Top 200 J.I. Packer Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “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

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

— J.I. Packer

53. “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

54. “We never move on FROM the Gospel, we move on IN the Gospel.”

— J.I. Packer

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

— J.I. Packer

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

— J.I. Packer

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

— J.I. Packer

58. “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

59. “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

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

— J.I. Packer

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

— J.I. Packer

62. “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

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

— J.I. Packer

64. “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

65. “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

66. “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

67. “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

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

— J.I. Packer

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

— 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. “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

74. “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

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

— J.I. Packer

76. “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

77. “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

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

— J.I. Packer

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

— J.I. Packer

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

— J.I. Packer

81. “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

82. “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

83. “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

84. “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

85. “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

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

— J.I. Packer

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

— J.I. Packer

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

— J.I. Packer

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

— J.I. Packer

90. “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

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

— J.I. Packer

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

— J.I. Packer

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

— J.I. Packer

94. “In common honesty, we must not conceal the fact that free forgiveness in one sense will cost everything.”

— J.I. Packer

95. “Think against your feelings; unmask the unbelief they have nourished; let evangelical thinking correct emotional thinking.”

— J.I. Packer

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

— J.I. Packer

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

— J.I. Packer

98. “The gospel tells that our Judge has become our Savior.”

— J.I. Packer

99. “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

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

— J.I. Packer