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
mistake thinking supposing-that
If you are walking backward, away from something you think is a mistake, you may be right in supposing it is a mistake, but for you to be walking backward is never right. You know what happens to people who walk backward.... We are meant to walk forward, not backward, and reaction is always a matter of walking backward.
mistake home blessing
Guidance, like all God's acts of blessing under the covenant of grace, is a sovereign act. Not merely does God will to guide us in the sense of showing us his way, that we may tread it; he wills also to guide us in the more fundamental sense of ensuring that, whatever happens, whatever mistakes we may make, we shall come safely home. Slippings and strayings there will be, no doubt, but the everlasting arms are beneath us; we shall be caught, rescued, restored. This is God's promise; this is how good he is.
weaker
Evangelical churches are weaker than we realize because we don't teach the confessions and doctrine.
indirect lewis
The books of C.S. Lewis had a very profound, indirect effect on me.
appears change doctrines god means reality stayed understanding walk worship
Christianity has stayed stable, as it must do. The doctrines don't change. The understanding of what it means to walk with God doesn't change. The reality of worship doesn't change, not at heart, anyway. So Christianity appears to be stuck.
counts editorial gave god inspiring material preparing
I'm saying that an editorial process that is preparing the material for publication counts as part of the inspiring process whereby God, in his sovereignty, gave every word.
editor evident quite testament work
In some Old Testament books, it's very evident that an editor has been at work. That's quite all right. It's part of the process.
prayer spirit sin
I must ask the Lord to direct the Holy Spirit within me to drain the life out of sin and in prayer.
taught endeavor response
Evangelizing includes the endeavor to elicit a response to the truth taught.
christian life-changing ignorance
Optimism is a wish without warrant; Christian hope is a certainty, guaranteed by God himself. Optimism reflects ignorance as to whether good things will ever actually come. Christian hope expresses knowledge that every day of his life, and every moment beyond it, the believer can say with truth, on the basis of God's own commitment, that the best is yet to come.
christian greatness church
The Christian's instincts of trust and worship are stimulated very powerfully by knowledge of the greatness of God. But this is knowledge which Christians today largely lack: and that is one reason why our faith is so feeble and our worship so flabby... When a person in the church, let alone the person in the street, uses the word God, the thought is rarely of divine majesty.
prayer vigor matter
The more you praise, the more vigor you will have for prayer; and the more you pray, the more matter you will have for praise.
church newton gravity
The Church no more gave us the New Testament canon than Isaac Newton gave us the force of gravity.
conceited sake proud
If we pursue theological knowledge for its own sake, it's bound to go bad on us. It will make us proud and conceited.