J. I. Packer Quotes

I frankly confess that even if it were possible I should not wish to have free choice given to me, or to have anything left in my own hands by which I might strive for salvation.

Let it be a settled principle ...that men's salvation, if saved, is wholly of God; and that man's ruin, if lost, is wholly of himself.

In vain people busy themselves with finding any good of man's own in his will. For any mixture of the power of freewill that men strive to mingle with God's grace is nothing but a corruption of grace. It is just as if one were to dilute wine with muddy, bitter water.

Man is nothing; he hath a free will to go to hell, but none to go to heaven, till God worketh in him" and "you dishonour God by denying election. You plainly make salvation depend, not on God's 'free grace' but on Man's 'free will.'

From the Word of God I gather that damnation is all of man, from top to bottom, and salvation is all of grace, from first to last. He that perishes chooses to perish; but he that is saved is saved because God has chosen to save him.

I believe that nothing happens apart from divine determination and decree. We shall never be able to escape from the doctrine of divine predestination - the doctrine that God has foreordained certain people unto eternal life.

If any man doth ascribe of salvation, even the very least, to the free will of man, he knoweth nothing of grace, and he hath not learnt Jesus Christ aright.

Reformed theology does NOT teach that God brings the ELECT kicking and screaming, against their will, into His kingdom. It teaches that God so-works in the hearts of the Elect as to make them willing and pleased to come to Christ. They come to Christ because they want to. They want to because God has created in their hearts a desire for Christ.

Grace is necessary to salvation, free will equally so - but grace in order to give salvation, free will in order to receive it.

No sinner has the right to say with impunity, 'God you owe me grace.' If grace is owed, it is not grace. The very essence of grace is its voluntary character. God reserves to himself the sovereign, absolute right to give grace to some and withhold that grace from others.

There can be but one will the master in our salvation, but that shall never be the will of man, but of God; therefore man must be saved by grace.

And I will go as far as Martin Luther, in that strong assertion of his, where he says, "If any man ascribes any of salvation, even the very least, to the free-will of man, he knows nothing of grace, and he has not learned Jesus Christ aright."

Those who are in a state of salvation are to attribute it to sovereign grace alone, and to give all the praise to Him who maketh them to differ from others.

There are two great truths which from this platform I have proclaimed for many years. The first is that salvation is free to every man who will have it; the second is that God gives salvation to a people whom He has chosen; and these truths are not in conflict with each other in the least degree.

It is inconceivable that the God who gives Himself in His Son to save us, should have created some people ordained to evil and damnation. There can only be one predestination to salvation. In and through Jesus Christ all people are predestined to be saved. Our free choice is ruled out in this regard. God wants free people, except in relation to this last and definitive decision. We are not free to decide and choose to be damned.

Free will carried many a soul to hell, but never a soul to heaven.

Our days are numbered, and God is just waiting for you to come back to him.

Therefore, don't let sinners take courage to think they will be favoured like the thief on the cross; for we see on the other side, they may be like the hardened one, and reproach death itself.

Let us preach Christ, let us be faithful to proclaiming the Gospel, but let's leave judgment in the hands of God.

There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done.’ All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. To those who knock it is opened.

Calvinism is the gospel, and nothing else.

To suggest that the merciful, longsuffering, gracious and loving God of the Bible would invent a dreadful doctrine like Calvinism, which would have us believe it is an act of 'grace' to select only certain people for heaven and, by exclusion, others for hell, comes perilously close to blasphemy.

A man who has no part in the grace of God, cannot keep the commandments of God, or prepare himself, either wholly or in part, to receive grace; but he rests of necessity under the power of sin.

Free will does not enable any man to perform good works, unless he is assisted by grace; indeed, the special grace which the elect alone receive through regeneration. For I stay not to consider the extravagance of those who say that grace is offered equally and promiscuously to all

When salvation is viewed as man's program, it is left up to man as to whether he will let God do this or that, but when it is viewed as God's program, there is a confidence and a certainty that no one whom God regenerates will be a carnal Christian.