J. I. Packer - Church Quotes

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We approach Scripture with minds already formed by the mass of accepted opinions and viewpoints with which we have come into contact, in both the Church and the world....It is easy to be unaware that it has happened; it is hard even to begin to realize how profoundly tradition in this sense has moulded us.

J. I. Packer
To an age which has unashamedly sold itself to the gods of greed, pride, sex, and self-will, the church mumbles on about God's kindness but says virtually nothing about his judgment... The fact is that the subject of divine wrath has become taboo in modern society, and Christians by and large have accepted the taboo and conditioned themselves never to raise the matter.

J. I. Packer
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
Were it not for the work of the Holy Spirit there would be no gospel, no faith, no church, no Christianity in the world at all.

J. I. Packer
The Christian's instincts of trust and worship are stimulated very powerfully by knowledge of the greatness of God. But this is knowledge which Christians today largely lack: and that is one reason why our faith is so feeble and our worship so flabby... When a person in the church, let alone the person in the street, uses the word God, the thought is rarely of divine majesty.

J. I. Packer
The task of the church is to make the invisible Kingdom visible through faithful Christian living and witness-bearing.

J. I. Packer
But that is not because these principles are traditional; it is because they are biblical. There is certainly an arrogant, hide-bound type of traditionalism, unthinking and uncritical, which is carnal and devilish. But there is also a respectful willingness to take help from the Church's past in order to understand the Bible in the present; and such traditionalism is spiritual and Christian.

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 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