A little knowledge of God is worth more than a great deal of knowledge about Him.
Taken from Knowing God by JI Packer. Copyright(c) 1973. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press, PO Box 1400, Downers Grove, IL 60515, p. 26. Get this book!
It is not strange that He, the Author of Life, should rise from the dead. If he was truly God the Son, it is much more startling that He should die than He should rise again.
Taken from Knowing God by JI Packer. Copyright(c) 1973. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press, PO Box 1400, Downers Grove, IL 60515, p. 54. Get this book!
The crucial significance of the cradle at Bethlehem lies in its place in the sequence of steps down that led the son of God to the cross of Calvary, and we do not understand it till we see it in this context.
Taken from Knowing God by JI Packer. Copyright(c) 1973. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press, PO Box 1400, Downers Grove, IL 60515, p. 58. Get this book!
Not till we have become humble and teachable, standing in awe of God’s holiness and sovereignty, acknowledging our own littleness, distrusting our own thoughts and willing to have our minds turned upside down, can divine wisdom become ours.
Taken from Knowing God by JI Packer. Copyright(c) 1973. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press, PO Box 1400, Downers Grove, IL 60515, p. 101. Get this book!
Wisdom consists of choosing the best means to the best end.
Taken from Knowing God by JI Packer. Copyright(c) 1973. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press, PO Box 1400, Downers Grove, IL 60515, p. 108. Get this book!
God’s work of giving wisdom is a means to His chosen end of restoring and perfecting the relationship between Himself and human beings – the relationship for which He made them.
Taken from Knowing God by JI Packer. Copyright(c) 1973. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press, PO Box 1400, Downers Grove, IL 60515, p. 108. Get this book!
True Christians are people who acknowledge and live under the Word of God. They submit without reserve to the Word of God written in the “Book of Truth” (Dan. 10:21), believing the teaching, trusting the promises, following the commands. Their eyes are upon the God of the Bible as their Father and the Christ of the Bible as their Savior.
Taken from Knowing God by JI Packer. Copyright(c) 1973. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press, PO Box 1400, Downers Grove, IL 60515, p. 116. Get this book!
God’s love is an exercise of His goodness toward individual sinners, whereby, having identified Himself with their welfare, He has given His son to be their Savior, and now brings them to know and enjoy Him in a covenant relation.
Taken from Knowing God by JI Packer. Copyright(c) 1973. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press, PO Box 1400, Downers Grove, IL 60515, p.123. Get this book!
The measure of love is how much it gives, and the measure of the love of God is the gift of his only son to become human, and to die for sins, and so to become the one mediator who can bring us to God.
Taken from Knowing God by JI Packer. Copyright(c) 1973. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press, PO Box 1400, Downers Grove, IL 60515, p.125. Get this book!
[Grace] tells us how our Judge has become our Savior.
Taken from Knowing God by JI Packer. Copyright(c) 1973. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press, PO Box 1400, Downers Grove, IL 60515, p.132. Get this book!
We were made in His image, but we must not think of Him existing in ours.
Taken from Knowing God by JI Packer. Copyright(c) 1973. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press, PO Box 1400, Downers Grove, IL 60515, p.47. Get this book!
Our aim in studying the Godhead must be to know God Himself better. Our concern must be to enlarge our acquaintance, not simply with the doctrine of God’s attributes, but with the living God whose attributes they are.
Taken from Knowing God by JI Packer. Copyright(c) 1973. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press, PO Box 1400, Downers Grove, IL 60515, p.23. Get this book!
There can be no spiritual help without doctrinal knowledge; but it is equally true that there can be no spiritual help with it, if it is sought for the wrong purpose and valued by the wrong standard.
Taken from Knowing God by JI Packer. Copyright(c) 1973. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press, PO Box 1400, Downers Grove, IL 60515, p.22. Get this book!
We are cruel to ourselves if we try to live in this world without knowing about the God whose world it is and who runs it. The world becomes a strange, mad, painful place and life in it a disappointing and unpleasant business, for those who do not know God.
Taken from Knowing God by JI Packer. Copyright(c) 1973. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press, PO Box 1400, Downers Grove, IL 60515, p.19. Get this book!
The study of God is a subject so vast, that all our thoughts are lost in its immensity; so deep, that our pride is drowned in its infinity.
Taken from Knowing God by JI Packer. Copyright(c) 1973. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press, PO Box 1400, Downers Grove, IL 60515, p.17. Get this book!
Puritan preaching revolved around “Christ, and Him crucified” – for this is the hub of the Bible. The preachers’ commission is to declare the whole counsel of God; but the cross is the center of that counsel, and the Puritans knew that the traveler through the Bible landscape misses his way as soon as he loses sight of the hill called Calvary.
The Puritans in Ministry taken from A Quest for Godliness by J.I. Packer, copyright 1990, Crossway Books, a division of Good News Publishers, Wheaton Illinois 60187, www.crosswaybooks.org. Page 286.
It must by now be apparent that the great Puritan pastor-theologians—Owen, Baxter, Goodwin, Howe, Perkins, Sibbes, Brooks, Watson, Gurnall, Flavel, Bunyan, Manton, and others like them—were men of outstanding intellectual power, as well as spiritual insight. In them mental habits fostered by sober scholarship were linked with a flaming zeal for God and a minute acquaintance with the human heart. All their work displays this unique fusion of gifts and graces. In thought and outlook they were radically God-centred. Their appreciation of God’s sovereign majesty was profound, and their reverence in handling His written word was deep and constant. They were patient, thorough, and methodical in searching the Scriptures, and their grasp of the various threads and linkages in the web of revealed truth was firm and clear. They understood most richly the ways of God with men, the glory of Christ the Mediator, and the work of the Spirit in the believer and the church.
Why We Need the Puritans by J.I Packer taken from A Quest for Godliness by J.I. Packer, copyright 1990, Crossway Books, a division of Good News Publishers, Wheaton Illinois 60187, www.crosswaybooks.org. Page 29.
Scripture is the unalterable rule of holiness.
Why We Need the Puritans by J.I Packer taken from A Quest for Godliness by J.I. Packer, copyright 1990, Crossway Books, a division of Good News Publishers, Wheaton Illinois 60187, www.crosswaybooks.org. Page 24.
Knowing that God’s way to the human heart (the will) is via the human head (the mind), the Puritans practiced meditation, discursive and systematic, on the whole range of biblical truth as they saw it applying to themselves. Puritan meditation on Scripture was modeled on the Puritan sermon; in meditation, the Puritan would seek to search and challenge his heart, stir his affections to hate sin and love righteousness, and encourage himself with God’s promises.
Why We Need the Puritans by J.I Packer taken from A Quest for Godliness by J.I. Packer, copyright 1990, Crossway Books, a division of Good News Publishers, Wheaton Illinois 60187, www.crosswaybooks.org. Page 24.
The Puritans…were great souls serving a great God. In them clear-headed passion and warm-hearted compassion combined. Visionary and practical, idealistic and realistic too, goal-oriented and methodical, they were great believers, great hopers, great doers, and great sufferers. But their sufferings, both sides of the ocean (in Old England from the authorities and in New England from the elements), seasoned and ripened them till they gained a stature that was nothing short of heroic. Ease and luxury, such as our affluence brings us today, do not make for maturity; hardship and struggle however do, and the Puritans’ battles against the spiritual and climatic wildernesses in which God set them produced a virility Of character, undaunted and unsinkable, rising above discouragement and fears, for which the true precedents and models are men like Moses, and Nehemiah, and Peter after Pentecost, and the apostle Paul.
Why We Need the Puritans by J.I Packer taken from A Quest for Godliness by J.I. Packer, copyright 1990, Crossway Books, a division of Good News Publishers, Wheaton Illinois 60187, www.crosswaybooks.org. Page 22.
We complain today that ministers do not know how to preach; but is it not equally true that our congregations do not know how to hear?
The mark of the false prophet or teacher is self-serving unfaithfulness to God and His truth. It may be that he says what he shouldn’t; but it is far more likely that he will err by failing to say what he should. He will gloss over all the tough questions and issues as did the false prophets in the Old Testament who went around saying, "Peace, peace," when there was no peace (Jer. 6:14). They wouldn’t speak the tough word calling for repentance nor suggest that Israel was out of sorts spiritually. Instead they brought groundless comfort, lulling people into a false sense of security so that their hearers were totally unprepared for the judgment which eventually came on them. There are teachers in the church today who never speak of repentance, self-denial, the call to be relatively poor for the Lord’s sake, or any other demanding aspect of discipleship. Naturally they are popular and approved, but for all that, they are false prophets. We will know such people by their fruits. Look at the people to whom they have ministered. Do these folks really know and love the Lord? Are they prepared to take risks, even hazard their lives, for Jesus? Or are they comfortable, inactive, and complacent? If so, they are self-deceived, and those who have irresponsibly encouraged their self-deception will have to answer for it. Anyone who is in a position of spiritual leadership who fails to teach the more demanding, less comfortable, “narrow gate” and “rough road” side of discipleship becomes a false prophet.
Your Father Loves You, Harold Shaw Publishers, 1986, page for September 19.
The Almighty appeared on earth as a helpless human baby, needing to be fed and changed and taught to talk like any other child. The more you think about it, the more staggering it gets. Nothing in fiction is so fantastic as this truth of the Incarnation.
Christian Reader, v. 33, n. 6.
Many of us would agree with Peter when he says that parts of Paul’s letters are hard to understand! And there are difficulties and apparent discrepancies in other parts of the Bible too. On this matter of discrepancies, I remember reading something written by an old seventeenth-century Puritan named William Bridge. He said that harping on discrepancies shows a very bad heart, adding: “For a godly man, it should be as it was with Moses. When a godly man sees the Bible and secular data apparently at odds, well, he does as Moses did when he saw an Egyptian fighting an Israelite: he kills the Egyptian. He discounts the secular testimony, knowing God’s Word to be true. But when he sees an apparent inconsistency between two passages of Scripture, he does as Moses did when he found two Israelites quarreling: he tries to reconcile them. He says, ‘Aha, these are brethren, I must make peace between them.’ And that’s what the godly man does.”
Your Father Loves You, Harold Shaw Publishers, 1986, page for June 21.
Repentance, as we know, is basically not moaning and remorse, but turning and change.
Marks of Revival, Revival Commentary, v. 1, n. 1.
The impression of Jesus which the Gospels give is not so much one of deity reduced as of divine capacities restrained.
The New Encyclopedia of Christian Quotations, ed. Mark Water, 2000, Baker, p. 180.
No upsurge of religious interest or excitement merits the name of revival if there is no profound sense of sin at its heart. God’s coming, and the consequent impact of His Word, makes Christians much more sensitive to sin than they previously were: consciences become tender and a profound humbling takes place. The perverseness, ugliness, uncleanness, and guilt of sin are seen and felt with new vividness.
Marks of Revival, Revival Commentary, v. 1, n. 1.
A revived church is full of the life, joy and power of the Holy Spirit. With the Spirit’s coming, fellowship with Christ is brought right to the center of our worship and devotion; the glorified Christ is shown, known, loved, served, and exalted. Love and generosity, unity and joy, assurance and boldness, a spirit of praise and prayer, and a passion to reach out to win others are recurring marks of a people experiencing revival.
Marks of Revival, Revival Commentary, v. 1, n. 1.
Christians in revival are accordingly found living in God’s presence (Coram Deo), attending to His Word, feeling acute concern about sin and righteousness, rejoicing in the assurance of Christ’s love and their own salvation, spontaneously constant in worship, and tirelessly active in witness and service, fueling these activities by praise and prayer.
Marks of Revival, Revival Commentary, v. 1, n. 1.
Revival is the visitation of God which brings to life Christians who have been sleeping and restores a deep sense of God’s near presence and holiness. Thence springs a vivid sense of sin and a profound exercise of heart in repentance, praise, and love, with an evangelistic outflow.
Your Father Loves You, Shaw Publishing, 1986, Page for May 30.
Calvary not merely made possible the salvation of those for whom Christ died; it ensured that they would be brought to faith and their salvation made actual.
I saw myself standing outside a house looking in on a tremendous party with laughter and joy. The Lord tracked me down and found me. I was surprised by grace. I became an avid Bible reader and my initial doubts soon evaporated in the atmosphere of solid Bible exposition at the Christian Union.
Surprised by Grace in More than Conquerors, ed. John D. Woodbridge, Moody, 1992, p. 317.
Any idea of getting beyond conflict, outward or inward, in our pursuit of holiness in this world is an escapist dream that can only have disillusioning and demoralizing effects on us as waking experience daily disproves it. What we must realize, rather, is that any real holiness in us will be under hostile fire all the time, just as our Lord’s was.
God’s Words: Studies of Key Bible Themes, Intervarsity Press, 1981, p. 195.
Our business is to present the Christian faith clothed in modern terms, not to propagate modern thought clothed in Christian terms… Confusion here is fatal.
The way to be truly happy is to be truly human, and the way to be truly human is to be truly godly.
Quoted in: Reformation and Revival Journal, v. 13, n. 3, p. 173.
It is most misleading to call this soteriology “Calvinism” at all, for it is not a peculiarity of John Calvin and the divines of Dort, but a part of the revealed truth of God and the catholic (universal) Christian faith. “Calvinism” is one of the “odious names” by which down the centuries prejudice has been raised against it. But the thing itself is just the biblical gospel.
What matters supremely, therefore, is not, in the last analysis, the fact that I know God, but the larger fact which underlies it – the fact that He knows me.
Underlying the preaching of the Puritans are three basic axioms:
1. The unique place of preaching is to convert, feed and sustain.
2. The life of the preacher must radiate the reality of what he preaches.
3. Prayer and solid Bible study are basic to effective preaching.
Puritan Preaching, Reformation Today, 68.
Preaching appears in the Bible as a relaying of what God has said about Himself and His doings, and about men in relation to Him, plus a pressing of His commands, promises, warnings, and assurances, with a view to winning the hearer or hearers…to a positive response.
Preaching a Biblical Interpretation in Inerrancy and Common Sense, edited by Roger Nicole and J. Ramsey Michaels, Baker, 1980, p. 189.
We are to order our lives by the light of His law, not our guesses about His plan.
The New Encyclopedia of Christian Quotations, ed. Mark Water, 2000, Baker, p. 190.
If it is right for man to have the glory of God as his goal, can it be wrong for God to have the same goal? If man can have no higher purpose than God’s glory, how can God? If it is wrong for man to seek a lesser end than this, it would be wrong for God, too. The reason it cannot be right for man to live for himself, as if He were God, is because He is not God. However, it cannot be wrong for God to seek His own glory, simply because He is God. Those who insist that God should not seek His glory in all things are really asking that He cease to be God. And there is no greater blasphemy than to will God out of existence.
Hot Tub Religion, Tyndale House, 1987, p. 38.
Evangelicals know that the power behind the eighteenth century revivals and the great nineteenth century missionary movement was prayer, and that the prayer was made out of hearts agonizing over the prospect of all who leave this world without Christ being lost. Was such prayer misconceived? uninstructed? foolish? wrong-headed? An evangelical who values his heritage must ponder that question, recognizing that if universalism is true all that missionary passion and praying was founded on a monstrous mistake.
Cited in: Evangelical Affirmations by Kenneth Kantzer and Carl F.H. Henry, Zondervan, 1990, p. 107-108, www.zondervan.com.
No evangelical, I think, need hesitate to admit that in his heart of hearts he would like universalism to be true. Who can take pleasure in the thought of people being eternally lost? If you want to see folk damned, there is something wrong with you! Universalism is thus a comfortable doctrine in a way that alternatives are not. But wishful thinking, based on a craving for comfort and a reluctance to believe that some of God’s truth might be tragic, is no sure index of reality.
Cited in: Evangelical Affirmations by Kenneth Kantzer and Carl F.H. Henry, Zondervan, 1990, p. 107-108, www.zondervan.com.
To the question: what must I do to be saved? The old gospel replies: believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. To the further question: what does it mean to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ? Its reply is: it means knowing oneself to be a sinner, and Christ to have died for sinners; abandoning all self-righteousness and self-confidence, and casting oneself wholly upon Him for pardon and peace; and exchanging one’s natural enmity and rebellion against God for a spirit of grateful submission to the will of Christ through the renewing of one’s heart by the Holy Ghost.
The two theologies thus conceive the plan of salvation in quite different terms. One makes salvation depend on the work of God, the other on a work of man; one regards faith as part of God’s gift of salvation, the other as man’s own contribution to salvation; one gives all the glory of saving believers to God, the other divides the praise between God, who, so to speak, built the machinery of salvation, and man, who by believing operated it.
Saved by His Precious Blood: An Introduction to John Owen’s The Death of Death in the Death of Christ, in A Quest for Godliness: The Puritan Vision of the Christian Life, Crossway, 1990, p. 128-129.
[The preacher’s] aim…will be to stand under Scripture, not over it, and to allow it, so to speak, to talk through him, delivering what is not so much his message as its. In our preaching, that is what should always be happening. In his obituary of the great German conductor, Otto Klemperer, Neville Cardus spoke of the way in which Klemperer “set the music in motion,” maintaining throughout a deliberately anonymous, self-effacing style in order that the musical notes might articulate themselves in their own integrity through him. So it must be in preaching; Scripture itself must do all the talking, and the preacher’s task is simply to “set the Bible in motion.”
Preaching as Biblical Interpretation, in Inerrancy and Common Sense, ed. Roger R. Nicole and J. Ramsey Michaels, Baker, 1980, p. 203.
Mutual communion is the soul of all true friendship; and a familiar converse with a friend hath the greatest sweetness in it…[so] besides the common tribute of daily worship you owe to [God], take occasion to come into His presence on purpose to have communion with Him. This is truly friendly, for friendship is most maintained and kept up by visits; and these, the more free and less occasioned by urgent business, or solemnity…. The more friendly they are… We used to check our friends with this upbraiding. “You still [always] come when you have some business, but when will you come to see me?” …When you come into His presence, be telling Him still how well you love Him; labor to abound in expressions of that kind, than which…there is nothing more taking with the heart of any friend.
The Puritan Idea of Communion with God, in Puritan Papers, Volume 2, 1960-1962, P&R, 2001, p. 114-115. Used by Permission.
Hearts on earth may say in the course of a joyful experience, “I don’t want this ever to end.” But invariably it does. The hearts of those in heaven say, “I want this to go on forever.” And it will. There is no better news than this.
Secret Church 2013.
All the language that strikes terror into our hearts – weeping and gnashing of teeth, outer darkness, the worm, the fire, gehenna, the great gulf fixed – is all directly taken from our Lord’s teaching. It is from Jesus Christ that we learn the doctrine of eternal punishment.
Secret Church 2013.
[The preacher’s] aim, rather, will be to stand under Scripture, not over it, and to allow it, so to speak, to talk through him, delivering what is not so much his message as its. In our preaching, that is what should always be happening. In his obituary of the great German conductor, Otto Klemperer, Neville Cardus spoke of the way in which Klemperer “set the music in motion,” maintaining throughout a deliberately anonymous, self-effacing style in order that the musical notes might articulate themselves in their own integrity through him. So it must be in preaching; Scripture itself must do all the talking, and the preacher’s task is simply to “set the Bible in motion.”
Preaching a Biblical Interpretation in Inerrancy and Common Sense, edited by Roger Nicole and J. Ramsey Michaels, Baker, 1980, p. 203.
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].
First, we must admit that we were silly ever to think that any evangelistic technique, however skillful, could of itself guarantee conversions; second, we must recognize that, because man’s heart is impervious to the word of God, it is no cause for surprise if at any time our evangelism fails to result in conversions; third, we must remember that the terms of our calling are that we should be faithful, not that we should be successful; fourth, we must learn to rest all our hopes of fruit in evangelism upon the omnipotent grace of God.
Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God, InterVarsity Press p. 112.
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How then should evangelism be defined? The New Testament answer is very simple. According to the New Testament, evangelism is just preaching the gospel, the evangel. It is a work of communication in which Christians make themselves mouth-pieces for God’s message of mercy to sinners. Evangelizing, therefore is not simply a matter of teaching, and instructing, and imparting information to the mind. There is more to it than that. Evangelism includes the endeavor to elicit a response to the truth taught. It is communication with a view to conversion. It is a matter, not merely of informing, but also of inviting.
Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God, InterVarsity Press p. 41, 50.
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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. For everything that Christ taught, everything that makes the New Testament new and better than the Old, everything that is distinctively Christian, is summed up in the knowledge of the Fatherhood of God the Father.
Knowing God, 1973 J. I. Packer. Used with permission of InterVarsity Press, P.O. Box 1400, Downers Grove, IL 60515. www.ivpress.com.
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Make it your work with diligence to apply the word as you are hearing it… Cast not all upon the minister, as those that will go no further than they are carried as by force… You have work to do as well as the preacher, and should all the time be as busy as he… You must open your mouths, and digest it, for another cannot digest it for you… Therefore be all the while at work, and abhor an idle heart in hearing, as well as an idle minister.
A Quest for Godliness, Crossway Books, 1990, p. 254.
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God’s guidance is more like the marriage guidance, child guidance, or career guidance that is received from counselors than it is like being “talked down” by the airport controller as one flies blind through the clouds. Seeking God’s guidance is not like practicing divination or consulting oracles, astrologers, and clairvoyants for information about the future, but rather is comparable with everyday thinking through of alternative options in given situations to determine the best course open to us. The inward experience of being divinely guided is not ordinarily one of seeing signs or hearing voices, but rather one of being enabled to work out the best thing to do.
Taken from: Hot Tub Religion by J.I. Packer. Copyright © 1987 by Tyndale Publishers, p. 117-118. Used by Permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved.
So far from making evangelism pointless, the sovereignty of God in grace is the one thing that prevents evangelism from being pointless. For it creates the possibility – indeed, the certainty – that evangelism will be fruitful. Apart from it, there is not even a possibility of evangelism being fruitful. Were it not for the sovereign grace of God, evangelism would be the most futile and useless enterprise that the world has ever seen, and there would be no more complete waste of time under the sun than to preach the Christian gospel.
Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God, InterVarsity Press p. 106.
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We must learn to measure ourselves, not by our knowledge about God, not by our gifts and responsibilities in the church, but by how we pray and what goes on in our hearts. Many of us, I suspect, have no idea how impoverished we are at this level. Let us ask the Lord to show us.
Revelation 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
God Has Spoken, Baker, 1988, p. 47.
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Biblical veracity and biblical authority are bound up together. Only truth can have final authority to determine belief and behavior, and Scripture cannot have such authority further than it is true. A factually and theologically trustworthy Bible could still impress us as a presentation of religious experience and expertise, but clearly, if we cannot affirm its total truthfulness, we cannot claim that it is all God’s testimony and teaching, given to control our convictions and conduct.
Taken from: Truth and Power © 1999, p. 134, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA. Used with permission of InterVarsity Press, P.O. Box 1400, Downers Grove, IL 60515. www.ivpress.com.
[We should] choose the leisure activities that bring us closest to God, to people, to beauty, and to all that ennobles.
God’s Plans for You, Crossway, 2001, p. 84.
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Repentance is more than just sorrow for the past; repentance is a change of mind and heart, a new life of denying self and serving the Savior as king in self’s place.
Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God, InterVarsity Press p. 71.
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Nobody has the right to dismiss the doctrine of the limitedness of the atonement as a monstrosity of Calvinistic logic until he has refuted Owen’s proof that it is part of the uniform biblical presentation of redemption, clearly taught in plain text after plain text.
Quoted in: The Death of Death in the Death of Christ by John Owen, Introduction, by permission Banner of Truth, Carlisle, PA.
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I have never known anyone whose speech communicated such a sense of the reality of God as did the Doctor (Martin Lloyd-Jones) in those occasional moments of emphasis and doxology. Most of the time, however, it was clear, steady analysis, refection, correction and instruction, based on simple thoughts culled from the text, set out in good order with the minimum of extraneous illustration or decoration. He knew that God’s way to the heart is through the mind (he often insisted that the first thing the gospel does to a man is to make him think), and he preached in a way designed to help people think and thereby grasp truth – and in the process be grasped by it, and so be grasped by the God whose truth it is.
David Martyn Lloyd-Jones in Honouring the People of God, v. 4 of Collected Shorter Writings of J. I. Packer, Paternoster, 1999, p. 85.
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Doctrinal preaching certainly bores the hypocrites; but it is only doctrinal preaching that will save Christ’s sheep.
The [Christian] message is that there is hope for a ruined humanity – hope of pardon, hope of peace with God, hope of glory – because at the Father’s will Jesus became poor, and was born in a stable so that thirty years later He might hang on a cross.
The New Encyclopedia of Christian Quotations, ed. Mark Water, 2000, Baker, p. 159.
What were we made for? To know God. What aim should we have in life? To know God. What is the eternal life that Jesus gives? To know God. What is the best thing in life? To know God. What in humans gives God most pleasure? Knowledge of Himself.
The New Encyclopedia of Christian Quotations, ed. Mark Water, Baker, 1995, p. 583.
Jesus Christ demands self-denial, that is, self-negation (Matt. 16:24; Mark 8:34; Luke 9:23), as a necessary condition of discipleship. Self-denial is a summons to submit to the authority of God as Father and of Jesus as Lord and to declare lifelong war on one’s instinctive egoism. What is to be negated is not personal self or one’s existence as a rational and responsible human being. Jesus does not plan to turn us into zombies, nor does he ask us to volunteer for a robot role. The required denial is of carnal self, the egocentric, self-deifying urge with which we were born and which dominates us so ruinously in our natural state. Jesus links self-denial with cross-bearing. Cross-bearing is far more than enduring this or that hardship. Carrying one’s cross in Jesus’ day, as we learn from the story of Jesus’ own crucifixion, was required of those whom society had condemned, whose rights were forfeit, and who were now being led out to their execution. The cross they carried was the instrument of death. Jesus represents discipleship as a matter of following him, and following him as based on taking up one’s cross in self-negation. Carnal self would never consent to cast us in such a role. "When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die," wrote Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Bonhoeffer was right: Accepting death to everything that carnal self wants to possess is what Christ’s summons to self-denial was all about.
The providence of God is the unceasing activity of the Creator whereby, in overflowing bounty and goodwill, He upholds His creatures in ordered existence, guides and governs all events, circumstances, and free acts of angels and men, and directs everything to its appointed goal, for His own glory.
Providence, The New Bible Dictionary, IVP, 1962, p. 1050-1051.
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The focus of health in the soul is humility, while the root of inward corruption is pride. In the spiritual life, nothing stands still. If we are not constantly growing downward into humility, we shall be steadily swelling up and running to seed under the influence of pride.
Rediscovering Holiness. Christianity Today, v. 36, n. 13.
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Any unbeliever who rightly understood it would be driven to despair. However clearly the content of general revelation was grasped, it would by itself provide no adequate basis for fellowship with God.
God Has Spoken, Baker, 1988, p. 55.
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In considering the conflict between the sovereignty of God in election and the human responsibility, J.I. Packer writes: What is an antinomy? The Shorter Oxford Dictionary defines it as ‘”a contradiction between conclusions which seem equally logical, reasonable or necessary.” For our purposes, however, this definition is not quite accurate; the opening words should read “an appearance of contradiction.” For the whole point of an antinomy – in theology, at any rate – is that it is not a real contradiction, though it looks like one. It is an apparent incompatibility between two apparent truths. An antinomy exists when a pair of principles stand side by side, seemingly irreconcilable, yet both undeniable.
Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God, InterVarsity Press p. 18.
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C.H. Spurgeon was once asked if he could reconcile these two truths to each other. “I wouldn’t try,” he replied; “I never reconcile friends.” Friends? – yes, friends.This is the point that we have to grasp. In the Bible, divine sovereignty and human responsibility are not enemies. They are not uneasy neighbors; they are not in an endless state of cold war with each other. They are friends, and they work together.
Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God, InterVarsity Press p. 35-36.
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[The Puritans believed in] the supreme importance of preaching. To the Puritans, the sermon was the liturgical climax of public worship. Nothing, they said, honours God more than the faithful declaration and obedient hearing of His truth. Preaching, under any circumstances, is an act of worship, and must be performed as such. Moreover, preaching is the prime means of grace to the church.
A Quest for Godliness: The Puritan View of the Christian Life, Crossway, 1990, p. 281.
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All theology is also spirituality, in the sense that it has an influence, good or bad, positive or negative, on its recipients’ relationship or lack of relationship with God. If our theology does not quicken the conscience and soften the heart, it actually hardens both; if it does not encourage the commitment of faith, it reinforces the detachment of unbelief; if it fails to promote humility, it inevitably feeds pride.
A Quest for Godliness, Crossway, 1994, p. 15.
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If our theology does not quicken the conscience and soften the heart, it actually hardens both; if it does not encourage the commitment of faith, it reinforces the detachment of unbelief; if it fails to promote humility, it inevitably feeds pride.
A Quest for Godliness, Crossway, 1990, p. 15.
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It is, in fact, a law of the spiritual life that the further you go, the more you are aware of the distance still to be covered. Your growing desire for God makes you increasingly conscious, not so much of where you are in your relationship with Him as of where as yet you are not.
Rediscovering Holiness by J.I. Packer, 1992, Regal, 1992, p. 138, Gospel Light/Regal Books, Ventura, CA 93003. Used by Permission.
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