J. I. Packer Quotes

127 Sourced Quotes

Sanctification has a double aspect. Its positive side is vivification, the growing and maturing of the new man; its negative side is mortification, the weakening and killing of the old man.

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

J. I. Packer
The Church no more gave us the New Testament canon than Isaac Newton gave us the force of gravity.

J. I. Packer
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.

J. I. Packer
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
Joy is a condition that is experienced, but it is more than a feeling; it is, primarily, a state of mind.

J. I. Packer
The Holy Spirit's main ministry is not to give thrills but to create in us Christlike character.

J. I. Packer
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
Infallible denotes the quality of never deceiving or misleading and so means wholly trustworthy and reliable; inerrant means wholly true. Scripture is termed infallible and inerrant to express the conviction that all its teaching is the utterance of God who cannot lie, whose word, once spoken, abides for ever, and that therefore it may be trusted implicitly.

J. I. Packer
What God does in time, He planned from eternity. And all that He planned in eternity He carries out in time.

J. I. Packer
But to read all Scripture narratives as if they were eye-witness reports in a modern newspaper, and to ignore the poetic and imaginative form in which they are sometimes couched, would be no less a violation of the canons of evangelical literalism than the allegorizing of the Scholastics was.

J. I. Packer
Adoption is the highest privilege that the gospel offers: higher even than justification... To be right with God the Judge is a great thing, but to be loved and cared for by God the Father is greater.

J. I. Packer
There is tremendous relief in knowing that His love to me is based at every point on prior knowledge of the worst about me.

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

J. I. Packer
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
The measure of all love is its giving. The measure of the love of God is the cross of Christ.

J. I. Packer
Evangelizing includes the endeavor to elicit a response to the truth taught.

J. I. Packer
God's wrath is his righteousness reacting against unrighteousness.

J. I. Packer
The peace of God is first and foremost peace with God; it is the state of affairs in which God, instead of being against us, is for us. No account of God's peace which does not start here can do other than mislead.

J. I. Packer
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
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
Maturity is a compound of wisdom, goodwill, resilience, and creativity.

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

J. I. Packer
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
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
God's love is an exercise of his goodness toward sinners who merit only condemnation.

J. I. Packer
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
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
In common honesty, we must not conceal the fact that free forgiveness in one sense will cost everything.

J. I. Packer