J.I. Packer Quotes & Sayings

I'm saying that an editorial process that is preparing the material for publication counts as part of the inspiring process whereby God, in his sovereignty, gave every word. — J.I. Packer

Suffering is getting what you do not want while wanting what you do not get. — J.I. Packer

Jesus' pattern prayer, which is both crutch, road, and walking lesson for the spiritually lame like ourselves, tells us to start with God: for lesson one is to grasp that God matters infinitely more than we do. So "thy" is the keyword of the opening three petitions, and the first request of all is "hallowed (holy, sanctified) be thy name" - which is the biggest and most basic request of the whole prayer. Understand it and make it your own, and you have unlocked the secret of both prayer and life. — J.I. Packer

The Trinity is the basis of the gospel, and the gospel is a declaration of the Trinity in action. — J.I. Packer

There is no holiness without a Christ-centered, Christ-seeking, Christ-serving, Christ-adoring heart. — J.I. Packer

The saving power of the cross does not depend on faith being addded to it; its saving power is such that faith flows from it — J.I. Packer

The Christian's life in all its aspects-intellectual and ethical, devotional and relational, upsurging in worship and outgoing in witness-is supernatural; only the Spirit can initiate and sustain it. So apart from him, not only will there be no lively believers and no lively congregations, there will be no believers and no congregations at all. — J.I. Packer

Knowing about God is crucially important for the living of our lives. As it would be cruel to an Amazonian tribesmen to fly him to London, put him down without explanation in Trafalgar Square and leave him, as one who knew nothing of English or England, to fend for himself, so we are cruel to ourselves if we try to live in this world without knowing about the God whose world it is and who runs it .The world becomes a strange, mad, painful place, and life in it a disappointing and unpleasant business, for those who do not know about God. Disregard the study of God, and you sentence yourself to stumble and blunder through life blindfold, as it were , with no sense of direction, and no understanding of what surrounds you. This way you can waste your life and lose your soul. — J.I. Packer

Richard Baxter: Ye saints, who toil below, Adore your heavenly King, And onward as ye go Some joyful anthem sing. Take what He gives, And praise Him still Through good and ill Who ever lives. — J.I. Packer

Yet in one sense they can miss it: that is, by failing to focus on it, even when in general terms they are aware of its reality. — J.I. Packer

A God whom we could understand exhaustively, and whose revelation of Himself confronted us with no mysteries whatsoever, would be a God in man's image, and therefore an imaginary God, not the God of the Bible at all. — J.I. Packer

Godliness means responding to God's revelation in trust and obedience, faith and worship, prayer and praise, submission and service. Life must be seen and lived in the light of God's Word. This, and nothing else, is true religion. — J.I. Packer

Who can pray this request and mean it? Only he who looks at the whole of life from this point of view. Such a man will not fall into the trap of superspirituality, so concentrating on God's redemption as to disregard his creation; people like that, however devoted and well-meaning, are unearthly in more senses than one, and injure their own humanity. Instead, he will see everything as stemming ultimately from the Creator's hand, and therefore as fundamentally good and fascinating, whatever man may have made of it (beauty, sex, nature, children, arts, crafts, food, games, no less than theology and church things). Then in thankfulness and joy he will so live as to help others see life's values, and praise God for them, as he does. Supremely in this drab age, hallowing God's name starts here, with an attitude of gratitude for the goodness of the creation. — J.I. Packer

We complain today that ministers do not know how to preach; but is it not equally true that our congregations do not know how to hear? — J.I. Packer

For dishonest thinking, however well-intentioned, can only discredit the cause it serves, and must in the long run boomerang disastrously on those who indulge in it. — J.I. Packer

So we are cruel to ourselves if we try to live in this world without knowing about the God whose world it is and who runs it. — J.I. Packer

We never move on FROM the Gospel, we move on IN the Gospel — J.I. Packer

New Testament writers do not tell me why God chose to save me. They only tell me to be thankful that He did. — J.I. Packer

It is Deism which depicts God as the passive onlooker rather than the active governor of His world, and which assures us that the guarantee of human freedom lies in the fact that men's actions are not under God's control. But the Bible teaches rather that the freedom of God, who works in and through His creatures, leading them to act according to their nature, is itself the foundation and guarantee of the freedom of their action. — J.I. Packer

The healthy Christian is not necessarily the extrovert, ebullient Christian, but the Christian who has a sense of God's presence stamped deep on his soul, who trembles at God's word, who lets it dwell in him richly by constant meditation upon it, and who tests and reforms his life daily in response to it. — J.I. Packer

The very quality of books to read and facts to master with which the twentieth-century man is confronted encourages him to think broadly and superficially about much, but hinders him from thinking deeply and thoroughly about anything. — J.I. Packer

We do well to ask about the catechetical value of our songs of worship. What vision of God do they convey? Do they serve well the proclamation of the biblical Gospel? Are the doctrines they exposit or imply sound doctrines that conform to the Gospel? Are our songs biblically based, and clearly so? Have we humbled ourselves to learn from the saints who have gone before us by singing the best of the songs from of old? Or do we limit ourselves to only the newest of the new songs? How can we do a better job of seizing upon the catechetical nature and formative power of our past and present hymnody? — J.I. Packer

The conviction behind the book is that ignorance of God-ignorance both of his ways and of the practice of communion with him-lies at the root of much of the church's weakness today. — J.I. Packer

The preacher should work to convert his congregation; the wife should work to save her unbelieving husband. Christians are sent to convert, and they should not allow themselves, as Christ's representatives in the world, to aim at anything less. Evangelizing, therefore, is not simply a matter of teaching, and instructing, and imparting information to the mind. There is more to it than that. Evangelizing includes the endeavor to elicit a response to the truth taught. — J.I. Packer

God made us thinking beings, and he guides our minds as we think things out in his presence. — J.I. Packer

Wisdom is the power to see, and the inclination to choose, the best and highest goal, together with the surest means of attaining it. — J.I. Packer

The meaning of "He will give us all things" can be put thus: one day we will see that nothing - literally nothing - which could have increased our eternal happiness has been denied us, and that nothing - literally nothing - that could have reduced that happiness has been left with us. — J.I. Packer

Knowing that our Father God is in heaven, or (putting it the other way round) knowing that God in heaven is our Father, is meant to increase our wonder, joy, and sense of privilege at being his children and being given the "hot line" or prayer for communication with him. "Hot line" it truly is, for though he is Lord of the worlds, he always has time for us; his eye is on everything every moment, yet we always have his full attention whenever we call on him. Marvelous! But have we really taken it in? — J.I. Packer

There are two sorts of sick conciences, those that are not aware enough of sin and those that are not aware enough of pardon. — J.I. Packer

Good works begin with praise, worship, and honoring and exalting of God as the temper of one's whole waking life. — J.I. Packer

Sanctification has a double aspect. Its positive side is vivification, the growing and maturing of the new man; its negative side is mortification, the weakening and killing of the old man. — J.I. Packer

Holy is the Bible word for all that makes God different from us, in particular his awesome power and purity. — J.I. Packer

Holiness is always the saved sinner's response of gratitude for grace received. — J.I. Packer

Constant endeavor to please God comes from love to God, called forth by wonder at the divine work of creation that surrounds us and by a greater wonder at the divine work of redemption that saves us. — J.I. Packer

Only when you know how to die can you know how to live. — J.I. Packer

The more you praise, the more vigor you will have for prayer; and the more you pray, the more matter you will have for praise. — J.I. Packer

Simple assent to the gospel, divorced from a transforming commitment to the living Christ, is by Biblical standards less than faith, and less than saving, and to elicit only assent of this kind would be to secure only false conversions. — J.I. Packer

We must learn to measure ourselves, not by our knowledge about God, not by our gifts and responsibilities in the church, but by how we pray and what goes on in our hearts. Many of us, I suspect, have no idea how impoverished we are at this level. Let us ask the Lord to show us. — J.I. Packer

It is not for us to imagine that we can prove the truth of Christianity by our own arguments; nobody can prove the truth of Christianity except the Holy Spirit, by his own almighty work of renewing the blinded heart. It is the sovereign prerogative of Christ's Spirit to convince men's consciences of the truth of Christ's gospel; and Christ's human witnesses must learn to ground their hopes of success not on clever presentation of the truth by man, but on powerful demonstration of the truth by the Spirit. — J.I. Packer

Certainly true worship invigorates, but to plan invigoration is not necessarily to order worship. — J.I. Packer

Scripture sees hell as self-chosen ... Hell appears as God's gesture of respect for human choice. All receive what they actually chose. Either to be with God forever, worshipping Him, or without God forever, worshipping themselves. — J.I. Packer

What is less often noticed is that it is precisely the kind of moral instruction that parents are constantly trying to give their children - concrete, imaginative, teaching general principles from particular instances, and seeking all the time to bring the children to appreciate and share the parent's own attitudes and view of life ... The all-embracing principles of conduct — J.I. Packer

Regenerate people feel through their minds and think through thier feelings. They are self-aware in a God-concious and God-centered way that is beyond the understanding of those who do not not actually share this life quality . — J.I. Packer

Think against your feelings; unmask the unbelief they have nourished; let evangelical thinking correct emotional thinking. — J.I. Packer

To know that nothing happens in God's world apart from God's will may frighten the godless, but it stabilizes the saints. — J.I. Packer

Living becomes an awesome business when you realize that you spend every moment of your life in the sight and company of an omniscient, omnipresent Creator. — J.I. Packer

There is nothing more irreligious than self-absorbed religion. — J.I. Packer

Our are speculations are not the measure of our God. — J.I. Packer

Revival is the visitation of God which brings to life Christians who have been sleeping and restores a deep sense of God's near presence and holiness. Thence springs a vivid sense of sin and a profound exercise of heart in repentance, praise, and love, with an evangelistic outflow. — J.I. Packer

This is momentous knowledge. There is unspeakable comfort - the sort of comfort that energizes, be it said, not enervates-in knowing that God is constantly taking knowledge of me in love and watching over me for my good. There is tremendous relief in knowing that his love to me is utterly realistic, based at every point on prior knowledge of the worst about me, so that no discovery now can disillusion him about me, in the way I am so often disillusioned about myself, and quench his determination to bless me. There is, certainly, great cause for — J.I. Packer

The Christian's instinct of trust and worship are stimulated very powerfully by knowledge of the greatness of God. — J.I. Packer

I do not think it can be disputed that while we lay heavy stress on faith (coming to Christ, trusting His promises, believing that God knows what He is doing with our lives, and hoping for heaven), we touch very lightly on repentance (binding one's conscience to God's moral law, confessing and forsaking one's sins, making restitution for past wrongs, grieving before God at the dishonor one's sins have done Him, and forming a game plan for holy living). — J.I. Packer

The shape this book has taken reflects my belief that there is need to blow the whistle on the sidelining of personal holiness that has been a general trend among Bible-centered Western Christians during my years of ministry. It is not a trend that one would have expected, since Scripture insists so strongly that Christians are called to holiness, that God is pleased with holiness but outraged by unholiness, and that without holiness none will see the Lord. — J.I. Packer

For the God with whom they had to do is the same God with whom we have to do. We could sharpen the point by saying exactly the same God; for God does not change in the least particular. — J.I. Packer

The idea that all are children of God is not found in the Bible anywhere. — J.I. Packer

Scripture is the most up-to-date and relevant reading that ever comes my way. — J.I. Packer

When you are not conscious of temptation, pray "lead us not into temptation"; and when you are conscious of it, pray "deliver us from evil"; and you will live. — J.I. Packer

But if we play down or ignore the importance of holiness, we are utterly and absolutely wrong. Holiness is in fact commanded: God wills it, Christ requires it, and all the Scriptures - the law, the gospel, the prophets, the wisdom writings, the epistles, the history books that tell of judgments past and the book of Revelation that tells of judgment to come - call for it. — J.I. Packer

If I were the devil I should broadcast doubts about the truths and relevance and good sense and straightforwardness of the Bible ... At all costs I should want to keep them from using their minds in a disciplined way to get the measure of its message. — J.I. Packer

Two Extremes Scripture and experience warn us that here we have to steer our course between two opposite extremes of disaster. On the one hand, there is the legalistic hypocrisy of Pharisaism (God-serving outward actions proceeding from self-serving inward motives), and on the other hand there is the antinomian idiocy that rattles on about love and liberty, forgetting that the God-given law remains the standard of the God-honoring life. Both Pharisaism and antinomianism are ruinous. — J.I. Packer

Pelagianism is the natural heresy of zealous Christians who are not interested in theology. — J.I. Packer

Redeeming love and retributive justice joined hands, so to speak, at Calvary, for there God showed himself to be "just, and the justifier of him that hath faith in Jesus. — J.I. Packer

Moral life becomes a jam session in which at any time I may improvise for myself rather than play the notes in the score. — J.I. Packer

We do not make friends with God; God makes friends with us, bringing us to know him by making his love known to us ... The word know, when used of God in this way, is a sovereign-grace word, pointing to God's initiative in loving, choosing, redeeming, calling and preserving. — J.I. Packer

The way to be truly happy is to be truly human, and the way to be truly human is to be truly godly. — J.I. Packer

The Holy Spirit's main ministry is not to give thrills but to create in us Christlike character. — J.I. Packer

Our best works are shot through with sin and contain something for which we need to be forgiven. — J.I. Packer

All true theology has an evangelistic thrust, and all true evangelism is theology in action. — J.I. Packer

Has the word propitiation any place in your Christianity? In the faith of the New Testament it is central. The love of God, the taking of human form by the Son, the meaning of the cross, Christ's heavenly intercession, the way of salvation-all are to be explained in terms of itand any explanation from which the thought of propitiation is missing will be incomplete, and indeed actually misleading, by New Testament standards — J.I. Packer

For love to be replaced by resentful contempt between husband and wife, or for that matter between parent and child, or colleague and colleague, is a negation of holiness, whatever stuff one may display in books or relay from pulpits and platforms. — J.I. Packer

Part of the answer to the question that life's roller-coaster ride repeatedly raises, why has this happened to me? is always: it is moral training and discipline, planned by my Heavenly Father to help me forward along the path of Chrislike virtue. — J.I. Packer

God loves people because he has chosen to love them - as Charles Wesley put it, "he hath loved us, he hath loved us, because he would love" (an echo of Deut 7:7-8) - and no reason for his love can be given except his own sovereign good pleasure. — J.I. Packer

God is good to all in some ways and to some in all ways. — J.I. Packer

God has not abandoned us any more than he abandoned Job. He never abandons anyone on whom he has set his love; nor does Christ, the good shepherd, ever lose track of his sheep. — J.I. Packer

Genuine holiness is genuine Christlikeness, and genuine Christlikeness is genuine humanness - the only genuine humanness there is. — J.I. Packer

The Puritan ethic of marriage was first to look not for a partner whom you do love passionately at this moment but rather for one whom you can love steadily as your best friend for life, then to proceed with God's help to do just that. — J.I. Packer

Prayer to God as Father is for Christians only. — J.I. Packer

What God does in time, He planned from eternity. And all that He planned in eternity He carries out in time. — J.I. Packer

Confidence that one's impressions are God-given is no guarantee that this is really so, even when they persist and grow stronger through long seasons of prayer. Bible-based wisdom must judge them. — J.I. Packer

The psalmist [of Psalm 119] was interested in truth and orthodoxy, in biblical teaching and theology, not as ends in themselves, but as means to the further ends of life and godliness. His ultimate concern was with the knowledge and service of the great God whose truth he sought to understand (pp. 22-23). — J.I. Packer

Only when it is seen that what decides each individual's destiny is whether or not God decides to save him from his sins, and that this is a decision that God need not make in any individual case, can one begin to grasp the biblical view of grace. — J.I. Packer

God's overriding goal is to glorify Himself. — J.I. Packer

Anyone who is actually following a recognized road will not be too worried if he hears nontravelers telling each other that no such road exists. — J.I. Packer

Justification is the truly dramatic transition from the status of a condemned criminal awaiting a terrible sentence to that of an heir awaiting a fabulous inheritance. — J.I. Packer

When you climb my favorite Welsh mountain, the highest outside Snowdonia, by my favorite route, there are two places where you are sure you are seeing the top ahead of you; but when you get to the point you saw, you find it was only a fold in the terrain, and the real summit is still a distance away. That is a good illustration of how Christian ministry feels in all its forms. — J.I. Packer

What were we made for? To know God. What aim should we have in life? To know God. What is the eternal life that Jesus gives? To know God. What is the best thing in life? To know God. What in humans gives God most pleasure? Knowledge of himself. — J.I. Packer

Let your thoughts move to and fro like an accelerating pendulum, taking ever wider swings. "He's my Father - and he's God in heaven; he's God in heaven - and he's my Father! It's beyond belief - but it's true!" Grasp this, or rather, let it grasp you; then tell God what you feel about it; and that will be the worship which our Lord wanted to evoke when he gave us this thought-pattern for the invocation of the One who is both his Father and ours. — J.I. Packer

The Spirit is not given to make Bible study needless, but to make it effective. — J.I. Packer

Taste and see that the LORD is good," says the psalmist (Ps 34:8). To "taste" is, as we say, to "try" a mouthful of something, with a view to appreciating its flavor. A dish may look good, and be well recommended by the cook, but we do not know its real quality till we have tasted it. — J.I. Packer

We are only living truly human lives just so far as we are labouring to keep God's commandments; no further. — J.I. Packer

The grace of God is love freely shown toward guilty sinners, contrary to their merit and indeed in defiance of their demerit. — J.I. Packer

My advice to a new husband is nothing more than 'husbands, love your wives.' And 'love your wife as Christ has loved the church.' Never forget that you are Christ's representative in serving your wife. — J.I. Packer

To know God's love is indeed heaven on earth. And the New Testament sets forth this knowledge, not as the privilege of a favored few, but as a normal part of ordinary Christian experience, something to which only the spiritually unhealthy or malformed will be strangers. — J.I. Packer

When we reach the outer limit of what Scripture says, it is time to stop arguing and start worshipping. — J.I. Packer

This is what all the work of grace aims at - an ever deeper knowledge of God, and an ever closer fellowship with him. Grace is God drawing us sinners closer and closer to himself. — J.I. Packer

I love his threatenings as most just ... — J.I. Packer

Holy" in both biblical languages means separated and set apart for God, consecrated and made over to Him. — J.I. Packer

You can have all the right notions in your head without ever tasting in your heart the realities to which they refer; and a simple Bible reader and sermon hearer who is full of the Holy Spirit will develop a far deeper acquaintance with his God and Saviour than a more learned scholar who is content with being theologically correct. The reason is that the former will deal with God regarding the practical application of truth to his life, whereas the latter will not. — J.I. Packer

Moreover, the whole purpose of God's mighty acts is to bring man to know Him by faith; and Scripture knows no foundation for faith but the spoken word of God, inviting our trust in Him on the basis of what He has done for us. — J.I. Packer

Holiness starts inside a person, with a right purpose that seeks to express itself in a right performance. — J.I. Packer