Speaker 3
No, other than just to say, let's let's keep the memory of Packer alive and well. Oh, praise God. Yes. Thanks. What a man. I'm grateful for the Familias article. And the three of us all had our disagreements with Packer, especially as it relates to his forays into Roman, Catholic, ecumenical dialogue and certain decisions he made. But I think one of the easiest things for evangelicals, ironically, to forget is personal piety and integrity. And we all know what's important. We were reminded of it when there's pastoral crises and people flame out and have moral failings and the like. But we we need heroes, you know, with a lowercase H that are men with feet of clay like ours and who are sinful, but who sought to walk by the Spirit and to live a sanctified life and to live a life core on day. Oh, J. I. Packer was that and he was a man who read his Bible regularly and loved God's people. I mean, Paul House has a little line in there about you know, he wasn't always strategizing about, you know, here's my 10 year plan, my 20 year plan. He kind of took assignments as they came to him. Not everybody should do that necessarily, but there's something so refreshing about the man, his godliness and his devotion to Christ and his unashamedness to speak about his love for Christ and his intimate walk with the Spirit and all of those sort of things. And just think, let's keep the memory alive and seek to replicate that by God's grace in our own lives as he as he wills and as he enables.
Speaker 1
That's a good word and piety can unfortunately be a bad word for people. And I know there's a piotism that feels cloying as it were, but I think piotism and piety is you're absolutely right. If we're living in a day where we become freshly aware of public sins among Christians and Christian leaders, and it's good to have our eyes open to that, I think at the same time we can become blind to private sins. And by that, I mean the sort of old fashioned, what sort of language do you use? What are you watching? I think we've become aware of how people treat and mistreat others. But some of those concerns, I mean, I was just said something about somebody's language last week and a tweet at me was, oh, this Victorian sensibility. I mean, that's what you just slap on if Victorian or piotistic and how dare you. And I just want to, you provided a good segue for ending this Justin with referencing here at the end of Paul's article. He talks about Packer left, he calls him four stones for the next wave of evangelicalism. Good mixed metaphor of stones and waves or maybe the stones are thrown in and creating ripples. Yeah. So first, he left the foundation stone of a strong family. Second, Packer modeled the foundation stone of humble service, taught small colleges that boasted no international scholarly reputation. Third, he, this is your point, he wrote books and articles that came his way. And fourth, he imitated the English reformers, he admired, he believed they planted seeds of renewal that he ought to cultivate. And that's so true. And it seems unremarkable. And yet it is in those remarkable steps of lifelong faithfulness that genuine seeds of renewal in your own personal life and your own family. And we have to remember some of our heroes, you know, Spurgeon, of course, he had a massive church, but his reputation now is different than it was when he was in his heyday. And so is Edward, and same is true for so many who seem to be less than they are now or seem to be more than they are now. And I think of the wonderful work the Lord has done through publishing houses, like Crossway, and through faithful schools and seminaries and RTS is the one I work for. And you work for, you know, do some teaching at Beeson and we could name others. But I think at its best, evangelicalism has been strengthened and renewed. And you think about how just the banner of truth, how much the church has been served in these last generations by the work that Ian Murray and others have done to publish these books that we just take for granted. And now Crossway does so much of that and so do other publishers. But books that, you know, you read about here in Packer's Day, they go searching and scrounging around libraries for old additions of these. They just, they didn't have things that we just now can click and be on our doorstep in two days. Such an embarrassment of riches. So there's much to be thankful for and always much work to be done. And thankfully, the Lord is the one doing the work. Thankful for you guys. Hope you have a great Christmas and a happy new year. Sure, we'll talk by text before that. But looking forward to having you back on LBE with the three of us. Come January until then, or if I got, enjoy him forever and read a good book.