J. I. Packer Quotes - Page 4

The Trinity is the basis of the gospel, and the gospel is a declaration of the Trinity in action.

A little knowledge OF God is worth more than a great deal of knowledge ABOUT him.

We never move on FROM the Gospel, we move on IN the Gospel

The Spirit is not given to make Bible study needless, but to make it effective.

We do not make friends with God; God makes friends with us, bringing us to know him by making his love known to us... The word know, when used of God in this way, is a sovereign-grace word, pointing to God's initiative in loving, choosing, redeeming, calling and preserving.

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

Grace 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.

[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.

Always and everywhere the servants of Christ are under orders to evangelize

God’s wrath is his righteousness reacting against unrighteousness.

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.

The peace of God is first and foremost peace with God.

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

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.

Guidance, like all God's acts of blessing under the covenant of grace, is a sovereign act. Not merely does God will to guide us in the sense of showing us his way, that we may tread it; he wills also to guide us in the more fundamental sense of ensuring that, whatever happens, whatever mistakes we may make, we shall come safely home. Slippings and strayings there will be, no doubt, but the everlasting arms are beneath us; we shall be caught, rescued, restored. This is God's promise; this is how good he is.

We are not fit for a place in God's family; the idea of his loving and exalting us sinners as he loves and has exalted the Lord Jesus sounds ludicrous and wild -- yet that, and nothing less than that, is what our adoption means.

There is no peace like the peace of those whose minds are possessed with full assurance that they have known God, and God has known them, and that this relationship guarantees God’s favor to them in life, through death and on for ever.

Sinners cannot obey the gospel, any more than the law, without renewal of heart.

God in his wisdom, to make and keep us humble and to teach us to walk by faith, has hidden from us almost everything that we should like to know about the providential purposes which he is working out in the churches and in our own lives.

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

The truth is that, though we were justified by faith alone, the faith that justifies is never alone (it always produces fruit, 'good works,'...a transformed life).

There is unspeakable comfort in knowing that God is constantly taking knowledge of me in love and watching over me for my good.

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.

Creatures are not entitled to register complaints about their Creator.

Think against your feelings; argue yourself out of the gloom they have spread; look up from your problems to the God of the gospel.