J. I. Packer has commented on what constitutes the great tradition of Christian faith and life:
Recognizing the canonical Scriptures as the repository and channel of Christ-centered divine revelation; acknowledging the triune God as sovereign in creation, providence and grace; focusing faith, in the sense both of belief and of trust, on Jesus Christ as God incarnate; as our crucified and living Savior, Lord, master, friend, life and hope; and as the one mediator of, and thus the only way to, a filial relationship with God his Father; seeing Christians as a family of forgiven sinners, now supernaturally regenerated in Christ and empowered for godliness by the Holy Spirit. . . . Christianity began and spread as the worship of a Creator-God truly manifested in a risen, living, miracle-working divine Savior who forgives sins and bestows the divine Holy Spirit, thereby transforming believers into loving, rejoicing, praying, worshiping persons who live in an unquenchable hope of sharing Christ’s heavenly glory forever. . . . Nothing is nearer the heart of the great tradition, and therefore more purely and gloriously ecumenical, than loving the Lord who in love died for us and now lives in us, and with that hating sin, and practicing repentance, and testifying that we live by being forgiven, and proving God’s power to enable us to resist sin’s down-drag. . . . When Jesus told Nicodemus that with those born of the Spirt it was like the wind - ”you hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going” (Jn 3:8) - he was referring to bewilderment on the part of unbelievers as to what makes Christians tick; true life in Christ will always have a supernatural quality that generates such bewilderment. Part of our calling is to unite to tell the world of this supernaturalizing of the natural and of the Christ who brings it to pass - and with that to demonstrate through the devotion of our own lives the supernaturalizing of which we speak. “Make your light shine,” says Jesus, “so that others will see the good that you do and will praise your Father in heaven” (Mt 5: 16).
I conclude the quotations taken from the book, Reclaiming the Great Tradition, with this series of quotations from J. I. Packer.