Once you become aware that the main business that you are here for is to know God, most of life's problems fall into place of their own accord.
J. I. PackerThe way to be truly happy is to be truly human, and the way to be truly human is to be truly godly.
J. I. PackerIf you are walking backward, away from something you think is a mistake, you may be right in supposing it is a mistake, but for you to be walking backward is never right. You know what happens to people who walk backward.... We are meant to walk forward, not backward, and reaction is always a matter of walking backward.
J. I. PackerScripture sees hell as self-chosen. . . Hell appears as God's gesture of respect for human choice. All receive what they actually chose. Either to be with God forever, worshipping Him, or without God forever, worshipping themselves.
J. I. PackerThink 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. PackerWe meet God through entering into a relationship both of dependance on Jesus as our Saviour and Friend and of discipleship to Him as our Lord and Master.
J. I. PackerGrace means God sending his only Son to the cross to descend into hell so that we guilty ones might be reconciled to God and received into heaven.
J. I. PackerMen who know their God are before anything else men who pray, and the first point where their zeal and energy for God's glory come to expression is in their prayers. If there is little energy for such prayer, and little consequent practice of it, this is a sure sign that as yet we scarcely know our God.
J. I. PackerNothing can alter the character of God. In the course of a human life, tastes and outlook and temper may change radically: a kind, equable man may turn bitter and crotchety: a man of good-will may grow cynical and callous. But nothing of this sort happens to the Creator. He never becomes less truthful, or merciful, or just, or good, than He used to be.
J. I. PackerGod's Word is not presented in Scripture in the form of a theological system, but it admits of being stated in that form, and, indeed, requires to be so stated before we can properly grasp it - grasp it, that is, as a whole. Every text has its immediate context in the passage from which it comes, its broader context in the book to which it belongs, and its ultimate context in the Bible as a whole; and it needs to be rightly related to each of these contexts if its character, scope and significance is to be adequately understood.
J. I. PackerWhen we reach the outer limit of what Scripture says, it is time to stop arguing and start worshipping.
J. I. PackerThe incarnation is in itself an unfathomable mystery, but it makes sense of everything else that the New Testament contains.
J. I. PackerIf 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. PackerThe 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. PackerIm 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. PackerInfallible 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. PackerGod 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. PackerThe grace of God is love freely shown toward guilty sinners, contrary to their merit and indeed in defiance of their demerit.
J. I. PackerWe think of God as too much like what we are. Learn to acknowledge the full majesty of your incomparable God and Savior.
J. I. PackerOne of the many divine qualities of the Bible is that it does not yield its secrets to the irreverent and the censorious.
J. I. PackerThere is, however, equally great incentive to worship and love God in the thought that, for some unfathomable reason, He wants me as His friend, and desires to be my friend, and has given His Son to die for me in order to realize this purpose. not merely that we know God, but that He knows us.
J. I. PackerGod has not abandoned us any more than he abandoned Job. He never abandons anyone on whom he has set his love; nor does Christ, the good shepherd, ever lose track of his sheep.
J. I. PackerHoly is the Bible word for all that makes God different from us, in particular his awesome power and purity.
J. I. PackerDoctrinal preaching certainly bores the hypocrites; but it is only doctrinal preaching that will save Christ's sheep.
J. I. PackerToday, 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. PackerBut 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. PackerHoly people glory, not in their holiness, but in Christ's cross; for the holiest saint is never more than a justified sinner and never sees himself in any other way.
J. I. PackerThe Christian's instinct of trust and worship are stimulated very powerfully by knowledge of the greatness of God.
J. I. PackerLiving 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. PackerI 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. PackerThe Holy Spirit's main ministry is not to give thrills but to create in us Christlike character.
J. I. PackerThe 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. PackerWilliam Wilberforce...w as a great man who impacted the Western world as few others have done. Blessed with brains, charm, influence and initiative, much wealth ... he put evangelism on Britain's map as a power for social change, first by overthrowing the slave trade almost single-handed and then by generating a stream of societies for doing good and reducing evil in public life... To forget such men is foolish.
J. I. PackerIf our theology does not quicken the conscience and soften the heart, it actually hardens both.
J. I. PackerDo I as a Christian understand myself? Do I know my own real identity? My own real destiny? I am a child of God, God is my Father; heaven is my home; every day is one day nearer. My Saviour is my brother; every Christian is my brother too. Say it over and over again to yourself first thing in the morning, last thing at night, as you wait for the bus, any time when your mind is free, and ask God that you may be enabled to live as one who knows it is all utterly and completely true. For this is the Christians secret of the Christian life, of a God-honouring life.
J. I. Packer[N]obody can produce new evidence of your depravity that will make God change his mind. For God justified you with (so to speak) his eyes open. He knew the worst about you at the time when he accepted you for Jesus' sake; and the verdict which he passed then was, and is, final.
J. I. PackerWherever 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. PackerRevelation does not mean man finding God, but God finding man, God sharing His secrets with us, God showing us Himself. In revelation, God is the agent as well as the object.
J. I. Packer