In 1964, J. I. Packer, who served as the Warden of Latimer house at Oxford at the time, spent six weeks as a Special Lecturer here at Westminster. He gave two series of lectures during this time. The first was on English Puritanism, and the second was on the Doctrine of the Work of Christ in its development throughout the centuries. During this time, Dr. Packer was also invited to deliver a commencement address. What follows is that commencement address, “Ministry of the Word Today.”
In 2 Timothy 4:5, Paul summons Timothy to “make full proof” of his ministry. Other versions have “fulfill thy ministry.” The ministry in view is, of course, the ministry of the Word—the service of God and men through the service of God’s revealed truth.
Ministers of the Word are privileged and responsible men. The New Testament describes them as stewards of God’s mysteries, heralds, ambassadors for Christ, teachers in the Lord’s name. As messengers of God, they stand in the true prophetic succession, and also in the true apostolic succession, which (may I, as an Anglican, remind you!) has nothing to do with bishops, but everything to do with preaching the gospel.
The New Testament also calls ministers pastors—that is, shepherds, charged to feed and guard Christ’s flock. How do they feed Christ’s flock? Precisely by their ministry of the Word. This point needs stressing. In Britain, and in America too, I suspect, the modern custom is to define pastoring in terms of visitation and sympathy. We say of a man, “To be sure, he’s no preacher, he can’t teach, but yet he’s a good pastor.” Scripture, however, obliges us to define pastoral care in terms of the public and private ministry of the Word of God. It is not enough to visit and show sympathy. Only as one preaches and teaches the Word is one a true pastor, feeding the flock. Only so does one’s ministry become a ministration of the Spirit. Only so does the minister fulfill his calling.
APPLICATION
Feeding Christ’s sheep by ministering the Word to them involves two problems. First, there is the problem of content—for the whole counsel of God must be made known to them. Second, there is the problem of application, ethical and experiential—for the truth must be brought to bear on their lives, so that it meets them where they are to draw them closer to Christ. Application is no rule-of-thumb affair, but a diagnostic and prescriptive science demanding as much skill as does the formulating of the truth to be applied; indeed, it is in many ways easier to grasp biblical doctrine than it is to apply it to the heart-needs of men and women.
Application is no rule-of-thumb affair, but a diagnostic and prescriptive science demanding as much skill as does the formulating of the truth to be applied.
Hence, as a Puritan once put it, the pastor must study two books, not just one. Certainly, he must know the book of Scripture—”Brethren,” said C. H. Spurgeon to his students, “if in your pastorates you are not theologians, you are just nothing at all”—but this is not enough. He must also be a master in reading the book of the human heart. He must know men no less well than he knows his Bible. “Who is sufficient for these things?” we cry. Paul gives us the answer: “Our sufficiency is of God.” Here is the burden, and the glory, of the ministry. The task seems superhuman, and impossibly demanding; yet in God’s strength it can be done.
My theme is ministry of the Word today. Was there ever a time, I wonder, when the minister’s task appeared more difficult and daunting than it does today? Here
I would mention two things in particular which seem to me to raise the acutest difficulties for us: first, the disintegrated vision of evangelicals, and second, the opposition of decadent Protestantism. Let me say a word about each.
DISINTEGRATED VISION
When I speak of the disintegrated vision of evangelicals, I am not thinking of the fragmenting of churches, or the break-up of organizations, or the presence of rivalries or rogue elephants in our ranks. I have in mind a trouble deeper than any of these. I am thinking of the way in which our vision of the Christian life, the true life of the redeemed people of God, has been split and shattered, so that values which belong together are now isolated and opposed to each other, and we all appear partial and lopsided in our Christian outlook.
Look at the evangelical world, and what do you see? Some are concerned for purity of doctrine, others for aggressive evangelism, others for personal holiness, others for an evangelical social conscience and cultural contribution. These are all proper Christian concerns; but which of us succeeds in maintaining them all, in a proper relation and balance? Who cares equally for purity of doctrine and aggressive evangelism, for personal holiness and Christian culture, for social justice and separation from the world?
We are all inclined, through the conditioning we have received in that section of the evangelical world where, humanly speaking, our roots are, to overlook and neglect some of these concerns as we prosecute others. And the authentic Reformed and biblical vision of the life of the redeemed—the vision, that is, of the purest doctrine working the profoundest all-round transformation of life, the vision of a genuinely godly humanism springing from a genuinely human godliness, the Puritan vision, Kuyper’s vision—that vision has been obscured and lost. To say that we need to recover it is easy, but actually to do so will be hard; meanwhile, our inveterate lopsidedness makes it desperately difficult to achieve true biblical balance and breadth in our ministry of the Word.
DECADENT PROTESTANTISM
Then we must face the opposition of decadent Protestantism. Decadence is a melancholy thing, doubly so when it regards itself as progressive and demands to hold the helm and steer the ship; and decadence, we know, has actually taken over in many, indeed most, of the older Protestant churches. Of course, this dominant outlook does not recognize itself as decadence, but such it demonstrably is, for one distinctive mark of decadence is reversion, and the reversionary tendencies of modern Protestantism are plain for all to see.
Forty years ago, Dr. J. Gresham Machen, in his invaluable Christianity and Liberalism, showed that the liberalism of his day, the liberalism which saw God as the universal Father, kind but not holy, pervasive but not fully personal, was not Christianity, but a reversion from Christianity to a type of pantheizing paganism that was in the world before Christianity came on the scene, and which in fact Christianity had displaced.
Decadence is a melancholy thing, doubly so when it regards itself as progressive and demands to hold the helm and steer the ship.
This naturalistic liberalism is still, we know, very much alive. Neo-orthodox theologians have labored for a generation to re-introduce supernatural elements of the biblical gospel into the liberal matrix, but in this they are like men running up an escalator that is constantly moving down: sooner or later their breath will give out, and they will find themselves back at the bottom. For while they work (as they do work) with a fundamentally naturalistic view of revelation and knowledge of God, they cannot consistently maintain a supernaturalistic view of redemption, but can only hold to any elements of Christian supernaturalism by sheer will-power, against the logic of their own systems. They have not overcome the reversionary tendencies of liberalism, but rather fallen victim to them.
"HONEST TO GOD"
Again, in Britain, we have recently been occupied with the so-called “Honest to God debate” (now exported to America, I understand!). The position which Bishop Robinson, in his somewhat bumbling way, sketched out in Honest to God appears to be this: that the ultimate religious reality is not the living and speaking God of the Bible, but rather the story of Jesus regarded as a therapeutic symbol or myth. According to this view, Jesus’s death and resurrection, regarded as historical events, have no ultimate saving significance, and the resurrection is indeed historically doubtful. Now, what is this professedly “radical,” avant-garde, super-modern teaching but a return in principle to that pagan Gnosticism of which the Christian church washed its hands in the second century A.D.?
Again, what is the modern spirit of ecumenical inclusivism, with its relativizing of doctrinal differences about salvation and grace, its welcoming attitude to Eastern Orthodoxy, its readiness to flirt with Rome, but a reversion to the doctrinal immaturity which almost ruined the church in the days of Arianism, when most Christians could not see that clear doctrine about the person and place of the Lord Jesus Christ mattered at all, one way or the other?
Here are some of the phenomena of contemporary Protestant decadence. They are pervasive and perplexing; they infect men’s minds, as a kind of theological smog; and in this tainted atmosphere clear and faithful ministry of the Word becomes more than ordinarily difficult.
Yet the principles relating to our ministry remain unchanged. On the one hand, where the Word of God is faithfully expounded and applied the promise is that life will follow: the Word will not return to God void. On the other hand, where this ministry of the Word fails neither the individual nor the world as a whole has any hope whatever. The issue is as stark as that. The first need of this age, as of every age, is faithful ministry of the Word of God. And if we who are called to this ministry are to sustain it faithfully and fruitfully, to the glory of God and the good of men, there are two necessities which we must bring to it: first, faith in a God who speaks; second, faith in the adequacy of the gospel. This is a further unchanging principle. Let me elaborate it a little.
The first need of this age, as of every age, is faithful ministry of the Word of God.
I said there must be faith in a God who speaks. I hope that form of words did not suggest to you that I was lurching into Barthianism! What I have in mind here is actually the biblical corrective to Barthianism. Let me explain.
GOD HAS SPOKEN
The basis of evangelical faith and theology is the conviction that, as the opening sentence of Hebrews puts it, God has spoken. He has accommodated himself to human language in order to convey his thoughts to our minds. He has talked—talked through the lips of prophets, and apostles, and his Son; talked in and through the written words of Holy Scripture. It is to this process of divine talking in history that the word “inspiration” points.
Scripture exhibits more than one type of inspiration. There is the dualistic inspiration of the prophet delivering a message which he knows to have been given him from without. There is the lyric inspiration of the psalmist, responding to God in exalted accents of praise, and prayer, and meditation. There is the organic inspiration of the prose writers of Scripture, the historians and teachers, whose own thoughts were fused with God’s without their mental processes being altered or heightened in any psychologically distinctive way. Yet the fact of inspiration—the fact that in each case the human word is also, and equally, and indeed primarily, a divine word, the fact that what Scripture says, God says—remains constant.
The basis of evangelical faith and theology is the conviction that, as the opening sentence of Hebrews puts it, God has spoken.
Thus, Holy Scripture is more than a human record of revelation in history; it is itself a divine revelation in writing. God has spoken, and the Bible is his Word. This we maintain against all modern views which substitute private revelation by existential encounter for public revelation by once-for-all inspired writing, and on this basis claim liberty to deviate from what is written.
GOD SPEAKS STILL
But this is not all that has to be said. On this basis, and with equal emphasis, we must now go on to insist that God speaks still. What he has said, he continues to say. The instruction which he gave once-for-all, in application to the original recipients of the biblical books, he gives afresh in application to each subsequent reader, and generation of readers. The biblical Word of God is a message—a message addressed to us in our day no less directly than it was addressed to those for whose instruction the sixty-six books of Scripture were written long ago.
There will be no dispute that, regarded as a human product, Holy Scripture has the nature of preaching, in the sense that it was all written for the purpose for which sermons are preached—namely, to instruct and edify. The biblical books, we may say, were written ad hominem, to man, to help him know and serve his Maker; they were written ad peccatorem, to the sinner, to tell him of his need and of God’s grace; they were written ad credentem, to the believer, to nourish his faith and devotion and obedience. What we must now grasp, however, is that what is true of Scripture from the standpoint of its human character is no less true from the standpoint of its divine character. Whether for purposes of devotion, or theology, or ministry, it is both right and fruitful to think of Holy Scripture as God’s sermon, which he is even now preaching to us who approach his Word.
LET SCRIPTURE TALK
The position can be illustrated from another mode of instruction. Reading Scripture, or hearing it read, is like joining God’s seminar. In a seminar, a group of students will go to a tutor, one will take and read a written essay, and then the tutor will comment on it in the presence of the group. If he is a wise instructor, he will so angle and adapt his comments that they will contain an application to everybody present. Thus, all learn by overhearing words addressed in the first instance to the essayist. So, with us when we read the Bible. We overhear God talking to Abraham, to Moses, to Israel, to the Jews of Christ’s day, to the Roman and Corinthian churches, and so forth, and the Holy Spirit enables us to apply his words to ourselves in our own situation and so to see, from what he said to them, what he now has to say to us. Similarly, by watching how he dealt with men in Bible times, we learn the principles of his dealing with us. And in this way, we come to know him and have fellowship with him through his Word.
It is vital that we understand this, if we would effectively preach God’s Word. For this is the essential idea of Christian preaching—to take a text from Scripture and let it talk, delivering its own message in application to the hearers. Nor is there any divine authority, or liberty, or power, in preaching, nor any warrant to expect blessing, save when the preacher is clear that he is doing no more than explaining and applying the Word of God, thus seeking simply to be the mouthpiece Whereby God himself addresses his people. This is why faith in a God who speaks is basic to effective ministry of the Word, today as in every age.
ADEQUACY OF THE GOSPEL
The second requirement for such ministry is faith in the adequacy of the gospel. On this, too, we must dwell for a moment.
In the true apostolic succession, which is the true prophetic succession, we are shut up to the rule which Paul imposed on himself when he went to Corinth—"I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified" (I Cor. 2:2). By this Paul does not mean, of course, that he never preached any truth but the atonement; what he means is that, in all his preaching of the whole counsel of God, he kept the cross at the center, and never let his hearers lose sight of the hill called Calvary. We must learn to do as he did, if we would see fruit in our ministry.
The wisest thing I ever heard said was a remark by an old clergyman which, as it seemed to me, summed up the whole of Christianity in two clauses and fourteen words! The remark was this: “God is sovereign in all things, and all problems find their solution at Calvary.” I have lived with that dictum for years, and I have not exhausted its meaning yet. It is the star by which I seek to steer in my ministry, and I commend it to you as a guiding star for yours. To see that in a world governed by a sovereign God all spiritual problems—all problems, that is, concerning man’s relation to God, and God’s to man—must be solved at the foot of the cross is the beginning of ministerial wisdom. Let me illustrate from some of the commonest kinds of spiritual problems.
To see that in a world governed by a sovereign God all spiritual problems—all problems, that is, concerning man’s relation to God, and God’s to man—must be solved at the foot of the cross is the beginning of ministerial wisdom.
There are some whose basic trouble is lack of assurance as to the reality of their peace with God. We can only help them by pointing them to Calvary, where Jesus “made peace through the blood of his cross” (Col. 1:20) and teaching them what it means to trust and glory in the cross.
POINT TO THE CROSS
There are others who need to realize—in trouble or loneliness or special personal difficulty, perhaps—the reality of God’s love for them. “He doesn’t seem to care,” is their complaint. We can only help them as we remind them that “God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8), and as we teach them to measure God’s love to them by Calvary.
Some need reassurance concerning the sufficiency of God as they face costly choices and decisions. “Yes,” they say, “I know this is the way God would have me go; but dare I take it? It will be hard; it will be lonely; it involves risk. Can I trust God to uphold me and provide for me?" We can only help these people by pointing them to the cross and to Paul’s reasoning about it—“He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?... in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us” (Rom. 8:32, 37).
Some seek to evade moral challenges. How can we help them? Only, in the last analysis, by making them feel the force of Paul’s argument in II Corinthians 5:14 f. —“The love of Christ constraineth us... he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them, and rose again.”
Others, again, are troubled with besetting sins; they, too, must be taken back to Calvary, to learn both that there they were bought with a price, to glorify God in their body (I Cor. 6:20), and also that “our old man is crucified with him... that henceforth we should not serve sin” (Romans 6:6).
And so, we might go on with our demonstration that spiritual problems get settled at Calvary alone, or else not at all.
SPIRITUAL SOLUTION
Let us see to it, then, that the message which we preach to men as the solution to their deepest problems is the apostolic message of the cross—“all problems find their solution at Calvary.” And let us not be hasty to exchange it for fashionable techniques of so-called pastoral psychology which rest on a secular analysis of human nature, and which, when used, have the effect of leading men and women out of sight of the cross, and teaching them to look elsewhere for the healing of their souls. I am not saying that pastoral psychology, as a study, is a complete waste of time, but I am saying that spiritual needs cannot be met by the counseling techniques of a naturalistic psychiatry, and woe betide us—and our people!—if we ministers go astray at this point.
What I am really pleading for in all this is a new Puritanism. That, of course, is a question-begging phrase which might mean many things; what I mean by it, however, is this. We need ministers, and churches, that combine strong faith in Scripture as the living Word of the living God with an equally strong faith in the adequacy of the gospel of the cross to bring life, and joy, and peace, and edifying, and victory, to needy sinners. We need a ministry of the Word that has both breadth and depth, that is both doctrinal and practical, evangelical and experiential. We need, in other words, what the Puritans actually had. May each generation of Westminster men catch the true Puritan spirit, and so “fulfill their ministry” to the glory of the God of truth and the blessing of those whom they serve in the gospel in these difficultand dangerous days.