Mark Overstreet

Through over 63 years in evangelical ministry, J. I. Packer has written, preached, and led many to think deeply about theology, the cross, and how Jesus changed the world. In this reflection, he looks back over decades of powerful ministry and contends for the center of the gospel – penal substitutionary atonement. He begins, “One’s belief about the atonement is bound up with one’s belief about the character of God, the terms of the gospel and the Christian’s inner life, the intensity of the debate is understandable.”

During the firestorm of the Reformation, Luther asked the question, “How may a weak, perverse and guilty sinner find a gracious God?” J. I. Packer argues that “real Christianity only really starts when that discovery is made.”

He closes with one of my favorite hymns: The Church is and will always be at its healthiest when every Christian can line up with every other Christian to sing P. P. Bliss’s simple words, which really say it all:

Bearing shame and scoffing rude
In my place condemned he stood,
Sealed my pardon with his blood-
Hallelujah! What a Saviour!