Inspirational Quotes by J.I. Packer
“Listen again to Shakespeare. In his tragedy King Lear, one of the world’s classics on dysfunctional families, a dispossessed son who refuses to be embittered by the way he has been treated comments thus on his blinded father’s loss of the will to live: Men must endure Their going hence, even as their coming hither; Ripeness is all. (act 5, scene 2)”
“It is extraordinary how little the New Testament says about God’s interest in our success, by comparison with the enormous amount that it says about God’s interest in our holiness, our maturity in Christ, and our growth into the fullness of His image.”
“Holiness starts inside a person, with a right purpose that seeks to express itself in a right performance.”
“Between human beings in and beyond middle age a comparable difference appears. Some grow old gracefully, meaning, fully in the grip of the grace of God. Increasingly they display a well-developed understanding with a well-formed character: firm, resilient, and unyielding, with an unfailing sense of proportion and abundant resources for upholding and mentoring others.”
“single-minded, wholehearted, free and glad concentration on the business of pleasing God.”
“[Racers] always try to keep something in reserve for a final sprint…so far as our bodily health allows, we should aim to be found running the last lap of our Christian life, as we would say, flat out. The final sprint, so I urge, should be a sprint indeed (pp. 21-22).”
topics: aging
“Holiness and humanness are correlative terms and mutual implicates (as the logicians would put it). To the”
“The deepest word that can be spoken about sanctification is that it is a progress towards true humanity.”
“For love to be replaced by resentful contempt between husband and wife, or for that matter between parent and child, or colleague and colleague, is a negation of holiness, whatever stuff one may display in books or relay from pulpits and platforms.”
“Robert Murray McCheyne declared: “My people’s greatest need is my personal holiness.”
“But if we play down or ignore the importance of holiness, we are utterly and absolutely wrong. Holiness is in fact commanded: God wills it, Christ requires it, and all the Scriptures—the law, the gospel, the prophets, the wisdom writings, the epistles, the history books that tell of judgments past and the book of Revelation that tells of judgment to come—call for it.”
“Righteousness, meaning holy integrity and uprightness, is the breastplate in the armor of God that Christians are called to wear in order to counter the devil’s attacks (Eph. 6:14).”
“I do not think it can be disputed that while we lay heavy stress on faith (coming to Christ, trusting His promises, believing that God knows what He is doing with our lives, and hoping for heaven), we touch very lightly on repentance (binding one's conscience to God's moral law, confessing and forsaking one's sins, making restitution for past wrongs, grieving before God at the dishonor one's sins have done Him, and forming a game plan for holy living).”
― J.I. Packer ,
“Holiness is in fact commanded: God wills it, Christ requires it, and all the Scriptures—the law, the gospel, the prophets, the wisdom writings, the epistles, the history books that tell of judgments past and the book of Revelation that tells of judgment to come—call for it.”
― J.I. Packer ,
topics: holiness
“Holiness is the object of our new creation. We are born again so that we may grow up into Christlikeness.”
― J.I. Packer ,
topics: holiness
“[Sanctification] is a process that includes on the one hand medication and diet (in the form of biblical instruction and admonition coming in various ways to the heart), and on the other hand tests and exercises (in the form of internal and external pressures, providentially ordered, to which we have to make active response). The process goes on as long as we are in the world, which is something that God decides in each case.”
― J.I. Packer ,
“Holiness is actually the true health of the person.”
“Man’s power of spontaneous and responsible choice is a created thing, an aspect of the mystery of created human nature, and God’s power to fulfill his purposes is not limited by anything that he has made.”
― J.I. Packer ,
from Growing in Christ
“Let your thoughts move to and fro like an accelerating pendulum, taking ever wider swings. “He’s my Father—and he’s God in heaven; he’s God in heaven—and he’s my Father! It’s beyond belief—but it’s true!” Grasp this, or rather, let it grasp you; then tell God what you feel about it; and that will be the worship which our Lord wanted to evoke when he gave us this thought-pattern for the invocation of the One who is both his Father and ours.”
― J.I. Packer ,
from Growing in Christ
“God’s purpose at the cross was as real as was the guilt of the crucifiers.”
― J.I. Packer ,
from Growing in Christ
Group of Brands
© 2026 Bibleportal.com All rights reserved.
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.
(http://www.regent-college.edu/about_r...http://www.regent-college.edu/about_r...)