"Without realizing it, we have during the past century bartered [the biblical] gospel for a substitute product which, though it looks similar enough in points of detail, is as a whole a decidedly different thing. Hence our troubles; for the substitute product does not answer the ends of which the authentic gospel as in past days proved itself so mighty. Why?
"We would suggest that the reason lies in its own character and content. It fails to make men God-centered in their thoughts and God-fearing in their hearts because this is not primarily what it is trying to do. One way of stating the difference between it and the old gospel is to say that it is too exclusively concerned to be 'helpful' to man -- to bring peace, comfort, happiness, satisfaction -- and too little concerned to glorify God.
"The old gospel was 'helpful' too -- more so, indeed, than is the new -- but (so to speak) incidentally, for its first concern was always to give glory to God. It was always and essentially a proclamation of divine sovereignty in mercy and judgment, a summons to bow down and worship the mighty Lord on who man depends for all good, both in nature and in grace.
"Its center of reference was unambiguously God. But in the new gospel the center of reference is man.
"This is just to say that the old gospel was religious in a way that the new gospel is not. Whereas the chief aim of the old was to teach people to worship God, the concern of the new seems limited to making them feel better.
"The subject of the old gospel was God and his ways with men; the subject of the new is man and the help God gives him. There is a world of difference....."
-- J.I. Packer, "A Quest for Godliness" (Crossway) p. 126
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