:37:44.880 | is that the vital energy which operates

00:37:50.380 | within the person who is following Christ

00:37:55.380 | through specifics, through the Holy Spirit,

00:38:01.200 | this energy is, it's the energy of Christ's risen life

00:38:08.740 | in us and through us.

00:38:11.740 | And that energy is mediated by the Holy Spirit

00:38:17.920 | who indwells us.

00:38:19.260 | When I'm teaching the Trinity,

00:38:24.240 | again and again I find myself talking about the Holy Spirit

00:38:29.660 | as the executive agent that brings about

00:38:34.180 | first of all the relationship in Christ,

00:38:39.940 | with Christ, with the Father, through the Son.

00:38:45.300 | You need all those pronouns in order to get it right.

00:38:48.200 | And I talk of him as the executive agent of the Godhead.

00:38:55.440 | I stress that everything in creation, in providence,

00:39:04.480 | in grace comes to us from the Father through the Son.

00:39:09.040 | And then I add by the agency recognized

00:39:14.400 | or unrecognized, specified or unspecified,

00:39:18.520 | but nonetheless really energy that's really there,

00:39:23.000 | the energy of the Holy Spirit.

00:39:25.000 | >> So my question-- >> The Trinity,

00:39:26.400 | the three persons of the Trinity,

00:39:28.400 | they're always together.

00:39:30.200 | None of them ever act separately.

00:39:32.360 | >> Right, so are there things I do

00:39:36.240 | that engage that executive influence?

00:39:42.520 | You know, this walk by the Spirit,

00:39:44.840 | that's an imperative to me.

00:39:46.560 | You walk by that agency.

00:39:49.480 | Very practically, if I get up in the morning,

00:39:53.440 | what do I do to do that?

00:39:58.000 | 'Cause I'm supposed to obey that command.

00:39:59.800 | Walk by that agency, by that executive power.

00:40:04.000 | I don't have, he's sovereign, I'm not God,

00:40:06.080 | I don't make him do things, and yet.

00:40:09.560 | >> Well look, I was trying to say,

00:40:13.200 | and I think I have to try again,

00:40:15.640 | simply because this is a way of thinking

00:40:21.120 | that runs all through the New Testament

00:40:24.400 | and which we miss.

00:40:27.320 | I mean, some things are so big and so clear

00:40:32.400 | that we overlook them.

00:40:34.020 | I regularly illustrate this from the letters

00:40:38.600 | Pacific Ocean on a map of all that water

00:40:43.600 | between Asia and America.

00:40:48.600 | We look at the map and we see the names

00:40:54.440 | of dozens of islands.

00:40:56.160 | It's a big map and all the islands are there.

00:40:59.280 | And while we're focusing on those details,

00:41:01.920 | we miss the big words Pacific Ocean.

00:41:05.720 | And when it's a matter of walking in the spirit,

00:41:10.120 | by doing things by the spirit,

00:41:13.720 | putting the deeds of the body,

00:41:15.680 | that is the habits, the bad habits,

00:41:20.560 | of our sinful system, that's how I like to explain it,

00:41:25.080 | or verbalize it, putting the bad habits

00:41:28.160 | of our sinful system to death,

00:41:31.520 | that is draining the life out of them

00:41:33.660 | so that they don't operate anymore.

00:41:36.000 | When that's what we're talking about,

00:41:38.040 | well, what's involved is knowledge

00:41:43.040 | of what we ought to do, dependence.

00:41:51.920 | I don't think, frankly, that by and large

00:41:57.940 | in our evangelical teaching these days,

00:42:01.520 | we make enough of the truth that we really

00:42:05.060 | are dependent on God, God the Holy Spirit,

00:42:08.540 | quite specifically, to enable us to do anything right,

00:42:13.540 | which we do right.

00:42:16.960 | The, how can I say it?

00:42:25.140 | The way to proceed, it seems, seems to me,

00:42:31.240 | is to look to the Lord and tell him,

00:42:34.240 | in effect, all of this depends on you.

00:42:39.740 | I can't do it, I can't break a sinful habit,

00:42:44.440 | I can't form a new pattern of obedience without your help.

00:42:51.200 | And having thus prayed and made it clear

00:42:56.360 | that it all depends on God, then it's up to us

00:43:01.300 | to make plans and procedure, devise procedures,

00:43:06.300 | decide what we're going to do as if it all depends on us.

00:43:14.680 | We are used, I think, in some other places

00:43:20.620 | in our discipleship and our theology,

00:43:23.600 | to the thought that we pray,

00:43:26.620 | acknowledging that it all depends on God,

00:43:29.740 | and then proceed as if it all depends on us.

00:43:33.820 | >> That's what I remember from the book,

00:43:36.500 | is that there's a dependence, you say,

00:43:40.100 | without you I can do nothing, and then you turn

00:43:42.580 | and you get out of bed, you open your Bible,

00:43:45.620 | you turn off the television, you don't click

00:43:48.560 | on the computer, you do things, but you've said,

00:43:52.980 | fundamentally, I cannot do this.

00:43:57.980 | >> And when you've, well, I mean, you're saying it

00:44:02.060 | absolutely the way that I wish everybody would say it,

00:44:06.540 | and certainly the way that I try to say it.

00:44:10.140 | And then the last bit, I think,

00:44:13.260 | ought to be put into the pattern,

00:44:15.300 | when we recognize that in measure, at any rate,

00:44:19.840 | we've done it, we just say, thank you,

00:44:24.720 | Heavenly Father, for enabling us to do it.

00:44:28.280 | Say, Father, well, it was the Holy Spirit.

00:44:30.840 | This is an area of reality in which the action

00:44:37.000 | of the Spirit doesn't impede, indeed,

00:44:40.520 | it strengthens and animates our action.

00:44:47.380 | But we don't think of our action as, in any way,

00:44:52.380 | self-generated or self-sustained.

00:44:57.140 | We know very well that the things we do that are right

00:45:01.940 | have been done by the Spirit,

00:45:05.800 | because we were walking by the Spirit,

00:45:10.100 | and they wouldn't have been done otherwise.

00:45:12.900 | And so we certainly feel that we are doing it.

00:45:17.900 | We know we are.

00:45:19.700 | But at the same time, we know by faith

00:45:22.020 | we're being enabled to do it.

00:45:24.340 | We started in asking to be enabled,

00:45:27.020 | and we shall finish by saying, thank you, Lord,

00:45:29.580 | for enabling me. >> That's very helpful.

00:45:30.660 | Very helpful.

00:45:31.620 | Let me take you in a new direction.

00:45:32.820 | I've not heard anybody ask you this,

00:45:34.740 | and what, two, three days ago,

00:45:37.960 | there was a earthquake in Nepal,

00:45:41.900 | I think about 2,500 people have died.

00:45:45.580 | So you and I are lovers of people

00:45:50.580 | and lovers of the sovereignty of God.

00:45:53.380 | How do you articulate God's role in that earthquake?

00:45:59.300 | >> I go right back to the beginning and say,

00:46:09.100 | with all due respect to Christians who think otherwise,

00:46:13.120 | I don't believe this world was ever intended

00:46:19.780 | to be our final dwelling place.

00:46:22.320 | I believe that it was always God's intention

00:46:28.340 | that His human creatures,

00:46:30.500 | having been tested and disciplined

00:46:35.420 | and so drilled into full-scale godliness in this world,

00:46:40.420 | would be taken, like Enoch was taken,

00:46:48.780 | into a world beyond.

00:46:53.900 | I applaud the title of a sermon

00:47:00.660 | that Martin Lloyd-Jones preached

00:47:02.720 | and that was published and circulated widely as a tract,

00:47:06.360 | titled, and you can see from the title

00:47:08.800 | that all of this was being expressed in the sermon, it was,

00:47:13.360 | the title was God's Preparatory School.

00:47:16.980 | That was how Martin Lloyd-Jones was urging us all

00:47:24.720 | to understand our present life.

00:47:26.860 | Now, this world has been messed up

00:47:30.320 | as a result of sin in a way in which it wouldn't have been

00:47:35.320 | had sin not happened.

00:47:38.360 | And it's beyond me to say

00:47:42.960 | whether there would have been the tests

00:47:48.840 | of living through earthquakes

00:47:51.000 | in a world where sin had not entered

00:47:55.940 | in the way that there is now,

00:47:59.120 | in the world as it is.

00:48:00.760 | I believe that all these circumstances,

00:48:08.840 | however drastic and traumatic,

00:48:12.400 | are in fact to be understood by believers

00:48:17.920 | as so many tests in which we practice faithfulness

00:48:22.920 | to our God and experience God sustaining us

00:48:27.600 | and carrying us through.

00:48:29.520 | And when these cosmic traumas

00:48:35.520 | bring about an early death, well,

00:48:39.300 | that now is God's will for the person who,

00:48:44.300 | or the persons who undergo that death.

00:48:47.560 | And we can only say,

00:48:50.520 | God remains in charge and he knows what he's doing.

00:48:55.240 | And if you ask me to cache that belief

00:48:59.120 | in terms of geology and physics,

00:49:02.840 | well, I can't do it.

00:49:04.040 | I mean, tectonic plates--

00:49:05.960 | >> No, I wasn't asking that.

00:49:06.800 | >> Or tectonic plates and so on.

00:49:08.840 | There are so many things in life

00:49:11.720 | where you have that problem.

00:49:15.840 | I mean, you have a physical order of things,

00:49:22.940 | which it seems has always been out of man's control.

00:49:27.220 | It's an order of things which now in this sinful world

00:49:33.680 | is used by God over and over as retributive judgment.

00:49:41.380 | I'm thinking here, and this is just one thing,

00:49:49.900 | there are thousands that one could bring in,

00:49:52.340 | but I'm thinking of the way that Berlin

00:49:56.780 | got ruined and wrecked in the last days

00:50:00.500 | of the Second World War.

00:50:01.980 | When Russia from one side and the Allies from the other side

00:50:08.300 | they advanced on Berlin,

00:50:13.020 | and just because of everything that was centered in Berlin,

00:50:20.420 | they messed up Berlin real good,

00:50:23.300 | if one may put it that way.

00:50:24.960 | I'm sure that there were German believers in Berlin

00:50:34.100 | who lived through it, and all they could say is,

00:50:37.740 | well, God has done it, and they may have added,

00:50:42.380 | I'm beginning to suspect that we all deserved it.

00:50:48.820 | And if, for instance, we continue in industrial life

00:50:53.820 | in a way that actually does produce major global warming

00:51:01.020 | in the way that they're warning us it might,

00:51:03.660 | well, that will mean certainly more storms,

00:51:11.060 | more natural disasters, more violence in the natural order,

00:51:18.740 | and there'll come a time when we shall have to whisper

00:51:22.460 | to ourselves, well, we brought it on ourselves,

00:51:26.340 | and in that sense we must accept responsibility for it.

00:51:31.280 | But it's still under God's sovereignty,

00:51:35.180 | and the bottom line for every believer then,

00:51:38.940 | like the bottom line for every believer now must be,

00:51:41.860 | Lord, you know what you're doing, what you do is right.

00:51:46.300 | If I fully understood it, I should see that.

00:51:50.100 | I don't fully understand it, so I walk by faith

00:51:54.660 | in your goodness and your wisdom, and step by step

00:51:59.060 | I seek to please you, starting, as it were, from now.

00:52:03.700 | >> Just a brief-- >> You can't go further

00:52:05.500 | than that. >> A brief clarification.

00:52:07.340 | It may be the most controversial thing anybody would say

00:52:09.680 | you've said so far is the belief that we were not intended

00:52:14.820 | to live our eternity on this earth.

00:52:17.340 | Relate that to the teachings of the new heavens

00:52:19.880 | and the new earth in Revelation or in Isaiah 65.

00:52:24.280 | When you foresee, when you see a million years

00:52:28.940 | and all of history is over, where are we?

00:52:31.940 | >> Well, now, this is a matter under--

00:52:37.460 | >> Not too long now. >> No, no, but I must begin

00:52:41.580 | by saying this is a matter under discussion.

00:52:44.140 | >> Yes, I just want to know Packer.

00:52:45.860 | >> Yes, learn, yes, all right.

00:52:47.980 | But there are learned men of evangelical persuasion,

00:52:52.380 | Bible believers, Bible lovers, taking different positions

00:52:57.120 | on this one, and I can't guarantee,

00:52:59.320 | this is what I wanted to say, I can't guarantee

00:53:02.900 | that I am properly wised up on the matter as yet.

00:53:07.900 | I don't know whether I know enough,

00:53:11.460 | and that's what I would prefer to tell the world

00:53:16.460 | rather than to pontificate on one side or other

00:53:20.700 | of this question, but now, I think the thing

00:53:24.340 | that is certain from scripture,

00:53:27.060 | and that one way or another, both brands

00:53:33.380 | of evangelical scholars are trying to catch hold of

00:53:38.900 | at the same time, is that in some form,

00:53:41.620 | there will be continuity.

00:53:44.340 | >> Okay.

00:53:45.420 | >> And having said that, I want to go on and say,

00:53:50.420 | I certainly believe that in all sorts of ways,

00:53:59.680 | it will be an enormously different order of things

00:54:05.740 | from that which we know now.

00:54:09.500 | But then, putting my weight on the other foot, you see,

00:54:13.900 | I want to say that I am equally sure

00:54:16.860 | that in all sorts of ways, there will be perceived

00:54:21.860 | continuity, we shall never forget what this world was like,

00:54:26.980 | and we shall never forget our walk through it

00:54:31.060 | before we came to whatever is our final place of abode.

00:54:36.060 | And what I can't say, though, is how we shall remember

00:54:46.700 | the past when things are so different in the present.

00:54:52.420 | Now, that's a formula.

00:54:58.420 | I can't catch the formula, I'm not wise enough,

00:55:01.460 | I don't know enough, the Bible doesn't tell me enough.

00:55:04.700 | But I think that that is clearly, yes, clearly,

00:55:09.700 | what we are intended to learn from Revelation 20 and 21,

00:55:18.500 | well, 20, 21, 22, it's all three chapters.

00:55:21.940 | >> Thank you.

00:55:22.780 | >> That is enough for you.

00:55:25.740 | >> It is enough, continuity is--

00:55:27.420 | >> How curious.

00:55:28.260 | >> Continuity and discontinuity is pretty much all I,

00:55:30.940 | that's all I know, too.

00:55:33.100 | We go, we're almost done, we're almost done,

00:55:36.500 | but I have one or two more.

00:55:39.020 | One of the most painful issues today,

00:55:45.020 | and you have been significantly involved in it,

00:55:48.700 | is homosexuality.

00:55:51.060 | You took a stand that implied,

00:55:56.660 | and pretty explicitly stated, to bless a union,

00:56:01.260 | an ordination of a union, or just to bless,

00:56:05.620 | or celebrate, or embrace an active homosexual partnership

00:56:10.620 | was a gospel issue.

00:56:14.620 | As I read your article in Christianity Today,

00:56:17.180 | you connected it.

00:56:19.660 | So, things have intensified since then,

00:56:23.660 | and we are in a more aggressive situation

00:56:27.740 | of being asked to embrace, and celebrate, and endorse.

00:56:32.740 | How should we think about the importance of that issue

00:56:39.060 | and its relation to the gospel?

00:56:40.660 | >> Well, this is a hot potato, just as you were implying.

00:56:51.780 | And, though I have taken a pretty forthright stand

00:56:56.780 | in black and white, shall I say,

00:57:03.700 | you affirm that, you're quite right, indeed I have.

00:57:07.700 | I was put in a situation where I was forced to do that,

00:57:12.980 | because I was in an ecclesiastical structure

00:57:18.620 | that, in my estimate, was being led into major sin

00:57:23.620 | by totally disregarding what the Bible says so clearly

00:57:28.940 | about homosexual behavior.

00:57:34.780 | And, well, in any situation of controversy,

00:57:41.780 | you have to speak as strongly as upholding the truth requires

00:57:48.340 | which may mean that you speak so strongly

00:57:51.060 | that you appear to be, how can I say it,

00:57:56.060 | to give more weight to the issue

00:58:00.180 | than in your own personal, pastoral, devotional ministry

00:58:05.020 | you actually do.

00:58:06.140 | I'm not sure that I was led into doing that, in fact.

00:58:15.800 | I do think that the issue is fundamental,

00:58:20.120 | and having spoken that preamble,

00:58:25.120 | I'll now try and answer your question and tell you just how.

00:58:29.660 | It seems to me that the procreation

00:58:37.860 | and continuance of the race

00:58:43.720 | was clearly the will of the creator

00:58:46.640 | when he made the first couple,

00:58:49.360 | made the world for them to live in.

00:58:51.960 | And homosexual sex, whatever else one may say about it,

00:58:58.000 | doesn't do that.

00:59:01.240 | It misdirects the order of creation

00:59:06.240 | in a fundamental way.

00:59:13.600 | Then, well, both Testaments,

00:59:18.600 | the whole Bible, I was going to say,

00:59:21.640 | is categorical, black and white,

00:59:26.700 | in its condemnation of homosexual behavior.

00:59:32.240 | And in the Old Testament, of course,

00:59:34.200 | where the fundamentals of right and wrong are being taught,

00:59:42.200 | in the Pentateuch, anyway,

00:59:44.480 | where the people of God are given the law

00:59:47.200 | and led into the promised land.

00:59:48.960 | Well, in the Pentateuch,

00:59:52.120 | homosexual behavior merits the death penalty.

00:59:55.800 | And I know that that is tough,

00:59:59.360 | 'cause in the first days of teaching the law,

01:00:05.480 | the penalties were very heavy.

01:00:12.160 | Penalties for things that would always be wrong,

01:00:15.880 | but they were very heavy penalties.

01:00:18.440 | And that partly, I'm sure,

01:00:21.080 | was God teaching his people

01:00:24.880 | to have a conscience about things

01:00:27.420 | which the world around them didn't have a conscience about,

01:00:31.000 | and which they wouldn't have had a conscience about

01:00:33.200 | had he not shot them, shaken them,

01:00:36.440 | by insisting that in the fellowship of Israel,

01:00:41.440 | this behavior is intolerable.

01:00:45.880 | I will not have it.

01:00:48.000 | Well, I think that that is a fact

01:00:54.600 | directly connected with God's purpose for sex

01:01:01.920 | and the procreation of the race.

01:01:04.980 | I am talking about procreation incidentally

01:01:09.980 | with a consciousness that too much discussion

01:01:15.340 | about sex these days

01:01:18.460 | never gets around to discussing procreation.

01:01:21.300 | God's wise plan was procreation with pleasure.

01:01:28.020 | But the context of the pleasure

01:01:32.020 | is intended to be the purpose of procreation.

01:01:35.500 | At this point, I think the Catholic tradition has it right,

01:01:41.540 | and in the separation of procreation and pleasure

01:01:47.500 | and focusing exclusively on pleasure,

01:01:50.300 | a great deal of Protestant thinking

01:01:54.100 | about sex, gender, marriage, and so on has it wrong.

01:02:00.840 | I would have to defend that, I know, in discussion.

01:02:03.920 | But that's something I would be willing to do

01:02:08.220 | because I think it's clear

01:02:10.820 | from the foundational books of Scripture.

01:02:14.580 | Pentateuch were all the foundations of everything are laid.

01:02:19.940 | >> Moving it towards the gospel.

01:02:26.220 | >> Yes.

01:02:28.540 | Well, the gospel message and the gospel grace

01:02:33.540 | is intended to lead sinful human beings

01:02:40.540 | through the practice of discipleship

01:02:47.640 | and the powerful action of the Holy Spirit

01:02:52.220 | enabling us to do things right

01:02:56.980 | that we've been doing wrong before.

01:02:59.080 | It's intended to bring us into the moral

01:03:05.480 | and spiritual image of Jesus our Lord.

01:03:10.180 | Christlikeness isn't primarily physical.

01:03:13.120 | It's primarily personal.

01:03:16.140 | It has to do with character.

01:03:18.660 | It has to do with outlook.

01:03:20.240 | It has to do with mindset.

01:03:23.060 | It has to do with the practice of love

01:03:25.980 | in all relationships.

01:03:27.540 | Well, love and justice and wisdom.

01:03:31.200 | All right, well, if that is so, and I believe it is,

01:03:37.360 | sanctioning homosexual behavior

01:03:41.420 | obstructs, counters, and messes up

01:03:47.660 | the work of sanctification.

01:03:49.900 | And when we're told in debate

01:03:56.100 | that some people who practice homosexual relationship

01:04:01.100 | are ever so Christlike in this, that, and the other way,

01:04:08.220 | it's a confusion.

01:04:09.440 | Just as one has to speak strongly

01:04:15.620 | when one's up against radical error

01:04:20.020 | and asked to sanction it,

01:04:23.620 | so one has to speak strongly

01:04:26.660 | when one's confronted with confusion

01:04:29.180 | and needs to sort out lines of thought

01:04:33.860 | that have got tangled.

01:04:34.940 | That's what I think we've got here.

01:04:38.100 | Well, the gospel has to do with

01:04:45.300 | the whole process that's involved

01:04:51.560 | in finding sinners,

01:04:54.340 | restoring them to fellowship with God

01:04:57.220 | from whom they've, on Him they've turned their backs,

01:05:00.780 | and renewing them in the image of Christ.

01:05:04.080 | At this point, any sanctioning of homosexual behavior,

01:05:09.080 | any attempt to fit homosexual behavior in any form

01:05:14.940 | into the pattern of Christian discipleship

01:05:19.000 | is, seems to me, very radical confusion.

01:05:23.200 | And the warrant for that would be

01:05:26.440 | First Corinthians 6, 9, and 10.

01:05:29.240 | Yes, those are the verses on which I lay more emphasis

01:05:32.600 | than any others,

01:05:34.000 | although Romans chapter one in the middle

01:05:37.960 | comes pretty close.

01:05:40.880 | But yes, the apostolic witness against homosexual behavior

01:05:47.160 | is absolutely categorical and strong.

01:05:50.720 | And there in First Corinthians 6, 9, and 10,

01:05:54.280 | Paul says, "If you embrace it,

01:05:57.480 | "you must expect it to keep you out of the kingdom

01:06:02.040 | "because you're negating the gospel."

01:06:04.480 | So the, yeah, so the,

01:06:06.360 | what I was impressed with is--

01:06:07.200 | The gospel's a unity, and this is--

01:06:09.800 | The gospel is designed at enormous price

01:06:13.760 | to get people into the kingdom.

01:06:16.240 | The apostles say this one--

01:06:18.240 | And out of sin.

01:06:19.080 | And the others, greed, embracing greed

01:06:21.200 | and embracing idolatry will keep you out of the kingdom.

01:06:23.760 | Therefore, to try to be a gospel person

01:06:27.400 | and a person embracing this sin are impossible.

01:06:31.920 | Yes, impossible, incompatible.

01:06:35.800 | And in our current culture,

01:06:39.200 | that needs to be shouted from the housetops

01:06:42.600 | because of the confusion about it,

01:06:45.160 | which infects our culture.

01:06:47.520 | And shouting it from the housetops will be very costly.

01:06:50.920 | Let me--

01:06:51.760 | Well, yes, and of course prudence,

01:06:55.440 | I mean, saying things in the way best calculated

01:06:58.280 | to get them hearing is also part of the equation here.

01:07:02.200 | And when I talk about shouting from the housetops,

01:07:05.600 | there's a way in which you could understand that phrase,

01:07:09.120 | which I wouldn't.

01:07:10.960 | I cannot picture J.I. Packer standing on a housetop

01:07:13.880 | shouting, but I can hear you saying pointed,

01:07:17.320 | appropriate, well-timed, powerful things as you just--

01:07:20.560 | Well, it's engaging people's minds

01:07:23.040 | and keeping them engaged while you make your points.

01:07:26.400 | Let me close with this question.

01:07:28.360 | You and I are old by standards of our culture.

01:07:34.200 | You, a little older.

01:07:36.120 | By any standards.

01:07:38.680 | Okay, that's true.

01:07:40.360 | Seven, three score, and then by reason of strength,

01:07:45.360 | seven, and that's where I am.

01:07:49.400 | And you just outstripped it all.

01:07:51.600 | Yes.

01:07:52.440 | You have, along with the Puritans,

01:07:57.560 | drawn our attention to the beauties of Christ,

01:08:01.520 | the beauties of his salvation, the glories of God.

01:08:06.480 | As you contemplate seeing him remarkably soon,

01:08:11.480 | what aspects of his person, character,

01:08:18.760 | are strengthening, bringing peace, joy to you now?

01:08:24.400 | What a good question.

01:08:32.320 | Goes right to the heart and to the depths of the heart.

01:08:36.680 | Yes.

01:08:38.160 | Well, let me answer it as best I can.

01:08:42.000 | I don't think of the Lord in terms of anything physical

01:08:49.920 | because I know that at that level, I can't focus him.

01:08:56.560 | It's beyond me.

01:08:59.520 | I think, try to keep thinking,

01:09:06.280 | of his wisdom.

01:09:08.840 | Wisdom means a great deal to me.

01:09:12.080 | His wisdom in seeing to the heart

01:09:17.080 | of those, everyone, with whom he's engaged.

01:09:24.280 | Speaking to the heart,

01:09:27.040 | often introducing the person with whom he's engaged

01:09:34.240 | to him or herself in a way

01:09:36.840 | that they never yet have met themselves.

01:09:39.240 | Like the rich young ruler, for instance,

01:09:42.840 | who thought he was a good chap

01:09:44.440 | until the Lord Jesus brought him,

01:09:47.240 | well, really brought him down in flames at that point.

01:09:50.720 | Made him realize that discipleship

01:09:55.760 | is what it's supposed to be about

01:09:58.720 | and discipleship is something which, at heart level,

01:10:02.440 | he hadn't begun.

01:10:04.440 | Well, I think of the Lord Jesus

01:10:09.440 | as the searcher of my heart.

01:10:11.680 | And whatever he, how do I say it, without seeming flip,

01:10:18.720 | whatever he looks like when I see him face to face,

01:10:28.920 | what I shall still, I think, value most,

01:10:33.920 | focus on most directly,

01:10:38.360 | take most interest in, dare I say it that way?

01:10:45.160 | Yes, I think so, is that he knows me through and through.

01:10:50.000 | He knows my heart.

01:10:51.880 | And just as it's humbling,

01:10:59.320 | to know that you can't hide anything from him,

01:11:02.520 | it's very salutary to know that.

01:11:04.920 | And I hope that the awareness

01:11:11.600 | that he is the searcher of my heart

01:11:17.480 | will keep me, dare I say, humble.

01:11:21.600 | No, if you venture to claim humility

01:11:27.280 | in any shape or form, the ax falls.

01:11:32.280 | >> Yes, you may pursue it.

01:11:35.440 | >> Yes, pursue it, yes, thank you, that's helpful.

01:11:39.320 | I pursue it, but no, the Lord knows me better

01:11:45.880 | than I know myself still,

01:11:50.120 | although I think that through his ministry to me,

01:11:55.480 | I now know myself a great deal better than I did.

01:11:58.960 | What shall I say?

01:12:01.560 | Well, it is actually 70 years ago when it started,

01:12:06.200 | and then I have known myself various points of the past.

01:12:11.200 | That's the best answer I can give you,

01:12:15.760 | and if it doesn't sound exciting, well, I'm sorry,

01:12:19.600 | I can't be exciting about the Lord searching my heart.

01:12:25.240 | I just tell you that as far as I'm concerned

01:12:28.840 | is central to what it's all about, 'cause he's changing me.

01:12:32.560 | >> In Psalm 92, at the end, there is a word to old people.

01:12:37.560 | The righteous will bear fruit in old age.

01:12:47.080 | They will remain, be full of sap and green

01:12:52.360 | to testify that the Lord is upright.

01:12:57.200 | So I wanna close by thanking you for 70 years plus

01:13:03.200 | of declaring that the Lord is good, the Lord is sovereign,

01:13:09.440 | the Lord is sufficient, the Lord is beautiful,

01:13:13.940 | the Lord is the searcher of our hearts,

01:13:16.200 | and that the Lord is upright.

01:13:18.640 | You've been a faithful witness,

01:13:20.800 | and we thank God for it.

01:13:24.100 | >> Thank you for the kindness with which you say that.

01:13:29.720 | Yes, I was reading Psalm 92 only two days ago,

01:13:36.400 | or was it three, very recently anyway,

01:13:39.720 | and finding much encouragement, actually,

01:13:44.720 | in those very words that you quoted.

01:13:48.040 | >> Thank you.

01:13:49.120 | I've enjoyed our conversation,

01:13:51.600 | and if you've enjoyed it too,

01:13:54.560 | well, let us praise the Lord together.

01:13:57.260 | >> Father, thank you for Dr. J.I. Packer,

01:14:03.160 | and the manifest delight he has in you,

01:14:06.680 | your ways, your work, even your humbling searching

01:14:11.680 | of his and our hearts.

01:14:16.240 | Bless his remaining days.

01:14:19.720 | Fill him with energy, health, wisdom, insight,

01:14:24.720 | love, joy, hope, and use him mightily

01:14:30.360 | as you have in the past, I pray in Jesus' name, amen.

01:14:34.720 | >> Amen.

01:14:35.560 | And I would pray that John Piper's ministry,

01:14:42.920 | which you have made so rich and honored so widely

01:14:47.920 | in so many good ways,

01:14:50.480 | may continue, continue in strength for many years yet

01:14:56.680 | as he leads disciples to desire you,

01:15:03.900 | to love Christ, to love their fellows,

01:15:11.400 | to stand for the truth,

01:15:13.200 | and to practice all the aspects of the discipleship

01:15:18.800 | to which you call us in your word.

01:15:22.480 | Thank you, Father, for John Piper and his ministry.

01:15:27.920 | Bless it greatly in years to come.

01:15:31.240 | In Jesus' name I pray, amen.

01:15:34.880 | >> Amen.

01:15:35.720 | >> Amen.

01:15:37.480 | That was John Piper interviewing Dr. J.I. Packer

01:15:39.880 | in Vancouver in April of 2015.

01:15:42.940 | Dr. Packer's stomach was always growling, it seemed,

01:15:47.860 | and you heard it a few times in this recording

01:15:50.280 | if you were wondering what that was.

01:15:52.040 | What a metabolism that man had.

01:15:54.720 | And what a precious gift from God he was to us,

01:15:57.760 | a desiring God as well.

01:15:59.280 | We will miss him.

01:16:00.720 | And by now you likely already know

01:16:01.960 | that on the morning of July 17th,

01:16:03.640 | Dr. Packer met face-to-face the Savior

01:16:06.040 | who knew him better than he knew himself.

01:16:09.480 | Dr. Packer was 93.

01:16:10.860 | Thank you for listening to this special long-form episode

01:16:14.360 | of the Ask Pastor John podcast.

01:16:15.680 | Pastor John and I will see you next time.

01:16:18.160 | Thanks for listening.

01:16:19.200 | (upbeat music)

01:16:21.780 | (upbeat music)

01:16:24.360 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

John Piper Interviews J.I. Packer

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