“God’s claim on our Sabbaths reminds us that all our time is his gift, to be given back to him and used for him” (J.I. Packer, Keeping the Ten Commandments, 67).

“Her book, A Revelation of Love, was written in two versions. The earlier version is often simply called The Short Text because it lacks a title . . . . The second version of Julian’s book is dramatically longer and theologically richer and more daring (xv). . . . In addition to Julian’s own texts we have a slim historical record that confirms at least the outline of Julian’s life (xvi). . . . In any given medieval document, women’s activities and lives are concealed. If we are going to tell their stories, we must make choices based on sometimes paltry evidence. Two things are crucial: that we proceed with humility and that we do not imagine the people of the Middle Ages to be less human than we are” (Amy Frykholm, Julian of Norwich: A Contemplative Biography, xvii-xviii).

“Do we give our God the resolute, wholehearted allegiance for which he asks, and which is his due? Does he really come first in our lives? (J.I. Packer, Keeping the Ten Commandments, 49).

“In the midst of what historian Barbara Tuchman has called the ‘calamitous’ fourteenth century — marked by war, famine, plague, and unrest — one woman wrote a book. It was the first book composed by a woman in English and remains one of the greatest theological works in the English language. So little is known about the woman that even her name — Julian of Norwich — is in question. Yet her achievement is extraordinary” (Amy Frykholm, Julian of Norwich: A Contemplative Biography, ix).

“What God is and has done determines what his people must be and do” (J.I. Packer, Keeping the Ten Commandments, 41).

“The Pharisees, thinking that they did God service by lovelessly serving the law, depersonalized all relationships and dehumanized themselves, and Jesus damned them for it. Loving relations with God, and with others for his sake, are what his service, as set forth in the Decalogue, is really all about” (J.I. Paker, Keeping the Ten Commandments, 33).

“The ten directives, which embody the Creator’s intention for human life as such, are here presented as means of maintaining a redeemed relationship already given by grace. And for Christians today, as for the Jews at Sinai, law-keeping (that is, meeting the claims of our God, commandments 1-4, and our neighbor, commandments 5-10) is not an attempt to win God’s admiration and put him in our debt, but the form and substance of grateful, personal response to his love” (J.I. Packer, Keeping the Ten Commandments, 30).

“Christ said in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:17) that he came not to abolish  the law but to fulfill it; that is, to be, and help others to be, all that God in the Commandments had required” (J.I. Packer, Keeping the Ten Commandments, 26).

“Jesus himself is in fact the embodiment of the Ten Commandments” (J.I. Packer, Keeping the Ten Commandments, 18).

“God’s love gave us the law just as his love gave us the gospel, and as there is no spiritual life for us save through the gospel, which points us to Jesus Christ the Savior, so there is no spiritual health for us save as we seek in Christ’s strength to keep the law and practice the love of God and neighbor for which it calls” (J.I. Packer, Keeping the Ten Commandments, 12).