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"Conviction of sin always includes conviction of sinfulness: a sense of one’s complete corruption and perversity in God’s sight, and one’s consequent need of what Ezekiel called a ‘new heart’, and our Lord a new birth." (J.I. Packer, Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1991), 63)

"Conviction of sin may centre upon the sense of one’s guilt before God, or one’s uncleanness in His sight, or one’s rebellion against Him, or one’s alienation and estrangement from Him; but always it is a sense of the need to get right, not simply with oneself or other people, but with God." (J.I. Packer, Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1991), 63)

"The Christ who is depicted and desired merely to make the lot of life’s casualties easier by supplying them with aids and comforts is not the real Christ, but a misrepresented and misconceived Christ—in effect, an imaginary Christ. And if we taught people to look to an imaginary Christ, we should have no grounds for expecting that they would find a real salvation." (J.I. Packer, Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1991), 61-62)

"It is not conviction of sin just to feel miserable about yourself and your failures and your inadequacy to meet life’s demands. Nor would it be saving faith if a man in that condition called on the Lord Jesus Christ just to sooth him, and cheer him up, and make him feel confident again. Nor should we be preaching the gospel (though we might imagine we were) if all that we did was to present Christ in terms of a man’s felt wants. (‘Are you happy? Are you satisfied? Do you want peace of mind? Do you feel that you have failed? Are you fed up with yourself? Do you want a friend? Then come to Christ; He will meet your every need…’—as if the Lord Jesus Christ were to be thought of as a fairy godmother, or a super-psychiatrist.) No; we have to go deeper than this. To preach sin means, not to make capital out of people’s felt frailties (the brainwasher’s trick), but to measure their lives by the holy law of God. To be convicted of sin means, not just to feel that one is an all-round flop, but to realize that one has offended God, and flouted His authority, and defiled Him, and gone against Him, and put oneself in the wrong with Him. To preach Christ means to set Him forth as the One who through His cross sets men right with God again. To put faith in Christ means relying on Him and Him alone, to restore us to God’s fellowship and favour." (J.I.

"Everybody’s life includes things which cause dissatisfaction and shame. Everyone has a bad conscience about some things in his past, matters in which he has fallen short of the standard which he set for himself, or which was expected of him by others. The danger is that in our evangelism we should content ourselves with evoking thoughts of these things and making people feel uncomfortable about them, and then depicting Christ as the One who saves us from these elements of ourselves, without even raising the question of our relationship with God. But this is just the question that has to be raised when we speak about sin. For the very idea of sin in the Bible is of an offense against God, which disrupts a man’s relationship with God. Unless we see our shortcomings in the light of the law and holiness of God, we do not see them as sin at all. For sin is not a social concept; it is a theological concept. Though sin is committed by man, and many sins are against society, sin cannot be defined in terms of either man or society. We never know what sin really is till we have learned to think of it in terms of God, and to measure it, not by human standards, but by the yardstick of His total demand on our lives." (J.I. Packer, Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1991), 60-61)

"The gospel is a message about sin. It tells us how we have fallen short of God’s standard; how we have become guilty, filthy, and helpless in sin, and now stand under the wrath of God. It tells us that the reason why we sin continually is that we are sinners by nature, and that nothing we do, or try to do, for ourselves can put us right, or bring us back into God’s favour. It shows us ourselves as God sees us, and teaches us to think of ourselves as God thinks of us. Thus it leads us to self-despair. And this also is a necessary step. Not till we have learned our need to get right with God, and our inability to do so by an effort of our own, can we come to know the Christ who saves from sin." (J.I. Packer, Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1991), 59)

"The gospel starts by teaching us that we, as creatures, are absolutely dependent on God, and that He, as Creator, has an absolute claim on us. Only when we have learned this can we see what sin is, and only when we see what sin is can we understand the good news of salvation from sin." (J.I. Packer, Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1991), 59)

"The way to find out whether a particular service was evangelistic is to ask, not whether an appeal for decision was made, but what truth was taught at it." (J.I. Packer, Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1991), 56)

"If in our churches ‘evangelistic’ meetings, ‘evangelistic’ sermons, are thought of as special occasions, different from the ordinary run of things, it is a damning indictment of our normal Sunday services." (J.I. Packer, Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1991), 55)

"It is a mistake to suppose that evangelistic sermons are a special brand of sermons, having their own peculiar style and conventions; evangelistic sermons are just scriptural sermons, the sort of sermons that a man cannot help preaching if he is preaching the Bible biblically. Proper sermons seek to expound and apply what is in the Bible. But what is in the Bible is just the whole counsel of God for man’s salvation; all Scripture bears witness, in one way or another, to Christ, and all biblical themes relate to Him." (J.I. Packer, Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1991), 54-55)

"In Paul’s view, his first and fundamental job as a preacher of the gospel was to communicate knowledge—to get gospel truth fixed in men’s minds. To him, teaching the truth was the basic evangelistic activity; to him, therefore, the only right method of evangelism was the teaching method." (J.I. Packer, Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1991), 49)

"What was this good news that Paul preached? It was the news about Jesus of Nazareth. It was the news of the incarnation, the atonement, and the kingdom—the cradle, the cross, and the crown—of the Son of God. It was the news of how God ‘glorifies his servant Jesus’ by making Him Christ, the world’s long-awaited ‘Prince and … Savior.’ It was the news of how God made His Son Man and how, as Man, God made Him Priest, and Prophet, and King; and how, as Priest, God also made Him a sacrifice for sins." (J.I. Packer, Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1991), 47)

"[The] good news, the ‘word of God’ in the usual New Testament sense of that phrase, ‘the truth’ as Paul often calls it, is a full and final disclosure of what the Creator has done, and will do, to save sinners. It is a complete unfolding of the spiritual facts of life in God’s apostate world." (J.I. Packer, Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1991), 46)

"Paul saw Himself as Christ’s herald. When he describes himself as ‘appointed a preacher’ of the gospel, the noun he uses is keryx, which means a herald, a person who makes public announcements on another’s behalf…. Paul, in his own estimation, was not a philosopher, not a moralist, not one of the world’s wise men, but simply Christ’s herald." (J.I. Packer, Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1991), 43)

"The results of preaching depend, not on the wishes and intentions of men, but on the will of God Almighty. This consideration does not mean that we should be indifferent as to whether we see fruit from our witness to Christ or not; if fruit is not appearing, we should seek God’s face about it to find out why. But this consideration does mean that we ought not to define evangelism in terms of achieved results." (J.I. Packer, Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1991), 41)

"The definition [of evangelism] under review established these vital points well. But on one fundamental matter it goes astray. It puts a consecutive clause where a final clause should be. Had it begun: ‘to evangelize is to present Christ Jesus to sinful men in order that, through the power of the Holy Spirit, they may come…’, there would be no fault to find with it. But it does not say this. What it does say is quite different. ‘To evangelize is so to present Christ Jesus in the power of the Holy Spirit, that men shall come…’ This is to define evangelism in terms of an effect achieved in the lives of others; which amounts to saying that the essence of evangelizing is producing converts. But this cannot be right, as we pointed out at an earlier stage. Evangelism is man’s work, but the giving of faith is God’s." (J.I. Packer, Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1991), 40)

"Evangelism means exhorting sinners to accept Christ Jesus as their Saviour, recognizing that in the most final and far-reaching sense they are lost without Him. Nor is this all. Evangelism also means summoning men to receive Christ Jesus as all that He is—Lord, as well as Saviour—and therefore to serve Him as their King in the fellowship of His church, the company of those who worship Him, witness to Him, and work for Him here on earth." (J.I. Packer, Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1991), 39)

"It is not evangelism, according to this definition, to present Christ Jesus as a subject for detached critical and comparative study. Evangelism, according to this definition, means presenting Christ Jesus and His work in relation to the needs of fallen men and women, who are without God as a Father and under the wrath of God as a Judge. Evangelism means presenting Christ Jesus to them as their only hope, in this world or the next." (J.I. Packer, Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1991), 39) 

"Evangelism means to present Christ Jesus, the divine Son who became man at a particular point in world-history in order to save a ruined race. Nor, according to this definition, is it evangelism merely to present the teaching and example of the historical Jesus, or even the truth about His saving work; evangelism means to present Christ Jesus Himself, the living Saviour and the reigning Lord. Nor, again, is it evangelism, according to this definition, merely to set forth the living Jesus as Helper and Friend, without reference to His saving work on the cross; evangelism means to present Jesus as Christ, God’s anointed Servant, fulfilling the tasks of His appointed office as Priest and King." (J.I. Packer, Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1991), 38)

"'And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified' (Rom. 8:30). There is no link in that golden chain that has our fingerprints on it. God chose us before we chose him; God saved us while we were enemies; God justifies us while we are ungodly; God makes us alive together with Christ even while we are dead--and he even gives us the faith to receive all of this!" (Michael Horton, Gospel Driven Life (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2009), 82).

"Only when we know that we are condemned in ourselves but righteous in Christ are we free for the first time to love God and our neighbors." (Michael Horton, Gospel Driven Life (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2009), 79).

"Spirituality is as successful as materialism in feeding our narcissism. Keeping us preoccupied with our inner self and its experiences, morality, and activity, the 'search for the sacred' is as godless as atheism." (Michael Horton, Gospel Driven Life (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2009), 78).

"The gospel transforms us in heart, mind, will, and actions precisely because it is not itself a message about our transformation. Nothing that I am or that I feel, choose, or do qualifies as Good News. On my best days, my experience of transformation is weak, but the gospel is an announcement of a certain state of affairs that exists because of something in God, not something in me; something that God has done, not something that I have done." (Michael Horton, Gospel Driven Life (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2009), 77).

"The Good News, however, is that in Jesus Christ our elder brother, God has received the perfect obedience that his law requires. There is nothing left to merit! He has earned every penny in the heavenly estate. We are indeed saved by works--and not by good intentions--but by works that are perfect, complete, and perpetual to every command. However, it is Christ's works, not ours, that have secured the eternal inheritance for us." (Michael Horton, Gospel Driven Life (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2009), 74).

"As the apostles were brought before Roman authorities, they  said nothing about how Jesus had helped them put their marriages back together or how they found the gospel helpful and useful in daily living. There may well have been stories like that to report. However, that was not their gospel. Rather, they testified to datable events, which they assumed to have been well-known to their judges." (Michael Horton, Gospel Driven Life (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2009), 69).

"Christianity is not centrally concerned with good lessons and timeless principles that are known, deep down, by everybody. It rivets our attention to an unfolding plot, where God makes promises and fulfills them in spite of human opposition." (Michael Horton, Gospel Driven Life (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2009), 66).

"The righteousness of God is a command that condemns us all, but the righteousness from God is a gift that saves all who believe." (Michael Horton, Gospel Driven Life (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2009), 65).

"Be nice, take out the trash, stop nagging your spouse, try to spend more time with your children, don't get into credit card debt, lose some weight, and get some exercise. Every one of these exhortations might be valid. Some of them may even find a legitimate application in a handful of biblical passages. However, it is not the big story. No wonder people--especially younger folks--are bored if this is the "news" that the church has to bring to the world. This kind of news need not come from heaven: there are plenty of earthly sages who can communicate it better than most preachers." (Michael Horton, Gospel Driven Life (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2009), 64).

"In the biblical drama, all our expectations, assumptions, and cherished ideas are thrown into question. God the judge bears the sentence that his own justice demands. The offended party becomes the redeemer, even as he is subjected to further acts of the most heinous violence from those he redeems. The outcast becomes royal heirs, the outsiders become insiders and the insiders outsiders, those who thought they were righteous are in fact condemned and those who were beyond any hope of moral recovery are declared righteous. A strange story, indeed." (Michael Horton, Gospel Driven Life (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2009), 64).

"God himself became the Savior. The judge became the deliverer. In fact, the judge became the judged. God's love did not overwhelm or overrule his justice, but fulfilled it." (Michael Horton, Gospel Driven Life (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2009), 62).