Top 241 Quotes & Sayings by J. I. Packer - Page 3

Ease and luxury, such as our affluence brings today, do not make for maturity; hardship and struggle however do.

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.

We think of God as too much like what we are. Learn to acknowledge the full majesty of your incomparable God and Savior.

Christian minds have been conformed to the modern spirit: the spirit, that is, that spawns great thoughts of man and leaves room for only small thoughts of God.

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.

What makes life worthwhile is having a big enough objective, something which catches our imagination and lays hold of our allegiance, and this the Christian has in a way that no other person has. For what higher, more exalted, and more compelling goal can there be than to know God?

Certainly true worship invigorates, but to plan invigoration is not necessarily to order worship.

The God of Israel is King of kings and Lord of lords... He know, and foreknows, all things, and his foreknowledge is foreordination; he, therefore, will have the last word, both in world history and in the destiny of every man; his kingdom and righteousness will triumph in the end, for neither men nor angels shall be able to thwart him.

We approach Scripture with minds already formed by the mass of accepted opinions and viewpoints with which we have come into contact, in both the Church and the world....It is easy to be unaware that it has happened; it is hard even to begin to realize how profoundly tradition in this sense has moulded us.

Have you been holding back from a risky, costly course to which you know in your heart God has called you? Hold back no longer. Your God is faithful to you, and adequate for you. You will never need more than He can supply, and what He supplies, both materially and spiritually, will always be enough for the present.

The gift of sonship to God becomes ours not through being born, but through being born again.

Whatever else in the Bible catches your eye, do not let it distract you from Him.

It has been said that in the New Testament doctrine is grace; and ethics is gratitude; and something is wrong with any form of Christianity in which, experimentally and practically, this saying is not being verified. Those who suppose that the doctrine of God's grace tends to encourage moral laxity are simply showing that, in the most literal sense, they do not know what they are talking about. For love awakens love in return; and love, once awakened, desires to give pleasure.

Were I asked to focus the New Testament message in three words, my proposal would be ADOPTION THROUGH PROPITIATION, and I do not expect ever to meet a richer or more pregnant summary of the gospel than that.

Pelagianism is the natural heresy of zealous Christians who are not interested in theology.

For what higher, more exalted, and more compelling goal can there be than to know God?

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

The whole story of the Father's Christ-exalting plan of redeeming love, from eternity to eternity, must be told, or the radical reorientation of life for which the gospel calls will not be understood, and the required total shift from man-centeredness to God-centeredness, and more specifically from self-centeredness to Christ-centeredness, will not take place.

The Christmas message is that there is hope for a ruined humanity--hope of pardon, hope of peace with God, hope of glory--because at the Father's will Jesus became poor, and was born in a stable so that thirty years later He might hang on a cross.

Adoption is the highest privilege the gospel offers.

We meet God through entering into a relationship both of dependance on Jesus as our Saviour and Friend and of discipleship to Him as our Lord and Master.

Holy people glory, not in their holiness, but in Christ's cross; for the holiest saint is never more than a justified sinner and never sees himself in any other way.

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

Nothing can alter the character of God. In the course of a human life, tastes and outlook and temper may change radically: a kind, equable man may turn bitter and crotchety: a man of good-will may grow cynical and callous. But nothing of this sort happens to the Creator. He never becomes less truthful, or merciful, or just, or good, than He used to be.

Arminianism is 'natural' in one sense, in that it represents a characteristic perversion of Biblical teaching by the fallen mind of man.

Today, on our own turf, we face pagan ignorance about God every bit as deep as that which the early church faced in the Roman Empire.

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.

Disregard the study of God, and you sentence yourself to stumble and blunder through life blindfolded.

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.

If our theology does not quicken the conscience and soften the heart, it actually hardens both.

This one word 'grace' contains within itself the whole of New Testament theology.

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.

The preachers commission is to declare the whole counsel of God; but the cross is the center of that counsel.

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.

A simple Bible reader and sermon hearer who is full of the Holy Spirit will develop a far deeper acquaintance with his God and Savior than a more learned scholar who is content with being theologically correct.

Our aim in studying the Godhead must be to know God himself better. Our concern must be to enlarge our acquaintance, not simply with the doctrine of God’s attributes, but with the living God whose attributes they are.

The Holy Spirit is God the evangelist.

The Almighty appeared on earth as a helpless human baby, needing to be fed and changed and taught to talk like any other child. The more you think about it, the more staggering it gets. Nothing in fiction is so fantastic as this truth of the Incarnation.

But man's eyes are blind through sin, and he can discern no part of God's truth till the Spirit opens them. Inner illumination, leading directly as it does to a deep, inescapable conviction, is thus fundamental to the Spirit's work as a teacher.

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

The Evangelical is not afraid of facts, for he knows that all facts are God's facts; nor is he afraid of thinking, for he knows that all truth is God's truth, and right reason cannot endanger sound faith.

God's ways do not change... Still he shows his freedom and lordship by discriminating between sinners, causing some to hear the gospel while others do not hear it, and moving some of those who hear it to repentance while leaving others in their unbelief, thus teaching his saints that hew owes mercy to none and that it is entirely of his grace, not at all through their own effort, that they themselves have found life.

The essence of God's action in wrath is to give people what they choose, in all its implications.

Man is a responsible moral agent, though he is also divinely controlled; man is divinely controlled, though he is also a responsible moral agent.

Evangelizing includes the endeavor to elicit a response to the truth taught.

Grace means God sending his only Son to the cross to descend into hell so that we guilty ones might be reconciled to God and received into heaven.

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.

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.

The Church, therefore, has two constant needs; instruction in the truths by which it must live, and correction of the shortcomings by which its life is marred.

There is nothing more irreligious than self-absorbed religion.

Optimism is a wish without warrant; Christian hope is a certainty, guaranteed by God himself. Optimism reflects ignorance as to whether good things will ever actually come. Christian hope expresses knowledge that every day of his life, and every moment beyond it, the believer can say with truth, on the basis of God's own commitment, that the best is yet to come.

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

Calvary not merely made possible the salvation of those for whom Christ died; it ensured that they would be brought to faith and their salvation made actual.

The incarnation is in itself an unfathomable mystery, but it makes sense of everything else that the New Testament contains.

Men treat God's sovereignty as a theme for controversy, but in Scripture it is matter for worship.

There is, however, equally great incentive to worship and love God in the thought that, for some unfathomable reason, He wants me as His friend, and desires to be my friend, and has given His Son to die for me in order to realize this purpose. not merely that we know God, but that He knows us.

The Christmas spirit does not shine out in the Christian snob. For the Christmas spirit is the spirit of those who, like their Master, live their whole lives on the principle of making themselves poor -- spending and being spent -- to enrich their fellow humans, giving time, trouble, care and concern, to do good to others -- and not just their own friends -- in whatever way there seems need.

There are few things stressed more strongly in the Bible than the reality of God's work as Judge.

How can we turn our knowledge about God into knowledge of God? The rule for doing this is simple but demanding. It is that we turn each Truth that we learn about God into matter for meditation before God, leading to prayer and praise to God.

We are to order our lives by the light of His Law, not by our guesses about His plan.