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Simple assent to the gospel, divorced from a transforming commitment to the living Christ, is by Biblical standards less than faith, and less than saving, and to elicit only assent of this kind would be to secure only false conversions.

J. I. Packer

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J. I. Packer
Age: 93 †
Born: 1926
Born: July 22
Died: 2020
Died: July 17
Anglican Priest
Christian Theologian
Theologian
University Teacher
Writer
Twyning
Gloucestershire
James I. Packer
James Innell Packer
Standards
Divorced
Simple
Missionary
Less
Biblical
Conversions
Faith
Gospel
Elicit
Christ
Saving
Assent
Living
Secure
Evangelism
Kind
False
Conversion
Would
Commitment
Transforming

More quotes by J. I. Packer

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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.
J. I. Packer
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The Holy Spirit is God the evangelist.
J. I. Packer
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The healthy Christian is not necessarily the extrovert, ebullient Christian, but the Christian who has a sense of God's presence stamped deep on his soul, who trembles at God's word, who lets it dwell in him richly by constant meditation upon it, and who tests and reforms his life daily in response to it.
J. I. Packer
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Any theology that does not lead to song is, at a fundamental level, a flawed theology.
J. I. Packer
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Jesus' pattern prayer, which is both crutch, road, and walking lesson for the spiritually lame like ourselves, tells us to start with God: for God matters infinitely more than we do.
J. I. Packer
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Suffering is getting what you do not want while wanting what you do not get.
J. I. Packer
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Justification is the truly dramatic transition from the status of a condemned criminal awaiting a terrible sentence to that of an heir awaiting a fabulous inheritance.
J. I. Packer
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God's overriding goal is to glorify Himself.
J. I. Packer
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Holy people glory, not in their holiness, but in Christ's cross for the holiest saint is never more than a justified sinner and never sees himself in any other way.
J. I. Packer
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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?
J. I. Packer
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The Christmas 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.
J. I. Packer
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God the Father is the giver of Holy Scripture God the Son is the theme of Holy Scripture and God the Spirit is the author, authenticator, and interpreter of Holy Scripture.
J. I. Packer
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If we pursue theological knowledge for its own sake, it's bound to go bad on us. It will make us proud and conceited.
J. I. Packer
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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.
J. I. Packer
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You can know a lot about God and godliness and still not know God.
J. I. Packer
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Doctrinal preaching certainly bores the hypocrites but it is only doctrinal preaching that will save Christ's sheep.
J. I. Packer
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[N]obody can produce new evidence of your depravity that will make God change his mind. For God justified you with (so to speak) his eyes open. He knew the worst about you at the time when he accepted you for Jesus' sake and the verdict which he passed then was, and is, final.
J. I. Packer
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...love and pity for hell's occupants will not enter our hearts.
J. I. Packer
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What God does in time, He planned from eternity. And all that He planned in eternity He carries out in time.
J. I. Packer
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The Evangelical is not afraid of facts, for he knows that all facts are God's facts nor is he afraid of thinking, for he knows that all truth is God's truth, and right reason cannot endanger sound faith.
J. I. Packer