Top 241 Quotes & Sayings by J. I. Packer

Explore popular quotes and sayings by a British priest J. I. Packer.

Last updated on November 21, 2024.

James Innell Packer was an English-born Canadian evangelical theologian, cleric and writer in the low-church Anglican and Calvinist traditions. He was considered one of the most influential evangelicals in North America, known for his best-selling book, Knowing God, written in 1973, as well as his work as an editor for the English Standard Version of the Bible. He was one of the high-profile signers on the 1978 Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, a member on the advisory board of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, and also was involved in the ecumenical book Evangelicals and Catholics Together in 1994. His last teaching position was as the board of governors' Professor of Theology at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia, in which he served from 1996 until his retirement in 2016 due to failing eyesight.

British - Priest | Born: July 22, 1926

Source: Wikipedia

The books of C.S. Lewis had a very profound, indirect effect on me.

J. I. Packer

In some Old Testament books, it's very evident that an editor has been at work. That's quite all right. It's part of the process.

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

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

I must ask the Lord to direct the Holy Spirit within me to drain the life out of sin and in prayer.

J. I. Packer

Christianity has stayed stable, as it must do. The doctrines don't change. The understanding of what it means to walk with God doesn't change. The reality of worship doesn't change, not at heart, anyway. So Christianity appears to be stuck.

J. I. Packer

I never get to the end of mortifying sin because sin in my heart, where it's still marauding even though it's no longer dominant, sin in my heart is constantly expressing itself in new disorderly desires.

J. I. Packer

I'm not against technology, but all tools should be used to their best advantage. We should be spending our time on things that have staying power, instead of on the latest thought of the latest blogger - and then moving on quickly to the next blogger.

J. I. Packer

Evangelical churches are weaker than we realize because we don't teach the confessions and doctrine.

J. I. Packer

I'm amazed at the amount of time people spend on the Internet.

J. I. Packer

The simple statement, 'God is for us', is in truth one of the richest and weightiest utterances that the Bible contains.

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

Guidance, like all God's acts of blessing under the covenant of grace, is a sovereign act. Not merely does God will to guide us in the sense of showing us his way, that we may tread it; he wills also to guide us in the more fundamental sense of ensuring that, whatever happens, whatever mistakes we may make, we shall come safely home. Slippings and strayings there will be, no doubt, but the everlasting arms are beneath us; we shall be caught, rescued, restored. This is God's promise; this is how good he is.

J. I. Packer

The weaker we feel, the harder we lean. And the harder we lean, the stronger we grow spiritually, even while our bodies waste away.

J. I. Packer

The measure of all love is its giving. The measure of the love of God is the cross of Christ.

J. I. Packer

God uses chronic pain and weakness, along with other afflictions, as his chisel for sculpting our lives. Felt weakness deepens dependence on Christ for strength each day. The weaker we feel, the harder we lean. And the harder we lean, the stronger we grow spiritually, even while our bodies waste away. To live with your ‘thorn’ uncomplainingly — that is, sweet, patient, and free in heart to love and help others, even though every day you feel weak — is true sanctification. It is true healing for the spirit. It is a supreme victory of grace.

J. I. Packer

Do I as a Christian understand myself? Do I know my own real identity? My own real destiny? I am a child of God, God is my Father; heaven is my home; every day is one day nearer. My Saviour is my brother; every Christian is my brother too. Say it over and over again to yourself first thing in the morning, last thing at night, as you wait for the bus, any time when your mind is free, and ask God that you may be enabled to live as one who knows it is all utterly and completely true. For this is the Christians secret of the Christian life, of a God-honouring life.

J. I. Packer

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

J. I. Packer

There is a tremendous relief in knowing that {God's} 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.

J. I. Packer

God the Father is the giver of Holy Scripture; God the Son is the theme of Holy Scripture; and God the Spirit is the author, authenticator, and interpreter of Holy Scripture.

J. I. Packer

Doctrinal preaching certainly bores the hypocrites; but it is only doctrinal preaching that will save Christ's sheep.

J. I. Packer

Wait on the Lord" is a constant refrain in the Psalms, and it is a necessary word, for God often keeps us waiting. He is not in such a hurry as we are, and it is not his way to give more light on the future than we need for action in the present, or to guide us more than one step at a time. When in doubt, do nothing, but continue to wait on God. When action is needed, light will come.

J. I. Packer

We dishonor God if we proclaim a Savior who satisfies and then go around discontent

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

A half-truth masquerading as the whole truth becomes a complete untruth.

J. I. Packer

Only when you know how to die can you know how to live.

J. I. Packer

There is unspeakable comfort in knowing that God is constantly taking knowledge of me in love and watching over me for my good.

J. I. Packer

There are no small sins against a great God

J. I. Packer

Christ had no interest in gathering vast crowds of professed adherents who would melt away as soon as they found out what following Him actually demanded of them. In our own presentation of Christ's gospel, therefore, we need to lay a similar stress on the cost of following Christ and make sinners face it soberly before we urge them to respond to the message of free forgiveness. In common honesty, we must not conceal the fact that free forgiveness in one sense will cost everything.

J. I. Packer

I am graven on the palms of His hands. I am never out of His mind. All my knowledge of Him depends on His sustained initiative in knowing me. I know Him, because He first knew me, and continues to know me. He knows me as a friend, One who loves me; and there is no moment when His eye is off me, or His attention distracted for me, and no moment, therefore, when His care falters.

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

There is tremendous relief in knowing that His love to me is based at every point on prior knowledge of the worst about me.

J. I. Packer

There's a difference between knowing God and knowing about God. When you truly know God, you have energy to serve Him, boldness to share Him, and contentment in Him.

J. I. Packer

Not until we have become humble and teachable, standing in awe of God's holiness and sovereignty...a cknowledging our own littleness, distrusting our own thoughts, and willing to have our minds turned upside down, can divine wisdom become ours.

J. I. Packer

Repentance means turning from as much as you know of your sin to give as much as you know of yourself to as much as you know of your God, and as our knowledge grows at these three points so our practice of repentance has to be enlarged.

J. I. Packer

Infallible denotes the quality of never deceiving or misleading and so means wholly trustworthy and reliable; inerrant means wholly true. Scripture is termed infallible and inerrant to express the conviction that all its teaching is the utterance of God who cannot lie, whose word, once spoken, abides for ever, and that therefore it may be trusted implicitly.

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

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

Revelation does not mean man finding God, but God finding man, God sharing His secrets with us, God showing us Himself. In revelation, God is the agent as well as the object.

J. I. Packer

In the New Testament grace means God's love in action towards men who merited the opposite of love. Grace means God moving heaven and earth to save sinners who could not lift a finger to save themselves.

J. I. Packer

Adoption is the highest privilege that the gospel offers: higher even than justification.. . To be right with God the Judge is a great thing, but to be loved and cared for by God the Father is greater.

J. I. Packer

The stars may fall, but God's promises will stand and be fulfilled.

J. I. Packer

God made life, and God alone can tell us its meaning.

J. I. Packer

God is good to all in some ways and to some in all ways.

J. I. Packer

The battle against pride in the heart is lifelong, so humility should become an ever more deeply seated attitude of living

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

Once you become aware that the main business that you are here for is to know God, most of life's problems fall into place of their own accord.

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

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

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

The peace of God is first and foremost peace with God.

J. I. Packer

To an age which has unashamedly sold itself to the gods of greed, pride, sex, and self-will, the church mumbles on about God's kindness but says virtually nothing about his judgment... The fact is that the subject of divine wrath has become taboo in modern society, and Christians by and large have accepted the taboo and conditioned themselves never to raise the matter.

J. I. Packer

You can know a lot about God and godliness and still not know God.

J. I. Packer

What is a Christian? The richest answer I know is that a Christian is one who has God as Father.

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

I need not torment myself with the fear that my faith may fail; as grace led me to faith in the first place, so grace will keep me believing to the end. Faith, both in its origin and continuance, is a gift of grace (Phil 1:29).

J. I. Packer

Our high and privileged calling is to do the will of God in the power of God for the glory of God.

J. I. Packer

Even when we cannot see the why and wherefore of God's dealings, we know that there is love in and behind them, and so we can rejoice always.

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

Repentance is more than just sorrow for the past; repentance is a change of mind and heart, a new life of denying self and serving the Savior as king in self's place.

J. I. Packer

Top 241 Quotes & Sayings by J. I. Packer

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