Our Most Present Pressing Need

J.I. Packer argues that our most pressing need is to to rediscover the gospel and reject its substitutes:

Without realizing it, we have during the past century bartered the 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 to which the authentic gospel has in past days proved itself so mighty…

…The subject of the old gospel was God and his ways with men; the subject of the new is man and the help that God gives him. There is a world of difference. The whole perspective and emphasis of gospel preaching has changed.

…It is undeniable that this is how we preach; perhaps this is what we really believe. But it needs to be said with emphasis that this set of twisted half-truths is something other than the biblical gospel. The Bible is against us when we preach in this way; and the fact that such preaching has become standard practice among us only shows how urgent it is that we should review this matter. To recover the old, authentic, biblical gospel, and to bring our preaching and practice back into line with it, is perhaps our most pressing present need. (A Quest for Godliness: The Puritan Vision of the Christian Life

)