Inspirational Quotes by J.I. Packer
“Toplady, who is the poet of Christian assurance in the same sense as Watts is the poet of God’s sovereignty and Charles Wesley the poet of the new creation, voices the realization to which Paul’s question seeks to lead us:”
― J.I. Packer ,
from Knowing God
“When the person in the church, let alone the person in the street, uses the word God, the thought is rarely of divine majesty. A well-known book is called Your God Is Too Small; it is a timely title. We are poles apart from our evangelical forefathers at this point, even when we confess our faith in their words.”
― J.I. Packer ,
from Knowing God
“We need to ask ourselves: What is my ultimate aim and object in occupying my mind with these things? What do I intend to do with my knowledge about God, once I have it? For the fact that we have to face is this. If we pursue theological knowledge for its own sake, it is bound to go bad on us. It will make us proud and conceited.”
― J.I. Packer ,
from Knowing God
“Lord, it belongs not to my care Whether I die or live; To love and serve Thee is my share, And this Thy grace must give. If life be long, I will be glad, That I may long obey; If short—then why should I be sad To soar to endless day?”
― J.I. Packer ,
from Knowing God
“When the person in the church, let alone the person in the street, uses the word God, the thought is rarely of divine majesty. A well-known book is called Your God Is Too Small; it is a timely title. We are poles apart from our evangelical forefathers at this point, even when we confess our faith in their words. When you start reading Luther, or Edwards, or Whitefield, though your doctrine may be theirs, you soon find yourself wondering whether you have any acquaintance at all with the mighty God whom they knew so intimately.”
― J.I. Packer ,
from Knowing God
“Richard Baxter: Ye saints, who toil below, Adore your heavenly King, And onward as ye go Some joyful anthem sing. Take what He gives, And praise Him still Through good and ill Who ever lives.”
― J.I. Packer ,
from Knowing God
“You tremble before the nations, because you are much weaker than they; but God is so much greater than the nations that they are as nothing to him. Behold your God!”
― J.I. Packer ,
from Knowing God
“That is how God reacts when his children lapse into wrong ways. Unregenerate apostates are often cheerful souls, but backsliding Christians are always miserable. So, if you find yourself asking: Where is the blessedness I knew when first I saw the Lord? you ought certainly to ask, before you go any further, whether there have been particular willful”
― J.I. Packer ,
from Knowing God
“Wisdom in Scripture always means knowledge of the course of action that will please God and secure life, so that the promise of James 1:5—“If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives to all men generously and without reproaching, and it will be given him” (RSV)—is in effect a promise of guidance. “Let your minds be remade and your whole nature thus transformed,” counsels Paul.”
― J.I. Packer ,
from Knowing God
“gift of wisdom consisting in the power to do this, the gift actually presupposes our conscious inability to do it,”
― J.I. Packer ,
from Knowing God
“Again: you are called to be a meek person, not always standing up for your rights, nor concerned to get your own back, nor troubled in your heart by ill treatment and personal slights (though, if you are normally sensitive, these things are bound to hurt you at the top level of consciousness); but you are simply to commit your cause to God and leave it to him to vindicate you if and when he sees fit.”
― J.I. Packer ,
from Knowing God
“Five basic truths, five foundation-principles of the knowledge about God which Christians have,”
― J.I. Packer ,
from Knowing God
“When he made us, his purpose was that we should love and honor him, praising him for the wonderfully ordered complexity and variety of his world, using it according to his will, and so enjoying both it and him. And though we have fallen, God has not abandoned his first purpose. Still he plans that a great host of humankind should come to love and honor him. His ultimate objective is to bring them to a state in which they please him entirely and praise him adequately, a state in which he is all in all to them, and he and they rejoice continually in the knowledge of each other’s love—people rejoicing in the saving love of God, set upon them from all eternity, and God rejoicing in the responsive love of people, drawn out of them by grace through the gospel.”
― J.I. Packer ,
from Knowing God
“This, at bottom, seems to be what is wrong with us. We are afraid to go all the way in accepting the authority of God, because of our secret uncertainty as to his adequacy to look after us if we do. Now let us call a spade a spade. The name of the game we are playing is unbelief, and Paul’s “he will give us all things” stands as an everlasting rebuke to us. Paul is telling us that there is no ultimate loss or irreparable impoverishment to be feared; if God denies us something, it is only in order to make room for one or other of the things he has in mind. Are we, perhaps, still assuming that a person’s life consists, partly at any rate, in the things he possesses?”
― J.I. Packer ,
from Knowing God
“Is it doctrine—truth about God, taught by God—that you are after? If so, you will find that Romans gives you all the main themes integrated together: God, man, sin, law, judgment, faith, works, grace, creation, redemption, justification, sanctification, the plan of salvation, election, reprobation, the person and work of Christ, the work of the Spirit, the Christian hope, the nature of the church, the place of Jew and Gentile in God’s purpose, the philosophy of church and world history, the meaning and message of the Old Testament, the significance of baptism, the principles of personal piety and ethics, the duties of Christian citizenship—et cetera!”
― J.I. Packer ,
from Knowing God
“Paul wrote the two previous verses to counter the Christian’s fear of opposition and privation among men; he writes this verse to counter fear of rejection by God. 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 ,
from Knowing God
“He was not now God minus some elements of his deity, but God plus all that he had made his own by taking manhood to himself.”
― J.I. Packer ,
from Knowing God
“Read Romans this way and you will find that it has unique power to search out and deal with things which are so much part of you that ordinarily you do not give them a thought—your sinful habits and attitudes; your instinct for hypocrisy; your natural self-righteousness and self-reliance; your constant unbelief; your moral frivolity, and shallowness in repentance; your halfheartedness, worldliness, fearfulness, despondency; your spiritual conceit and insensitivity. And you will also find that this shattering letter has unique power to evoke the joy, assurance, boldness, liberty and ardor of spirit which God both requires of and gives to those who love him.”
― J.I. Packer ,
from Knowing God
“All speculative theology, which rests on philosophical reasoning rather than biblical revelation, is at fault here. Paul tells us where this sort of theology ends: “The world by wisdom knew not God” (1 Cor 1:21 KJV). To follow the imagination of one’s heart in the realm of theology is the way to remain ignorant of God, and to become an idol-worshipper, the idol in this case being a false mental image of God, made by one’s own speculation and imagination.”
― J.I. Packer ,
from Knowing God
“The psalmist [of Psalm 119] was interested in truth and orthodoxy, in biblical teaching and theology, not as ends in themselves, but as means to the further ends of life and godliness. His ultimate concern was with the knowledge and service of the great God whose truth he sought to understand (pp. 22-23).”
― J.I. Packer ,
from Knowing God
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Dr. Packer, the Board of Governors’ Professor of Theology at Regent College, was hailed by TIME as “a doctrinal Solomon” among Protestants. “Mediating debates on everything from a particular Bible translation to the acceptability of free-flowing Pentecostal spirituality, Packer helps unify a community [evange licalism] that could easily fall victim to its internal tensions.”
Knowing God, Dr. Packer’s seminal 1973 work, was lauded as a book which articulated shared beliefs for members of diverse denominations; the TIME profile quotes Michael Cromartie of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington as saying, “conservative Methodists and Presbyterians and Baptists could all look to [Knowing God] and say, ‘This sums it all up for us.’”
In a similar tribute to Dr. Packer almost ten years ago, American theologian Mark Noll wrote in Christianity Today that, “Packer’s ability to address immensely important subjects in crisp, succinct sentences is one of the reasons why, both as an author and speaker, he has played such an important role among American evangelicals for four decades.”
For over 25 years Regent College students have been privileged to study under Dr. Packer’s clear and lucid teaching, and our faculty, staff and students celebrate the international recognition he rightly receives as a leading Christian thinker and teacher.
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