18 Words

Given the attention to Jim Packer's split with the Anglican Church of Canada, I wanted to draw some attention to one of his best writing projects, recently published in Scotland by Mentor under the title 18 Words: The Most Important Words you will ever Know. Originally published as a series of word studies in the magazine Inter-Varsity, Packer explores eighteen key concepts in theology, including 'Scripture', 'Sin', 'Reconciliation', 'Mortification', etc. It's great stuff: vintage Packer, as expressed in this quotation from the chapter on grace:

"... the moral law expresses the will of God for man as man. It was never meant as a method of salvation (and it is in any case useless for that purpose); it was given to guide men in the life of godliness. And grace, while it condemns self-righteousness, establishes the law as a rule of conduct ... So far from giving us liberty to break the law, grace sets us free from the dominion of sin that we might keep the law. This is the final answer to antinomianism: grace establishes the law" (p100).

What struck me most in reading these key words from the Bible is that they are not New Testament words. Part of the function of the Old Testament was to train us in the vocabulary of the New. The lexical categories in which we express the glorious Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ are drawn from an old stock.