Top 200 J.I. Packer Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “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

152. “The worlds greatest need is the personal holiness of Christian people.”

— J.I. Packer

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

— J.I. Packer

154. “Every time we mention God we become theologians, and the only question is whether we are going to be good ones or bad ones.”

— J.I. Packer

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

— J.I. Packer

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

— J.I. Packer

157. “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.”

— J.I. Packer

158. “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.”

— J.I. Packer

159. “Wisdom will not go with comforting illusions, false sentiment, or the use of rose-colored glasses.”

— J.I. Packer

160. “Many humanists in the West are stirred by a sense of outrage at what professed Christians, past and present, have done; and this makes them see their humanism as a kind of crusade, with the killing of Christianity as its prime goal.”

— J.I. Packer

161. “Confidence that one’s impressions are God-given is no guarantee that this is really so, even when they persist and grow stronger through long seasons of prayer. Bible-based wisdom must judge them.”

— J.I. Packer

162. “One of the many divine qualities of the Bible is that it does not yield its secrets to the irreverent and the censorious.”

— J.I. Packer

163. “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

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

— J.I. Packer

165. “Historical exegesis is only the preliminary part of interpretation; application is its essence. Exegesis without application should not be called interpretation at all.”

— J.I. Packer

166. “What we often feel in ecstatic moments in this world – ‘I don’t ever want this to stop’ – will be the constant thought of our hearts in that world. We shall think it, knowing that in fact it never WILL stop.”

— J.I. Packer

167. “Daydreaming and indulgence of nostalgia are unhappy habits, making for unrealism and discontent. Like all bad habits, they tighten their grip on us until we set ourselves against them and, with God’s help, break them. Elderly retirees are prone to find that a disciplined breaking of them is an increasingly necessary task in life’s last lap, in which steady looking ahead in each present moment becomes a bigger and bigger factor in inner spiritual health.”

— J.I. Packer

168. “Redeeming love and retributive justice joined hands, so to speak, at Calvary, for there God showed himself to be “just, and the justifier of him that hath faith in Jesus.”

— J.I. Packer

169. “Calvinism is the consistent endeavor to acknowledge the Creator as the Lord, working all things after the counsel of His will.”

— J.I. Packer

170. “Im amazed at the amount of time people spend on the Internet.”

— J.I. Packer

171. “What Is the Motive for Evangelizing? There are, in fact, two motives that should spur us constantly to evangelize. The first is love of God and concern for his glory; the second is love of man and concern for his welfare.”

— J.I. Packer

172. “We complain today that ministers do not know how to preach; but is it not equally true that our congregations do not know how to hear?”

— J.I. Packer

173. “The very quality of books to read and facts to master with which the twentieth-century man is confronted encourages him to think broadly and superficially about much, but hinders him from thinking deeply and thoroughly about anything.”

— J.I. Packer

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

— J.I. Packer

175. “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.”

— J.I. Packer

176. “Holy is the Bible word for all that makes God different from us, in particular his awesome power and purity.”

— J.I. Packer

177. “I must labor to keep my heart actively responsive to God.”

— J.I. Packer

178. “Our proud humanism, so-called, has made the world more like hell than heaven.”

— J.I. Packer

179. “Our are speculations are not the measure of our God.”

— J.I. Packer

180. “We must seek, in studying God, to be led to God.”

— J.I. Packer

181. “We should not... think of our fellowship with other Christians as a spiritual luxury, an optional addition to the exercises of private devotion. We should recognise rather that such fellowship is a spiritual necessity, for God has made us in such a way that our fellowship with himself is fed by our fellowship with fellow Christians, and requires to be so fed constantly for its own deepening and enrichment.”

— J.I. Packer

182. “Im 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

183. “John Wesley at eighty-five wrote in his journal that the only sign of deterioration that he could see in himself was that he could not run as fast as he used to. With all due deference to that wonderful, seemingly tireless little man, we may reasonably suspect that he was overlooking some things at this point, just as some do when they assure us that they never had a day’s illness in their life. We cannot stop our bodies aging, any more than King Canute’s say-so could stop the tide coming in.”

— J.I. Packer

184. “Creatures are not entitled to register complaints about their Creator.”

— J.I. Packer

185. “His purpose is simply to draw us closer to Himself in conscious communion with Him.”

— J.I. Packer

186. “We are only living truly human lives just so far as we are labouring to keep God’s commandments; no further.”

— J.I. Packer

187. “We must seek, in studying God, to be led to God. It was for this purpose that revelation was given, and it is to this use that we must put it.”

— J.I. Packer

188. “The more you praise, the more vigor you will have for prayer; and the more you pray, the more matter you will have for praise.”

— J.I. Packer

189. “Fanciful spiritualizing, so far from yielding God’s meaning, actually obscured it. The literal sense is itself the spiritual sense, coming from God and leading to Him.”

— J.I. Packer

190. “Evangelizing includes the endeavor to elicit a response to the truth taught.”

— J.I. Packer

191. “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.”

— J.I. Packer

192. “For dishonest thinking, however well-intentioned, can only discredit the cause it serves, and must in the long run boomerang disastrously on those who indulge in it.”

— J.I. Packer

193. “Wherever Christianity has produced what historians call a ‘popular piety’ claiming to be part of the national heritage, anti-Christian reaction among the intelligentsia has followed.”

— J.I. Packer

194. “There is no holiness without a Christ-centered, Christ-seeking, Christ-serving, Christ-adoring heart.”

— J.I. Packer

195. “All my knowledge of him depends on his sustained initiative in knowing me.”

— J.I. Packer

196. “Christ had the good of souls in his eye... When you preach, let this be your design, to seek to recover lost sheep... to get some converted, and brought in to your Master.”

— J.I. Packer

197. “Rarely does this world look as if a beneficent Providence were running it.”

— J.I. Packer

198. “When you are not conscious of temptation, pray “lead us not into temptation”; and when you are conscious of it, pray “deliver us from evil”; and you will live.”

— J.I. Packer

199. “But the way to tell whether in fact you are evangelizing is not to ask whether conversions are known to have resulted from your witness. It is to ask whether you are faithfully making known the gospel message.”

— J.I. Packer

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

— J.I. Packer