J. I. Packer - Knowing God (1973)

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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
The Almighty appeared on earth as a helpless human baby, needing to be fed and changed and taught to talk like any other child. The more you think about it, the more staggering it gets. Nothing in fiction is so fantastic as this truth of the Incarnation.

J. I. Packer
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
What were we made for? To know God. What aim should we have in life? To know God. What is the eternal life that Jesus gives? To know God. What is the best thing in life? To know God. What in humans gives God most pleasure? Knowledge of himself.

J. I. Packer
The God of Israel is King of kings and Lord of lords... He know, and foreknows, all things, and his foreknowledge is foreordination; he, therefore, will have the last word, both in world history and in the destiny of every man; his kingdom and righteousness will triumph in the end, for neither men nor angels shall be able to thwart him.

J. I. Packer
Meditation is the activity of calling to mind, and thinking over, and dwelling on, and applying to oneself, the various things that one knows about the works and ways and purposes and promises of God.

J. I. Packer
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
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
The fruit of wisdom is Christlikeness, peace, humility and love. And, the root of it is faith in Christ as the manifested wisdom of God

J. I. Packer
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
If you want to judge how well a person understands Christianity, find out how much he makes of the thought of being God's child, and having God as his Father. If this is not the thought that prompts and controls his worship and prayers and his whole outlook on life, it means that he does not understand Christianity very well at all.

J. I. Packer
It is staggering that God should love sinners, yet it is true.

J. I. Packer
The modern way with God is to set him at a distance, if not to deny him altogether; and the irony is that modern Christians, preoccupied with maintaining religious practices in an irreligous world, have themselves allowed God to become remote...for churchmen who look at God through the wrong end of the telescope, so reducing him to pigmy proportions, cannot hope to end up as more than pigmy Christians.

J. I. Packer
We are only living truly human lives just so far as we are labouring to keep God's commandments; no further.

J. I. Packer
His purpose is simply to draw us closer to Himself in conscious communion with Him.

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

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

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
Have you been holding back from a risky, costly course to which you know in your heart God has called you? Hold back no longer. Your God is faithful to you, and adequate for you. You will never need more than He can supply, and what He supplies, both materially and spiritually, will always be enough for the present.

J. I. Packer
The point here is not just that an image represents God as having body and parts, whereas in reality he has neither. But the point really goes much deeper. The heart of the objection to pictures and images is that they inevitably conceal most, if not all, of the truth about the personal nature and character of the divine Being whom they represent.

J. I. Packer
God has spoken to man, and the Bible is his Word, given to us to make us wise unto salvation... 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