DON'T FORGET THE MYSTERY

'Every aspect of God's reality and work, without exception, is mystery. The eternal Trinity; God's sovereignty in creation, providence, and grace; the incarnation, exaltation, present reign and approaching return of Jesus Christ; the inspiring of the Holy Scriptures; and the ministry of the Spirit in the Christian and the Church - each of these (to look no further) is a reality beyond our full fathoming, just as the cross is. And theories about any of these things which used human analogies to dispel the dimension of mystery would deserve our distrust, just as rationalistic theories about the cross do.' 

JI Packer, 'What Did the Cross Achieve?' in Celebrating the Saving Work of God, p.89. 

THE IMPORTANCE OF HISTORY IN THEOLOGY

'Every theological question has behind it a history of study, and narrow eccentricity in handling it is unavoidable unless the history is taken into account.' 

JI Packer, 'What did the Cross Achieve' in Celebrating the Saving Work of God, p.85. 

OUR FAILURE IN DISCIPLESHIP

'It is these half-conscious fears, this dread of insecurity, rather than any deliberate refusal to face the cost of following Christ, which make us hold back. We feel that the risks of out-and-out discipleship are too great for us to take. In other words we are not persuaded of the adequacy of God to provide for the needs of all those who launch out whole-heartedly on to the deep sea of unconventional living in obedience to the call of Christ. Therefore, we feel obliged to break the first commandment just a little, by withdrawing a certain amount of our time and energy from serving God in order to serve mammon. 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...'

JI Packer, Knowing God, p.307.

GOD & SUFFERING

'The reason why the Bible spends so much of its time reiterating that God is a strong rock, a firm defence, and a sure refuge and help for the weak, is that God spends so much of his time bringing home to us that we are weak both mentally and morally, and dare not trust ourselves to find, or follow, the right road.

When we walk along a clear road feeling fine, and someone takes our arm to help us, as likely as not we shall impatiently shake him off; but when we are caught in rough country in the dark, with a storm getting up and our strength spent, and someone takes our arm to help us, we shall thankfully lean on him. And God wants us to feel that our way through life is rough and perplexing so that we may learn thankfully to lean on him. Therefore he takes step to drive us out of self-confidence to trust in himself - in the classical scriptural phrase for the secret of the godly life, to "wait on the Lord".'

JI Packer, Knowing God, p.284. 

CHRISTIANS & THE INCARNATION

'It is to our shame and disgrace today that so many Christians - I will be more specific: so many of the soundest and most orthodox Christian - go though this world in the spirit of the priest and the Levite in our Lord's parable, seeing human needs all around them, but (after a pious wish, and perhaps a prayer, that God might meet those needs) averting their eyes, and passing by on the other side. That is not the Christmas spirit. Nor is it the spirit of those Christians - alas, they are many - whose ambition in life seems limited to building a nice middle-class Christian home, and making nice middle-class Christian friends, and bringing up their children in nice middle-class Christian ways, and who leave the sub-middle-class sections of the community, Christian and non-Christian to get on by themselves. 

The Christmas spirit does not shine out in the Christian snob. For the Christmas spirit is the spirit of those who, like their Master, live their whole lives on the principle of making themselves poor - spending and being spent - to enrich their fellow humans, giving time, trouble, care and concern, to do good to others - and not just their own friends - in whatever way there seems need.' 

JI Packer, Knowing God, p.70. 

THE INCARNATION

'It is from misbelief, or at least inadequate belief , about the incarnation that difficulties at other points in the gospel story usually spring. But once the incarnation is grasped as a reality, these other difficulties dissolve.' 

JI Packer, Knowing God, p.58. 

THE INCARNATION

'...the supreme mystery with which the gospel confronts us does not lie...in the Good Friday message of atonement, nor in the Easter message of the resurrection, but in the Christmas message of incarnation.' 

JI Packer, Knowing God, p.58. 

GOD KNOWS ME

'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. I am graven on the palms of his hands. I am never out of his mind. All my knowledge of him depends on his sustained initiative in knowing me. I know him, because he first knew me, and continues to know me. He knows me as a friend, one who loves me; and there is no moment when his eye is off me, or his attention distracted form me, and no moment, therefore, when his care falters. 

This is momentous knowledge. There is unspeakable comfort - the sort of comfort that energises, be it said, not enervates - in knowing that God is constantly taking knowledge of me in love, and watching over me for my good. There is tremendous relief in knowing that his love to me is utterly realistic, based at every point on prior knowledge of the worst about me, so that no discovery now can disillusion him about me, in the way I am so often disillusioned about myself, and can quench his determination to bless me.' 

JI Packer, Knowing God, p.45. 

KNOWING GOD

'The question is not whether we are good at theology, or "balanced" (horrible, self-conscious word!) in our approach to problems of Christian living; the question is, can we say, simply, honestly, not because we feel that as evangelicals we ought to, but because it is plain matter of fact, that we have known God, and because we have known God the unpleasantness we have had, or the pleasantness we have not had, through being Christians does not matter to us? If we really knew God, this is what we would be saying, and if we are not saying it, that is a sign that we need to face ourselves more sharply with the difference between knowing God and merely knowing about him.' 

JI Packer, Knowing God, p.27. 

BIBLICAL MEDITATION

'...meditation is a lost art today, and Christian people suffer grievously from their ignorance of the practice. 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. It is an activity of holy thought, consciously performed in the presence of God, under the eye of God, by the help of God, as a means of communion with God. Its purpose is clear one's mental and spiritual vision of God, and to let his truth make its full and proper impact on one's mind and heart. It is a matter of talking to oneself about God and oneself; it is, indeed, often a matter of arguing with oneself, reasoning oneself out of moods of doubt and unbelief into a clear apprehension of God's power and grace.' 

JI Packer, Knowing God, p.22. 

THEOLOGY

'...if we pursue theological truth for its own sake, it is bound to go bad on us. It will make us proud and conceited. The very greatness of the subject-matter will intoxicate us, and we shall come to think of ourselves as a cut above other Christians because of our interest in it and grasp of it; and we shall look down on those whose theological ideas seem to us crude and inadequate, and dismiss them as very poor specimens. For, as Paul told the conceited Corinthians, "knowledge puffs up...the man who thinks he knows something does not yet know as he ought to know" (I Cor.8: If.). To be preoccupied with getting theological knowledge as an end in itself, to approach Bible study with no higher a motive than a desire to know all the answers, is the direct route to a state of self-deception. We need to guard our hearts against such an attitude, and pray to be kept from it.'

JI Packer, Knowing God, p.20.  

THE CROSS

'The passion to pack God into a conceptual box of our own making is always strong, but must be resisted. If we bear in mind that all the knowledge we can have of the atonment is of a mystery about which we can only think and speak by means of models, and which remain a mystery when all is said and done, it will keep us fromn rationalistic pitfals and thus help our progres considerably.'

JI Packer, 'What Did the Cross Achieve?' in Celebrating the Saving Work of God, p.94.

THE GOSPEL

'God saves sinners. God - the triune Jehovah Father, Son and Spirit, three Persons working together in sovereign wisdom, power and love to acheive the salvation of a chosen people, the Father electing, the Son fulfilling the Father's will by redeeming, the Spirit executing the purpose of the Father and the Son by renewing. Saves - does everything, first to last, that is involved in bringing man from death in sin to life in glory: plans, acheives and communicates redemption, calls and keeps, justifies, sanctifies, glorifies. Sinners - men as God finds them, guilty, vile, helpless, powerless, unable to lift a finger to do God's will or better their spiritual lot.' 

JI Packer in Timothy Keller, Center Church: Doing Balanced, Gospel-Centered Ministry in Your City, p.30.  

HEAVEN

'Hearts on earth often say in the course of a joyful experience, "I don't want this ever to end." But it invariably does. The hearts in heaven say, "I want this to go forever." And it will.'

JI Packer in Steve DeWitt, Eyes Wide Open, p.181.

HOPE OF HEAVEN

'Why has modern Protestantism so largely lost its grip on this biblical otherworldliness? Several factors have combined to produce the effect.

First, death is no longer our constant companion. Until the twentieth century most children died before they were ten, and adults dies at home with the family around them. But nowadays deaths in the family are rarer and, as often as not, happen in hospitals, so that we can easily forget the certainity of our own death for years together.

Second, modern materialism, with its corollary that this life is the only life for enjoying anything has infected Christian minds, producing the feeling that is a cosmic outrage for anyone to have to leave this world before he or she has tasted all that it has to offer.

Third, Marxist mockery of the Christian hope ("Pie in the sky when you die") and the accusation that having a hope of heaven destroys one's zeal for ending evil on earth have given Christians a false conscience that inhibits them about being heavenly minded.

Fourth, modern Christians are rightly troubled at the cultural barrenness, social unconcern, and seemingly shrunken humanity that have sometimes accompanied professed longings for heaven. We have come to suspect that such longings are escapist and unhealthy.

Fifth, man's natural sense of being made for an eternal destiny, the awareness formerly expressed by the phrase "the greatness of the soul," has largely atrophied amid the hectic artificialities of Western urban life.'

JI Packer, 'When You Know How To Die You Know How To Live' in Nancy Guthrie (Ed.), O Love That Will Not Let Me Go: Facing Death with Courageous Confidence in God, p.16.

SUFFERING

'God uses chronic pain and weakness, along with other afflictions, as his chisel for sculpting our lives. Felt weakness deepens dependence on Christ for strength each day. The weaker we feel, the harder we lean. And the harder we lean, the stronger we grow spiritually, even while our bodies waste away. To live with your "thorn" uncomplainingly, sweet, patient, and free in heart to love and help others, even though every day you feel weak, is true sanctification. It is true healing for the spirit. It is supreme victory of grace. The healing of your sinful person this goes forward even though the healing of your mortal body does not. And the healing of persons is the name of the game as far as God is concerned.'

JI Packer in Nancy Guthrie (Ed.), Be Still My Soul, p.139.