Tag Archives: J.I. Packer

“If you ask, ‘Why is this or that happening?’ no light may come, for ‘the secret things belong to the Lord our God’ (Deut 29:29); but if you ask, ‘How am I to serve and glorify God here and now, where I am?’ there will always be an answer.” J.I. Packer, Praying the Lord’s Prayer, 14–15.

“To the Puritan the Bible was in truth the most precious possession that this world affords. His deepest conviction was that reverence for God means reverence for Scripture, and serving God means obeying Scripture. To his mind, therefore, no greater insult could be offered to the Creator than to neglect his written word; and, conversely, there could be no truer act of homage to him than to prize it and pore over it, and then to live out and give…

“Holy Scripture, the inspired Word (message) of the living God, may truly be described as God preaching… All that Bible writers tell us about God and man, God himself tells us, for the sacred text is not just man’s witness to God, but is also, and indeed primarily, God’s own witness to himself, given us in this human form. Everything in Scripture teaches us something of the Father’s plan, something of the ministry and majesty of the Son as fulfiller…

“God does not intend Bible reading to function simply as a drug for fretful minds. The reading of Scripture is intended to awaken our minds, not send them to sleep. God asks us to approach Scripture as his Word—a message addressed to rational creatures, people with minds, a message we cannot expect to understand without thinking about it. ‘Come now, and let us reason together,’ said God to Judah through Isaiah (Isa. 1:18), and he says the same to us…