J. I. Packer
J. I. Packer
JamesInnell Packeris a British-born Canadian Christian theologian in the low church Anglican and Reformed traditions. He currently serves as the Board of Governors' Professor of Theology at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia. He is considered one of the most influential evangelicals in North America. He has been the theologian emeritus of the Anglican Church in North America, since its inception in 2009...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionClergyman
Date of Birth22 July 1926
two sick sin
There are two sorts of sick consciences, those that are not aware enough of sin and those that are not aware enough of pardon.
father men self
The whole story of the Father's Christ-exalting plan of redeeming love, from eternity to eternity, must be told, or the radical reorientation of life for which the gospel calls will not be understood, and the required total shift from man-centeredness to God-centeredness, and more specifically from self-centeredness to Christ-centeredness, will not take place.
mind doubt devil
If I were the devil I should broadcast doubts about the truths and relevance and good sense and straightforwardness of the Bible ... At all costs I should want to keep them from using their minds in a disciplined way to get the measure of its message.
emotional thinking feelings
Think against your feelings; unmask the unbelief they have nourished; let evangelical thinking correct emotional thinking.
knowing relief his-love
There is tremendous relief in knowing that His love to me is based at every point on prior knowledge of the worst about me.
christian spiritual biblical
But that is not because these principles are traditional; it is because they are biblical. There is certainly an arrogant, hide-bound type of traditionalism, unthinking and uncritical, which is carnal and devilish. But there is also a respectful willingness to take help from the Church's past in order to understand the Bible in the present; and such traditionalism is spiritual and Christian.
eye would-be narrative
But to read all Scripture narratives as if they were eye-witness reports in a modern newspaper, and to ignore the poetic and imaginative form in which they are sometimes couched, would be no less a violation of the canons of evangelical literalism than the allegorizing of the Scholastics was.
spiritual literal
Fanciful spiritualizing, so far from yielding God's meaning, actually obscured it. The literal sense is itself the spiritual sense, coming from God and leading to Him.
running thinking indulge-in
For dishonest thinking, however well-intentioned, can only discredit the cause it serves, and must in the long run boomerang disastrously on those who indulge in it.
spirit holy holy-spirit
The Holy Spirit is God the evangelist.
thinking feelings looks
Think against your feelings; argue yourself out of the gloom they have spread; look up from your problems to the God of the gospel.
book character needs
God's Word is not presented in Scripture in the form of a theological system, but it admits of being stated in that form, and, indeed, requires to be so stated before we can properly grasp it - grasp it, that is, as a whole. Every text has its immediate context in the passage from which it comes, its broader context in the book to which it belongs, and its ultimate context in the Bible as a whole; and it needs to be rightly related to each of these contexts if its character, scope and significance is to be adequately understood.
curiosity needs answers
God then does not profess to answer in Scripture all the questions that we, in our boundless curiosity, would like to ask about Scripture. He tells us merely as much as He sees we need to know as a basis for our life of faith.
essence wrath giving
The essence of God's action in wrath is to give people what they choose, in all its implications.