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.

Two I Started But Might Not Finish

I don’t always finish the books I start. There are various reasons for that, and usually it isn’t because the book is bad. Here are two that I recently started reading that I’ve decided to set aside for now and maybe forever.

How to Write a Sentence and How to Read One
As the title suggests, this little book by Stanley Fish is about appreciating and crafting sentences. After the first chapter, I was sure I would love it, but things fizzled in the middle. I set it aside and never picked it up again until this morning, when I cleaned off my desk. 

I thumbed through to refresh my memory, read some of the last chapter on last sentences and was once again intrigued. I’ve decided to read that chapter and the one before it on first sentences and leave it at that. And that’s more than I planned to read before I began this post on books I might not finish.

Would you like it? I don’t know. It won’t teach you how to write better sentences any more than a book about fine wine will help you with wine-making. But if you love language, you might enjoy the whole thing as much as this reviewer did.

O Love That Will Not Let Me Go
This is another of Nancy Guthrie’s books of collected essays by classic and contemporary Christians. The purpose is to help believers learn to think rightly about death so that they can “die well.” I read several excellent essays, but grew tired of thinking about dying. It didn’t help that I recently read and reviewed another book about death. 

I feel bad for not finishing, because I know there aren’t enough books on this subject. I also know that this book in particular is a valuable resource and one I recommend. I especially enjoyed the essay by Richard Baxter with Directions for a Peaceful Departure.

Maybe I’ll finish later, but right now, I’m death saturated, and ready to move on to something else.

Book Review: The Promised One

Click on image to purchase at Amazon.comSeeing Jesus in Genesis by Nancy Guthrie.

The Promised One is intended for use in a study for group of women. It’s purpose is to help us see pointers to Christ in Genesis, the first book of the Old Testament. “You search the Scriptures,” Jesus said to the Jewish religious leaders, “but the Scriptures point to me!” He was, of course, referring to our Old Testament. So we should expect to see Jesus in Genesis, and this study was written to help us do that.

Guthrie’s goal is an important one. The Jewish leaders missed the Messiah because they did not see that Scripture was pointing them to a redeemer who would suffer. They were familiar with Scripture, but failed to see the big picture. We don’t want to be like them, and yet, too many of us read the Bible piecemeal (if we read it at all), and don’t have a good grasp of the whole storyline. 

Included in The Promised One are ten studies made up of three parts each. First, each study has a workbook section with questions on the section’s passage to be filled out by each participant in preparation for the group study. Then there is a teaching chapter to explain and apply the passage, including, at the end, a few paragraphs that show us how the themes in the passage that point us to Christ will be fulfilled completely at his second coming, when all the threads that begin in Genesis are tied up into a perfect whole cloth. Finally, there is a discussion guide with questions for use in group discussion.

I’ve not used this book in group study, but I have worked through each section, filling out the questions, reading the teaching chapter, and thinking about the discussion questions. I asked myself, as I worked through it all, how it would work in a group of the women I know. 

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