Book Review: 18 Words

The Most Important Words You Will Ever Know by J. I. Packer.

Did you know someone gave Carl Trueman a copy of 18 Words (first published as God’s Words) when he started university, and he read it and came to faith? I was halfway through this gem of a book when I heard this interview in which Trueman mentions J. I. Packer and God’s Words as pivotal in his early Christian faith.

So what is 18 Words? How does it work? It’s a collection of essays on keywords from the Bible, words like scripture, the devil, reconciliation, and holiness. That descriptions makes it sound like a book of word studies, but it isn’t quite, at least not in the way we usually think of word studies. Rather, 18 Words looks at biblical words not as mere words, but as pointers to biblical themes with the purpose of “spelling out the gospel which is the Bible’s central message.” It’s one way, and an effective one, to get at the core of true Christianity. 

I’d not heard of this book, not as God’s Words or 18 Words, before I saw it at Amazon and decided to order it.1 It isn’t as well-known as Packer’s classic Knowing God and that’s too bad, because it’s similar in quality, style and value, full of sentences and paragraphs to underline, or quotes and clever phrases to remember. Now that I think about it, I’d say it would make a perfect companion for Knowing God, with Knowing God expounding who God is, and 18 Words explaining the biblical themes that ultimately point us to Christ. Together they’d make an excellent two volume Christian Doctrine 101. 

J. I. Packer is the Board of Governor’s Professor of Theology at Regent College, Vancouver, BC, Canada. You’ll find a list of some of his books and articles here.

If you haven’t read 18 Words, you should. I’ve already posted several quotes to give you a glimpse of how delightful this book is and how much it can teach you.

• Made to Rule Creation
• Walking on a Knife Edge
• Only He, As the God-Man
• A Steady Blaze
• Safeguarding the Glory of Christ
• Safeguarding the Genuineness of Faith Itself
• Counted as Righteous
• Regeneration in the Old Testament? Oh Yes!
• The Salutary Tendency of the Doctrine of Election
• Somewhat Unnerving Company
• One Bosom Friend

What’s more, you can read the introduction here (pdf). And while you’re ordering one for yourself, why not buy a copy for your favorite college student, pairing it, perhaps, with Knowing God? Who knows what might happen? 

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1Something I did twice, as it turns out. My daughter’s dog chewed my first copy to bits when I left him in the car alone for ten minutes. I like him anyway and he’s a good skijorer.

Round the Sphere Again: Bits of History

Timing is Everything
Never heard of Harriet Quimby? There’s a reason for that (mental_floss Blog).

Discipline with a Gentle Hand
Lucy Thurston, early missionary to Hawaii, endured a mastectomy done without any anaesthetic. Later, she wrote a letter to her daughter describing it (Letters of Note). (Be forewarned: Her description is realistic, but worth reading unless you are very sensitive.)

Learning from the Puritans
Who they were (Heritage Booktalk). 

Doctrinally, Puritanism was a kind of vigorous Calvinism; experientially, it was warm and contagious; evangelistically, it was aggressive, yet tender; ecclesiastically, it was theocentric and worshipful; politically, it aimed to be scriptural, balanced, and bound by conscience before God in the relations of king, Parliament, and subjects.

Why you might want to read them (Heritage Booktalk).

With the Spirit’s blessing, Puritan writings can enrich your life as a Christian in many ways as they open the Scriptures and apply them practically, probing your conscience, indicting your sins, leading you to repentance, shaping your faith, guiding your conduct, comforting you in Christ and conforming you to Him, and bringing you into full assurance of salvation and a lifestyle of gratitude to the triune God for His great salvation.

How they viewed wealth (The Upward Call).

Theological Term of the Week

sin
Any failure to conform to the moral law of God in act, attitude, or nature.1

• From scripture: 
  

  Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness. (1 John 3:4 ESV)

  …for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God…. (Romans 3:23 ESV)

• From the Westminster Larger Catechism:

  Question 24: What is sin?

  Answer: Sin is any want of conformity unto, or transgression of, any law of God, given as a rule to the reasonable creature.

• From Systematic Theology by Louis Berkhof:

Sin always has a relation to God and His will. The older dogmaticians realized that is was impossible to have a correct conception of sin without contemplating it in relation to God and His will, and therefore emphasized this aspect and usually spoke of sin as “lack of conformity to the law of God.” This is undoubtedly a correct formal definition of sin. But the question arises, Just what is the material content of the law? What does it demand? If this question is answered, it will be possible to determine what sin is in a material sense. Now there is no doubt about it that the great central demand of the law is love to God. And if from the material point of view moral goodness consists in love to God, then moral evil must consist in the opposite. It is separation from God, opposition to God, hatred of God, and this manifests itself in constant transgression of the law of God in thought, word and deed. The following passages clearly show that Scripture contemplates sin in relation to God and His law, either as written on the tablets of the heart, or as given by Moses….

• From What Is Sin? by J. Gresham Machen:

What, then, is sin? We have said what it is not. Now we ought to say what it is. Fortunately we do not have to search very long in the Bible to find the answer to that question. The Bible gives the answer right at the beginning in the account that it gives of the very first sin of man. What was that first sin of man, according to the Bible? Is not the answer perfectly clear? Why, it was disobedience to a command of God. God said, “Ye shall not eat of the fruit of the tree”; man ate of the fruit of the tree: and that was sin. There we have our definition of sin at last.

“Sin is any want of conformity unto, or transgression of, the law of God.” Those are the words of the Shorter Catechism, not of the Bible; but they are true to what the Bible teaches from Genesis to Revelation. The most elementary thing about sin is that it is that which is contrary to God’s law. You cannot believe in the existence of sin unless you believe in the existence of the law of God. The idea of sin and the idea of law go together.

That being so, I ask you just to run through the Bible in your mind and consider how very pervasive in the Bible is the Bible’s teaching about the law of God. We have already observed how clear that teaching is in the account which the Bible gives of the first sin of man. God said, “Ye shall not eat of the fruit of the tree”. That was God’s law; it was a definite command. Man disobeyed that command; man did what God told him not to do: and that was sin. But the law of God runs all through the Bible. It is not found just in this passage or that, but it is the background of everything that the Bible says regarding the relations between God and man.

…

This law is grounded in the infinite perfection of the being of God Himself. “Be ye therefore perfect,” said Jesus, “even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). That is the standard. It is a holy law, as God Himself is holy. If that be the law of God, how awful a thing is sin! Not an offence against some rule proceeding from temporal authority or enforced by temporal penalties, but an offence against the infinite and eternal God!

Learn more:

1. Theopedia: Sin
2. New City Catechism: What is sin?
3. GotQuestions.org: What is the definition of sin?
4. Blue Letter Bible: What Is Sin?
5. Tim Challies: The Essential: Sin
6. R. C. Sproul: Cosmic Treason
7. David Powlison: What Is Sin?
8. Ralph Venning: The Sinfulness of Sin (pdf)
9. Wayne Grudem: Doctrine of Sin: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 (mp3s)

Related terms:

• fall (of man)
• original sin
• total depravity

Filed under Anthropology.

1From Systematic Theology by Wayne Grudem

Do you have a term you’d like to see featured here as a Theological Term of the Week? If you email it to me, I’ll seriously consider using it, giving you credit for the suggestion and linking back to your blog when I do.

Clicking on the Theological Term graphic at the top of this post will take you to a list of all the previous theological terms in alphabetical order.