Top 200 J.I. Packer Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “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.”

— J.I. Packer

52. “There is no peace like the peace of those whose minds are possessed with full assurance that they have known God, and God has known them, and that this relationship guarantees God’s favor to them in life, through death and on for ever.”

— J.I. Packer

53. “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.”

— J.I. Packer

54. “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

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

— J.I. Packer

56. “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

57. “God uses chronic pain and weakness, along with other afflictions, as his chisel for sculpting our lives.”

— J.I. Packer

58. “Nothing in fiction is so fantastic as is this truth of the Incarnation.”

— J.I. Packer

59. “The Church no more gave us the New Testament canon than Isaac Newton gave us the force of gravity.”

— J.I. Packer

60. “There are no small sins against a great God.”

— J.I. Packer

61. “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.”

— J.I. Packer

62. “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

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

— J.I. Packer

64. “God answers the prayer we ought to have made rather than the prayer we did make.”

— J.I. Packer

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

— J.I. Packer

66. “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.”

— J.I. Packer

67. “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.”

— J.I. Packer

68. “It is often the case, as all the saints know, that fellowship with the Father and the Son is most vivid and sweet, and Christian joy is greatest, when the cross is heaviest.”

— J.I. Packer

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

— J.I. Packer

70. “All true theology has an evangelistic thrust, and all true evangelism is theology in action.”

— J.I. Packer

71. “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.”

— J.I. Packer

72. “C. H. Spurgeon was once asked if he could reconcile these two truths to each other. “I wouldn’t try,” he replied; “I never reconcile friends.” Friends? – yes, friends. This is the point that we have to grasp. In the Bible, divine sovereignty and human responsibility are not enemies. They are not uneasy neighbors; they are not in an endless state of cold war with each other. They are friends, and they work together.”

— J.I. Packer

73. “Getting God in focus means thinking correctly about his character, his sovereignty, his salvation, his love, his Son, his Spirit, and all the realities of his work and ways; it also means thinking rightly about our own relationship to him as creatures either under sin or under grace, either living this responsive life of faith, hope, and love or living unresponsively, in barrenness and gloom of heart.”

— J.I. Packer

74. “The Trinity is the basis of the gospel, and the gospel is a declaration of the Trinity in action.”

— J.I. Packer

75. “What matters supremely, therefore, is not, in the last analysis, the fact that I know God, but the larger fact which underlies it – the fact that He knows me.”

— J.I. Packer

76. “Live each day as if thy last” is a wise word from a hymn written in 1674 by Thomas Ken. The older we get, the more needful its wisdom becomes, and if we have not already taken it to heart, we should do so now.”

— J.I. Packer

77. “The idea that all are children of God is not found in the Bible anywhere.”

— J.I. Packer

78. “To be right with God the judge is a great thing, but to be loved and cared for by God the Father is a greater.”

— J.I. Packer

79. “The unceasing activity of the Creator whereby, in overflowing bounty and goodwill, He upholds His creatures in ordered existence, guides and governs all events, circumstances, and free acts of angels and men, and directs everything to its appointed goal, for His own glory.”

— J.I. Packer

80. “Doctrinal preaching certainly bores the hypocrites; but it is only doctrinal preaching that will save Christ’s sheep.”

— J.I. Packer

81. “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

82. “The Holy Spirit is God the evangelist.”

— J.I. Packer

83. “God then does not profess to answer in Scripture all the questions that we, in our boundless curiosity, would like to ask about Scripture. He tells us merely as much as He sees we need to know as a basis for our life of faith.”

— J.I. Packer

84. “Repentance, as we know, is basically not moaning and remorse, but turning and change.”

— J.I. Packer

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

— J.I. Packer

86. “Our Lord Jesus Christ is both God for man and man for God;.”

— J.I. Packer

87. “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?”

— J.I. Packer

88. “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.”

— J.I. Packer

89. “Any theology that does not lead to song is, at a fundamental level, a flawed theology.”

— J.I. Packer

90. “If we pursue theological knowledge for its own sake, it’s bound to go bad on us. It will make us proud and conceited.”

— J.I. Packer

91. “The gospel does in truth proclaim the redemption of reason. Obscurantism is always evil, and wilful error is always sin., All truth is God’s truth; facts, as such, are sacred, and nothing is more un-Christian than to run away from them.”

— J.I. Packer

92. “Only when you know how to die can you know how to live.”

— J.I. Packer

93. “The Christian’s instinct of trust and worship are stimulated very powerfully by knowledge of the greatness of God.”

— J.I. Packer

94. “It is staggering that God should love sinners, yet it is true.”

— J.I. Packer

95. “God is good to all in some ways and to some in all ways.”

— J.I. Packer

96. “In the Bible, divine sovereignty and human responsibility are not enemies. They are not uneasy neighbors; they are not in an endless state of cold war with each other. They are friends, and they work together.”

— J.I. Packer

97. “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.”

— J.I. Packer

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

— J.I. Packer

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

— J.I. Packer

100. “The peace of God is first and foremost peace with God.”

— J.I. Packer