Friday 15 June 2012

Packer and Spurgeon on Calvinism

I have just been re-reading Jim Packer's magnificent preface to the 1959 Banner of Truth edition of John Owen's 'The Death of Death' and came across amongst many other gems these comments on Calvinism:

'For to Calvinism there is really only one point to be made in the field of soteriology: the point that God saves sinners. God - the Triune Jehovah, Father, Son and Spirit; three Persons working together in sovereign wisdom, power and love to achieve the salvation of a chosen people, the Father electing, the Son fulfillng the Father's will by redeeming, the Spirit executing the purpose of Father and Son by renewing. Saves - does everything, first to last, that is involved in bringing man from death in sin to life in glory: plans, achieves and communicates redemption, calls and keeps, justifies, sanctifies, glorifies. Sinners - men as God finds them, guilty, vile, helpless, powerless, unable to lift a finger to do God's will or better their spiritual lot. God saves sinners - the force of this confession may not be weakened by disrupting the unity of the work of the Trinity, or by dividing the achievement of salvation between God and man and making the decisive part man's own, or by soft-pedalling the sinner's inability so as to allow him to share the praise of his salvation with his Saviour'.

'C.H.Spurgeon was thus abundantly right when he declared: " I have my own private opinion that there is no such thing as preaching Christ and him crucified, unless we preach what is nowadays called Calvinism. It is a nickname to call it Calvinism; Calvinism is the gospel, and nothing else. I do not believe we can preach the gospel...unless we preach the sovereignty of God in His dispensation of grace; nor unless we exalt the electing, unchangeable, eternal, immutable, conquering love of Jehovah; nor do I think we can preach the gospel unless we base it upon the special and particular redemption of His elect and chosen people which Christ wrought out upon the Cross; nor can I comprehend a gospel which lets saints fall away after they are called" (Autobiography, Vol I chap XVI, p 172)'.

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