22 October
1944 A.D. 70 Years Ago J. I. Packer
Sobers Up, Gets Real, Does Business, Wisens Up & Closes with Christ—As the
Elect Do
James’ church where he was reared, St. Catherine’s, Gloucester (the pictures didn't survive posting).
On
Sunday, October 22, 1944—seventy years ago today—it is doubtful that anyone
noticed a soft-spoken, lanky, and decidedly bookish first-year university
student leaving his dormitory room at Corpus Christi College and heading across
Oxford for an evening Christian Union service at a local Anglican church.
18-year-old
Jim Packer had arrived at Oxford University less than three weeks prior, a
single suitcase in hand, traveling east by train from Gloucester using a free
ticket available to family members of Great Western Railway employees.
He
later described himself at this stage of life as ”immature,” “shy,”
“introverted,” “awkward,” “intellectual,” and an “oddball.” He was an
“outsider” who was “bad at relationships” and “emotionally locked up.” He
was also a “churned-up young man, painfully aware of himself, battling his
daily way, as adolescents to, through manifold urges and surges of discontent
and frustration.”
Packer
came from a lower middle-class background and a nominal Anglican family that
went to St Catharine’s Church in Gloucester but never talked about the things
of God or even prayed at meals. As a teenager Packer had read a couple of the
new books coming out by C. S. Lewis (fellow and tutor in English literature at
Oxford’s Magdalen College), including The Screwtape Letters (1942) and
the three BBC talks turned pamphlets that would later become Mere
Christianity (1942-44). During chess matches with a high school
classmate—the son of a Unitarian minister—he had defended Christianity.
Packer
thought of himself as a Christian. But the events of that evening would
convince him otherwise.
On this
cool autumn evening, he made his way west across Oxford, past Pembroke College,
and into St Aldate’s Church, where the Christian Union occasionally held
services. The lights in the building were dimmed so that the light emanating
from the building would be no brighter than moonlight—a recent relaxation of
England’s “blackout” regulations to avoid air-raid attacks in World War II.
He entered the doors of the church a dead man walking and was to leave later
that night as a resurrected man, knowing himself to belong to Christ.
The
following narrative is adapted from Leland Ryken’s forthcoming biography, J. I.
Packer: An Evangelical Life (Crossway, 2015), which Mike Reeves
calls “now the definitive, most up-to-date biography of J. I. Packer.”
A
schoolboy friendship with Eric Taylor was an important part of Jim Packer’s
final year at Crypt
School in Gloucester, England. While Packer spent his third year in
“sixth form,” Taylor made the transition to the University of Bristol. During
his first year at Bristol, Taylor became a Christian. He wrote letters to
Packer about his new-found faith. Packer did not fully understand the letters,
especially the one that contained an exposition of the final verses of Romans 3
on justification by faith. Jim was puzzled by references to “saving faith.”
During the following summer vacation of 1944, Taylor and Packer had a series of
conversations about the Christian faith. The discussions left Packer feeling
that something was lacking, but he was mystified as to what it was.
Eric
Taylor did not bring Packer to faith, but he did the next-best thing by
encouraging Jim to make contact with the Christian student group at Oxford
called the Oxford
Inter-Collegiate Christian Union (OICCU, an Inter-Varsity
organization).
Front quad of Corpus Christi College at Oxford.
Christian
student groups at Oxford and Cambridge Universities were highly active in the
middle of the twentieth century. The Christian Union at Oxford followed a
practice of arranging a social event in the respective colleges for new
students at the beginning of each academic year. These were informational
meetings designed to attract the participation of students in the meetings of
the Christian Union of the university as a whole. Nearly everything at Oxford
University is traditional, and the opening recruitment meeting of the term
Jim Packer (top center), with members of OICCU
in Trinity Term 1948 at St Ebbe’s Rectory. Elizabeth Lloyd-Jones (now Lady
Catherwood) is sitting in front of Packer.
happened specifically on the Thursday evening
before the start of the academic year.
Ralph
Hulme, the Corpus Christi OICCU representative, initiated contact with Packer
and invited him to the introductory Thursday meeting. Packer accepted the
invitation, having already determined that he would attend. The first meeting
was eminently forgettable, as evidenced by the fact that the only thing Packer
remembers about the event was that it failed to spark his interest!
Despite
the low wartime enrollments at the University, OICCU president David Mullins (a
medical student) was determined to maintain the evangelistic thrust of the Christian Union. The weekly
agenda was ambitious. On the University level, there was a Bible exposition
every Saturday evening and an evangelistic sermon every Sunday evening (known
as “Sunday evening sermon”). Individual colleges then sponsored their own
weekly Bible studies and prayer meetings. These options were presented to
Packer at the informational meeting. The first week he decided to attend the
Saturday evening Bible exposition but not the Sunday evening evangelistic
service. He did, however, attend the evangelistic service the next Sunday,
October 22, 1944.
The sanctuary of St Aldate’s church in Oxford,
c. 1940s.
The
service at which Packer was converted occurred at St. Aldate’s church,
an Anglican church in the center of the city. It was one of the larger Oxford
churches and was noted for its student ministry. We might note in passing that
St. Aldate’s is a “stone’s throw” from Pembroke College, where fellow Crypt School
alumnus George Whitefield (1714-70) attended college and was converted.
The
service began at 8:15 PM. The preacher was an elderly Anglican parson named
Rev. Earl Langston, from the resort town of Weymouth. The first half of the
forty-minute sermon consisted of biblical exposition that left Packer bored.
But the second half was a personal narrative of how Langston had been converted
at a boys’ camp. The key component of that conversion had been a challenge
posed to the youthful Langston by a camp leader as to whether or not he was a
Christian. Langston had been jolted by this question to conclude that he was
not actually saved. That, in turn, led to his coming to personal faith in Christ
as Savior.
This
autobiographical narrative was riveting to Packer, who had entered Oxford
believing himself to be a Christian. Packer suddenly saw his own story in
Langston’s narrative and realized that he was not a Christian. It was a
traumatic realization. It was accompanied by an imagined picture that Alister
McGrath reconstructs as follows:
He found a picture arising
from within his mind. The picture was that of someone looking from outside
through a window into a room where some people were having a party. Inside the
room, people were enjoying themselves by playing games. The person outside
could understand the games that they were playing. He knew the rules of the
games. But he was outside; they were inside. He needed to come in.
Packer
was particularly convicted by the latter awareness: “I need to come in.” So by
the Spirit’s prompting he came in. The sermon ended as evangelistic services in
the Oxford milieu (and more universally) did—with the preacher emphasizing the
need to commit oneself to Christ and the singing of the hymn “Just As I Am.”
Just as I am, without one
plea,
But that Thy blood was shed for me,
And that Thou bid’st me come to Thee,
O Lamb of God, I come! I come!
Just as I am, and waiting
not
To rid my soul of one dark blot;
To Thee whose blood can cleanse each spot,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come!
Just as I am, though
tossed about
With many a conflict, many a doubt;
Fightings within, and fears without,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come!
Just as I am, poor,
wretched, blind;
Sight, riches, healing of the mind;
Yes, all I need, in Thee to find,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come!
Just as I am, Thou wilt
receive,
Wilt welcome, pardon, cleanse, relieve;
Because Thy promise I believe,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come!
Just as I am, Thy love
unknown
Has broken every barrier down;
Now, to be Thine, yea, Thine alone,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come!
Packer
states simply, “I had given my life to Christ.” He also recounts, “When I went
out of the church I knew I was a Christian.”
Packer
went back to his room at Corpus Christi and wrote his parents to tell them what
had happened.
More
than half a century later, Packer could attest regarding his conversion that “I
remember the experience as if it were yesterday.”
Thank
God for his saving grace. Seventy years later, Packer continues to instruct the
church on the beauty and power of the gospel of Jesus Christ, who saves us just
as we are but begins to transform us into what we will someday be, all to the
praise of the glory of his grace.
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