Heard Dr Ling preach on Puritan spirituality to a group of Mandarin-speaking youths... we may wonder, "How weird? Learning about people in a bygone age?"
Aren't they legalistic joyless folks?
Perfect they were not. But the Puritans were strongest at those point where we, contemporary evangelicals, were weakest. Since our tendency is 'antinomian' or lawlessness, we had better take care of the plank in our eye...
Taken from article: Is the Puritan movement dead-ended?
"Here were men of outstanding intellectual power, in whom the mental habits fostered by sober scholarship were linked with a flaming zeal for God and a minute acquaintance with the human heart. All their work reveals this unique fusion of gifts and graces. Their appreciation of God's sovereign majesty was profound; their reverence in handling His Word was deep. They understood the ways of God with men, the glory of Christ the Mediator, and the work of the Spirit in the believer and the church, as richly and fully as any since their day. Nor was their knowledge a mere theoretical orthodoxy. They sought to 'reduce to practice' (their own phrase) all that God taught them. They yoked their consciences to Scripture, disciplining themselves to demand a theological, as distinct from a merely pragmatic, justification for everything they did. They saw the church, the family, the state, the arts and sciences, the world of commerce and industry, along with the personal world and involvements of each individual, as so many spheres in which the Creator and Lord of all things must be served and glorified.
Then, too, knowing God, they also knew man. They saw him as essentially a noble being, made in God's image to rule God's world, but now tragically brutified and brutalised by sin. In the light of God's law, lordship, and holiness, they saw sin in its threefold character: as transgression and guilt; as rebellion and usurpation; and as uncleanness, corruption, and inability for good. Seeing these things and knowing as they did the ways and means whereby the Spirit brings sinners to faith and new life in Christ, and leads saints to grow up into their Saviour's image by growing downwards into humility and an increasing dependence on grace, the Puritans became superb pastors in their own day. By the same token, they can, though dead, yet speak to us for our guidance and direction."
No one has done more to revive interests in these spiritual giants than JI Packer,
The Last Puritan . Here, he shared how they work out the task of evangelism
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