Top 200 J.I. Packer Quotes (2024 Update)
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101. “Joy is a condition that is experienced, but it is more than a feeling; it is, primarily, a state of mind.”

— J.I. Packer

102. “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

103. “God’s wisdom is not, and never was, pledged to keep a fallen world happy, or to make ungodliness comfortable.”

— J.I. Packer

104. “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

105. “Think against your feelings; argue yourself out of the gloom they have spread; look up from your problems to the God of the gospel.”

— J.I. Packer

106. “There are ministers who never speak of repentance or self-denial. Naturally they are popular, but they are false prophets.”

— J.I. Packer

107. “This one word ‘grace’ contains within itself the whole of New Testament theology.”

— J.I. Packer

108. “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.”

— J.I. Packer

109. “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

110. “The Spirit is not given to make Bible study needless, but to make it effective.”

— J.I. Packer

111. “He that has learned to feel his sins, and to trust Christ as a Saviour, has learned the two hardest and greatest lessons in Christianity.”

— J.I. Packer

112. “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.”

— J.I. Packer

113. “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

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

— J.I. Packer

115. “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

116. “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.”

— J.I. Packer

117. “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

118. “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

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

— J.I. Packer

120. “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

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

— J.I. Packer

122. “We are not fit for a place in God’s family; the idea of his loving and exalting us sinners as he loves and has exalted the Lord Jesus sounds ludicrous and wild – yet that, and nothing less than that, is what our adoption means.”

— J.I. Packer

123. “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

124. “Suffering is getting what you do not want while wanting what you do not get.”

— J.I. Packer

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

— J.I. Packer

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

— J.I. Packer

127. “God in his wisdom, to make and keep us humble and to teach us to walk by faith, has hidden from us almost everything that we should like to know about the providential purposes which he is working out in the churches and in our own lives.”

— J.I. Packer

128. “Arminianism is ‘natural’ in one sense, in that it represents a characteristic perversion of Biblical teaching by the fallen mind of man.”

— J.I. Packer

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

— J.I. Packer

130. “To mend our own relationship with God, regaining God’s favor after having once lost it, is beyond the power of any one of us. And one must see and bow to this before one can share the biblical faith in God’s grace.”

— J.I. Packer

131. “Our best works are shot through with sin and contain something for which we need to be forgiven.”

— J.I. Packer

132. “The Life of true holiness is rooted in the soil of awed adoration.”

— J.I. Packer

133. “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

134. “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

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

— J.I. Packer

136. “We dishonor God if we proclaim a Savior who satisfies and then go around discontent.”

— J.I. Packer

137. “Sinners cannot obey the gospel, any more than the law, without renewal of heart.”

— J.I. Packer

138. “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

139. “Trying to describe what I do in prayer would be like telling the world how I make love to my wife.”

— J.I. Packer

140. “Disregard the study of God, and you sentence yourself to stumble and blunder through life blindfolded, as it were, with no sense of direction and no understanding of what surrounds you.”

— J.I. Packer

141. “The character of God is today, and always will be, exactly what it was in Bible times.”

— J.I. Packer

142. “Underlying the preaching of the Puritans are three basic axioms: 1. The unique place of preaching is to convert, feed and sustain, 2. The life of the preacher must radiate the reality of what he preaches, 3. Prayer and solid Bible study are basic to effective preaching.”

— J.I. Packer

143. “There are two sorts of sick consciences, those that are not aware enough of sin and those that are not aware enough of pardon.”

— J.I. Packer

144. “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

145. “There are few things stressed more strongly in the Bible than the reality of God’s work as Judge.”

— J.I. Packer

146. “There is nothing more irreligious than self-absorbed religion.”

— J.I. Packer

147. “The most excellent study of expanding the soul, is the science of Christ, and Him crucified, and the knowledge of the Godhead in the glorious Trinity.”

— J.I. Packer

148. “Always and everywhere the servants of Christ are under orders to evangelize.”

— J.I. Packer

149. “Read two old books for every new one.”

— J.I. Packer

150. “God’s love is an exercise of his goodness toward sinners who merit only condemnation.”

— J.I. Packer