Inspirational Quotes by J.I. Packer
“If only preaching be necessary, let us have none but preachers. What needs there, then, such a stir about government? But if discipline (in its place) be necessary too, what is it but enmity to men's salvation to exclude it?”
“Nothing can be rightly known, if God be not known; nor is any study well managed, nor to any great purpose, if God is not studied.”
“Beware lest, while you proclaim to the world the necessity of a Savior, your own hearts should neglect him, and you should miss an interest in him and his saving benefits. Take heed to yourselves, lest you perish, while you call upon others to take heed of perishing; and lest you famish yourselves while you prepare food for them. Though there”
“Some desire to know merely for the sake of knowing, and that is shameful curiosity. Some desire to know that they may sell their knowledge, and that too is shameful. Some desire to know for reputation’s sake, and that is shameful vanity. But there are some who desire to know that they may edify others, and that is praiseworthy; and there are some who desire to know that they themselves may be edified, and that is wise.”
“Content not yourselves with being in a state of grace, but be also careful that your graces are kept in vigorous and lively exercise, and that you preach to yourselves the sermons which you study, before you preach them to others. If”
“When I let my heart grow cold, my preaching is cold; and when it is confused, my preaching is confused; and so I can often observe also in the best of my hearers, that when I have grown cold in preaching, they have grown cold too; and the next prayers which I have heard from them have been too like my preaching. We are the nurses of Christ’s little ones. If”
“Take heed to yourselves, lest your example contradict your doctrine, and lest you lay such stumbling–blocks before the blind, as may be the occasion of their ruin; lest you unsay with your lives, what you say with your tongues; and be the greatest hindrances of the success of your own labors. It”
“If you must needs have your pleasures, you should not have put yourselves into that calling that requireth you to make God and His service your pleasure, and restraineth you so much from fleshly pleasures.”
“Do you know that much of the Christian warfare consisteth in the combat between the flesh and the Spirit; and that is the very difference between a true Christian and a wicked wretch, that one liveth after the Spirit, and mortifieth the deeds and desires of the body, and the other liveth after the flesh?”
“The ministry is another kind of business than too many excellent preachers take it to be.”
“Recreations for a student must be especially for the exercise of his body, he having before him such variety of delights for his mind; and they must be as whetting is with the mower, only to be used so far as is necessary to his work.”
“I know necessity may cause the Church to tolerate the weak; but woe to us if we tolerate and indulge our own weakness.”
“Just as we need to direct the thoughts of careless sinners inwardly and turn them from the world and sin and to themselves, in a different way we need to direct the thoughts of self-perplexing, melancholy persons outwardly. This is so because it is the nature of their disorder to be always accusing themselves. Remember that it is a far higher, nobler, and sweeter work to think of God, Christ, and heaven, than of such worms as we ourselves are.”
“God. When you pore over the contents of your heart to search whether or not the love of God is there, it would be wiser to think of the infinite friendliness of God.”
“The love of something precedes desire and grief over it. Whatever men love, they delight in possessing them, mourn to be without, and desire to gain.”
topics: desire
“7. The effects of natural sickness or disease are not (in and of themselves) sins. 8. The smallest sins (formally) and least likely to condemn us are those which we are most unwilling to commit and least love or enjoy. 9. No sin that we hate more than we love shall condemn us, if we would rather leave and be delivered from it than keep it. This is true repentance.”
“O how unconcernedly do many look on the miseries of others, how far are they from taking a lesson to themselves therefrom!”
“The truth is, the crook in the lot is the great engine of Providence for making men appear in their true colours, discovering both their ill and their good. And if the grace of God is in them, it will bring it out, and cause it to display itself. It so puts the Christian to his shifts, that however it makes him stagger for awhile, yet it will at length evidence both the reality and the strength of grace in him. "You are in heaviness through manifold temptations, that the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perishes, may be found unto praise.”
“In order to test our submission to Him, God has subjected us to others whom He has set over us. He then discovers what regard we will pay to His authority through the commands from others. Dominion or superiority is a part of the divine image shining in us (1 Cor 11:7).5 Therefore, we must reverence these qualities with respect to the ray of the divine image shining in them (Eph 5:33).6 The same principle holds in all other relations and superiorities; they are reflecting the authority of God with those under them (Ps 82:6).7 And although those in authority are worthless in themselves, He does not release us from our debt of submission (Acts 23:1-5,8 Rom 13:79). Our respect rests not on the qualities of others but on their position, which is the ground of our debt of reverence and subjection”
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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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