Growing in Christ Quotes

“When you are not conscious of temptation, pray “lead us not into temptation”; and when you are conscious of it, pray “deliver us from evil”; and you will live.”
― J.I. Packer, Growing in Christ

“Man’s Chief End “Man’s chief end,” says the Shorter Catechism, magnificently, “is to glorify God, and to enjoy him for ever.” End, note, not ends; for the two activities are one. God’s chief end, purposed in all that he does, is his glory (and what higher end could he have?), and he has so made us that we find our own deepest fulfillment and highest joy in hallowing his name by praise, submission, and service. God is no sadist, and the principle of our creation is that, believe it or not (and or course many don’t, just as Satan doesn’t), our duty, interest and delight completely coincide. Christians get so hung up with the pagan idea (very dishonoring to God, incidentally) that God’s will is always unpleasant, so that one is rather a martyr to be doing it, that they hardly at first notice how their experience verifies the truth that in Christian living duty and delight go together. But they do!—and it will be even clearer in the life to come. To give oneself to hallowing God’s name as one’s life-task means that living, though never a joy ride, will become increasingly a joy road. Can you believe that? Well, the proof of the pudding is in the eating! Try it, and you will see.”
― J.I. Packer, Growing in Christ

“Holy” is the Bible word for all that makes God different from us, in particular his awesome power and purity.”
― J.I. Packer, Growing in Christ

“Jesus’ pattern prayer, which is both crutch, road, and walking lesson for the spiritually lame like ourselves, tells us to start with God: for lesson one is to grasp that God matters infinitely more than we do. So “thy” is the keyword of the opening three petitions, and the first request of all is “hallowed (holy, sanctified) be thy name”— which is the biggest and most basic request of the whole prayer. Understand it and make it your own, and you have unlocked the secret of both prayer and life.”
― J.I. Packer, Growing in Christ

“the Son of God told his disciples to baptize “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19). “Name,” note, not “names”: the three persons together constitute the one God.”
― J.I. Packer, Growing in Christ

“if you dwell often on the truth that God is Lord and orders everything, even the frustrations, for our sanctification (Hebrews 12:511; cf. Romans 8:28ff.), you will find yourself able increasingly, even in the most maddening moments, to “keep your cool”—and that is best of all.”
― J.I. Packer, Growing in Christ

“When God gave Israel the Commandments on Sinai (Exodus 20:1-17), he introduced them by introducing himself. “God spoke all these words, saying, ‘I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of . . . bondage. You shall . . .’” (verse 1ff.). What God is and has done determines what his people must be and do. So study of the Decalogue should start by seeing what it tells us about God.”
― J.I. Packer, Growing in Christ

“What does “hallowed be thy name” ask for? God’s “name” in the Bible regularly means the person he has revealed himself to be. “Hallowed” means known, acknowledged, and honored as holy. “Holy” is the Bible word for all that makes God different from us, in particular his awesome power and purity. This petition, then, asks that the praise and honor of the God of the Bible, and of him only, should be the issue of everything. The idea that “glory be to God alone” is a motto distinguishing John Calvin and his admirers is no discredit to them, but it is a damning sideswipe at all other versions of Christianity.”
― J.I. Packer, Growing in Christ

“Prayer to God as Father is for Christians only.”
― J.I. Packer, Growing in Christ

“When Thomas Chalmers spoke of “the expulsive power of a new affection,” he was thinking of the way in which knowledge of my Savior’s love diverts me from the barren ways of covetous self-service, to put God first, others second, and self-gratification last in my concerns.”
― J.I. Packer, Growing in Christ

“Our benighted society urgently needs recalling to the noble and ennobling view of sex which Scripture implies and the seventh commandment assumes: namely, that sex is for fully and permanently committed relationships which, by being the blend of affection, loyalty, and biology that they are, prepare us for and help us into that which is their archetype—“the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united” to God, men, and angels “in an ecstasy of love and delight compared with which the most rapturous love between a man and a woman on this earth is mere milk and water” (C.”
― J.I. Packer, Growing in Christ

“No man’s really any good till he knows how bad he is, or might be; till he’s realized exactly how much right he has to all this snobbery, and sneering, and talking about ‘criminals,’ as if they were apes in a forest ten thousand miles away . . . till he’s squeezed out of his soul the last drop of the oil of the Pharisees; till his only hope is somehow or other to have captured one criminal, and kept him safe and sane under his own hat.”
― J.I. Packer, Growing in Christ

“Reluctance to treat our word as our bond—unwillingness, that is, to count ourselves committed by what we actually said—is a symptom of sin, which is the moral maggot destroying integrity.”
― J.I. Packer, Growing in Christ

“What will it mean in practice for me to put God first? This much, at least. All the 101 things I have to do each day, and the 101 demands on me which I know I must try to meet, will all be approached as ventures of loving service to him, and I shall do the best I can in everything for his sake—which attitude, as George Herbert quaintly said, “makes drudgery divine; who sweeps a room, as for thy laws, makes that and th’ action fine.” And then I shall find that, through the secret work of the Spirit which is known by its effects, my very purpose of pleasing God gives me new energy for all these tasks and relationships, energy which otherwise I could not have had. “I could not love thee, dear, so much loved I not honor more,” said the poet. Put “God” for “honor,” and you have the deepest truth about the Christian’s love of his neighbor. Self-absorbed resentments dissolve, and zest for life, happiness in doing things, and love for others all grow great when God comes first. So”
― J.I. Packer, Growing in Christ

“The Bible opposes all long-faced asceticism by saying that if you enjoy health, good appetite, physical agility, and marriage in the sense that you have been given them, you should enjoy them in the further sense of delighting in them. Such delight is (not the whole, but) part of our duty and our service of God, for without it we are being simply ungrateful for good gifts. As Screwtape truly said (with disgust), “He’s a hedonist at heart”: he values pleasure, and it is his pleasure to give pleasure. Well did some Rabbis teach that at the judgment God will hold against us every pleasure that he offered us and we neglected. Do we yet know how to enjoy ourselves—yes, physically too—to the glory of God?”
― J.I. Packer, Growing in Christ

“Luther expounded the words like this: “Let thy will be done, O Father, not the will of the devil, or of any of those who would overthrow thy holy Word or hinder the coming of thy kingdom; and grant that all we may have to endure for its sake may be borne with patience and overcome, so that our poor flesh may not yield or give way from weakness or laziness.”
― J.I. Packer, Growing in Christ

“To give oneself to hallowing God’s name as one’s life-task means that living, though never a joy ride, will become increasingly a joy road.”
― J.I. Packer, Growing in Christ

“Sometimes when we pray we feel there is nobody there to listen, and are tempted to think that our feelings tell us the truth. What finally dispels this temptation, under God, is a fresh realization (Spirit-given, for sure) that God is actually questioning us in the way described, requiring us to tell him honestly how we think of him and what we want from him and why.”
― J.I. Packer, Growing in Christ

“The second petition is that God’s kingdom should come. God’s “kingdom” means the public display of his ruling power in salvation, and the prayer for his kingdom to come is a plea that his lordship might be seen and submitted to, and his saving grace experienced, all the world over, till Christ returns and all things are made new.”
― J.I. Packer, Growing in Christ

“The Bible is full of models for prayer: 150 patterns of praise, petition, and devotion are contained in the Psalter, and many more examples of proper praying are recorded too, along with much teaching on the subject.”
― J.I. Packer, Growing in Christ

“The Lord’s Prayer in particular is a marvel of compression, and full of meaning. It is a compendium of the gospel (Tertullian), a body of divinity (Thomas Watson), a rule of purpose as well as of petition, and thus a key to the whole business of living. What it means to be a Christian is nowhere clearer than here.”
― J.I. Packer, Growing in Christ

“Someday they’ll tell you Moody’s dead. Don’t you believe it! That day I’ll be before the throne; I’ll be more alive than I’ve ever been.” Yes; and so shall I.”
― J.I. Packer, Growing in Christ

“O merciful God, grant that the old Adam in these persons may be so buried, that the new man may be raised up in them. “Grant that all carnal affections may die in them, and that all things belonging to the Spirit may live and grow in them. “Grant that they may have power and strength, to have victory and to triumph, against the devil, the world, and the flesh. “Grant that whosever is here dedicated to thee by our office and ministry may also be endued with heavenly virtues, and everlastingly rewarded, through thy mercy, O blessed Lord God, who dost live, and govern all things, world without end. Amen.” —BAPTISMAL OFFICE, 1662 PRAYER BOOK”
― J.I. Packer, Growing in Christ

“No doubt, like me, you both love your body because it is part of you and get mad at the way it limits you. So we should. And it is good to know that God’s aim in giving us second-rate physical frames here is to prepare us for managing better bodies hereafter. As C. S. Lewis says somewhere, they give you unimpressive horses to learn to ride on, and only when you are ready for it are you allowed an animal that will gallop and jump.”
― J.I. Packer, Growing in Christ

“A man distressed about sin wrote to Luther. The Reformer, who himself had suffered long agonies over this problem, replied: “Learn to know Christ and him crucified. Learn to sing to him and say—Lord Jesus, you are my righteousness, I am your sin. You took on you what was mine; you set on me what was yours. You became what you were not that I might become what I was not.”
― J.I. Packer, Growing in Christ

“What happened at the Ascension, then, was not that Jesus became a spaceman, but that his disciples were shown a sign, just as at the Transfiguration. As C. S. Lewis put it, “they saw first a short vertical movement and then a vague luminosity (that is what ‘cloud’ presumably means . . . ) and then nothing.” In other words, Jesus’ final withdrawal from human sight, to rule till he returns to judgment,”
― J.I. Packer, Growing in Christ

“Suffered.” This word carries not only the everyday meaning of bearing pain, but also the older and wider sense of being the object affected by someone else’s action. The Latin is passus, whence the noun “passion.” Both God and men were agents of Jesus’ passion: “this Jesus, delivered up according to the plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men” (Acts 2:23, from Peter’s first sermon). God’s purpose at the cross was as real as was the guilt of the crucifiers.”
― J.I. Packer, Growing in Christ

“When Luther told Erasmus that his thoughts of God were toohuman, he was uprooting in principle all the rationalistic religion that has ever infected the church—and rightly too!”
― J.I. Packer, Growing in Christ

“But surely in that case what we think of as our free will is illusory and unreal? That depends on what you mean. It is certainly illusory to think that our wills are only free if they operate apart from God. But free will in the sense of “free agency,” as theologians have defined it—that is, the power of spontaneous, self-determining choice referred to above—is real. As a fact of creation, an aspect of our humanness, it exists, as all created things do, in God. How God sustains it and overrules it without overriding it is his secret; but that he does so is certain, both from our conscious experience of making decisions and acting “of our own free will,” and also from Scripture’s sobering insistence that we are answerable to God for our actions, just because in the moral sense they really are ours.”
― J.I. Packer, Growing in Christ

“The positive way to say this is that though there are things which a holy, rational God is incapable of intending, all that he intends to do he actually does. “Whatever”
― J.I. Packer, Growing in Christ