Martyn Lloyd-Jones in The Assurance of Our Salvation: . But this is the amazing message, and this is what is meant by justification – that God tells us that, as the result of the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, because of his life, his death and his resurrection, if we believe on him and trust ourselves solely and entirely to him, God pardons and forgives our sins. Not only that, he declares that we are free from guilt: more than that, justification includes this. He not only declares that we are pardoned and forgiven and that we are guiltless, he also declares that we are positively righteous. He imputes to us, that is, he puts to our account, the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ himself, who was entirely without sin, who never failed his Father in any way, and who never broke a Commandment or transgressed any law. God gives to us – puts upon us – the righteousness
Martyn Lloyd-Jones
The Essense of the Christian Faith
Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones: “The determining factor in our relationship with God is not our past or present, but Christ’s past and present.” ‘How then does it work?’ It works like this. God accepts this righteousness of Christ, this perfect righteousness face to face with the Law, which He honored in every respect. He has kept it and given obedience to it [through his perfect life], and he has borne its penalty [through his death]. The Law is fully satisfied. God’s way of salvation, says Paul, is that. He gives to us the righteousness of Christ. If we have seen our need and go to God and confess it, God will give us his own Son’s righteousness. He imputes Christ’s righteousness to us, who believe in Him, and regards us as righteous, and declares and pronounces us to be righteous in Him. That is the way of salvation, the Christian way of salvation… To make it quite practical let me say that
J I Packer on the Doctor
Carl Trueman posts: From JIP’s Collected Shorter Writings 4, pp. 84 and 87: “In some way there was in the Doctor’s preaching thunder and lightning that no tape or transcription ever did or could capture — power, I mean, to mediate a realisation of God’s presence…. Nearly forty years on, it still seems to me that all I have ever known about preaching was given me in the winter of 1948-49, when I worshipped at Westminster Chapel with some regularity. Through the thunder and lightning, I felt and saw as never before the glory of Christ and of his gospel as modern man’s only lifeline and learned by experience why historic Protestantism looks on preaching as the supreme means of grace and of communion with God. Preaching, thus viewed and valued, was the centre of the Doctor’s life: into it he poured himself unstintingly; for it he pleaded untiringly…. Pulpit dramatics and rhetorical rhapsodies the Doctor despised and never indulged in;
Boasting in the Cross
May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.-Galatians 6:14 Martyn Lloyd-Jones: The Christian not only glories in the cross, he glories in the cross alone. He glories in nothing else. . . . There is an exclusiveness about it, which means that to the Christian this is the chief thing in history, the most important event that has ever taken place. It means that to him there is nothing which comes anywhere near it in significance. It means that he rests everything upon this, that this means all to him, that he is what he is because of this. He glories in it. I want to ask a question to all Christian believers. Are you glorying in the cross? Or are you just saying, Of course, I always believe, I always have believed, I was brought up to. Can you speak like that about the cross? The test of the Christian is that he glories
Never look back…
“Would you like to be rid of this spiritual depression? The first thing you have to do is to say farewell now once and forever to your past. Realize that it has been covered and blotted out in Christ. Never look back at your sins again. Say: ‘It is finished, it is covered by the blood of Christ.’ That is your first step. Take that and finish with yourself and all this talk about goodness, and look to the Lord Jesus Christ. It is only then that true happiness and joy are possible for you.” Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression (Grand Rapids, 1965), page 35. (HT: Ray Ortlund)
The Most Urgent Need in the Church
From Martyn Lloyd-Jones’ book Preaching and Preachers: But, ultimately, my reason for being very ready to give these lectures is that to me the work of preaching is the highest and greatest and the most glorious calling to which anyone can ever be called. If you want something in addition to that I would say without any hesitation that the most urgent need in the Christian Church today is true preaching; and as it is the greatest and most urgent need in the Church, it is obviously the greatest need of the world also. (9) We are here to preach this Word, this it the first thing, ‘We will give ourselves continually to prayer and the ministry of the Word.’ Now there are the priorities laid down once and for ever. This is the primary task of the Church, the primary task of the leaders of the Church, the people who are sit in this position of authority; and we must
Martyn Lloyd-Jones refutes Universalism
Surely we cannot accept . . . Universalistic ideas, because, if we do so, it means that we find ourselves contradicting the plain teaching of Scripture in those places where there is a clear division between the saved and the unsaved, the good and the bad, the redeemed and the lost. In spite of the arguments based upon a philosophic idea of the love of God, the Scripture draws the ultimate distinction between eternal salvation and eternal destruction . . . There is only one salvation—by the blood of Christ—and no-one can enter the kingdom except by belief in Christ. Such is the Universal teaching of the Scripture . . . The mystic secret which we as Christians are allowed to share is that God will ultimately restore the original harmony, and re-unite again all things in Christ. Christ is over all and the old harmony will be restored . . .these blessings only apply to those who believe on
Lloyd-Jones on the folly of thinking God is only love and ignoring punishment and hell
My thanks to Adrian Warnock for this: Lloyd-Jones could have been saying this for the 21st Century not the 20th. There really is nothing new under the sun: “All this modern preaching on the fact that God is love is an indication of the same attitude and spirit. We are told today that the old sermons that preached the law and talked about conviction of sin and called people to repentance were all wrong because they were legalistic . . .So it is said that we must return to the message of Jesus. We must get rid of all our theology, our argumentation and doctrine—it is all unnecessary. The business of preaching is to tell people that God is love. It does not matter what they are, or what they have been, or what they have done, or what they may do—God loves them. Nobody will ever be punished. There is no law; so there is no retribution and no
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Dr Lloyd-Jones documentary on George Whitefield
(HT: Dane Ortlund)
A Heart at Peace
Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones: I suppose that in many ways it can truthfully be said that the greatest need of men and women in this world is the need of what is called a quiet heart, a heart at leisure with itself. Is that not, in the last analysis, the thing for which we are all looking? You can if you like call it peace; that means exactly the same thing, peace of mind and peace of heart, tranquility. We are all restless; we are all disturbed. There is unhappiness in us. . . . [I]t is not only the Christian gospel that offers us freedom from the troubled heart. There are many ways in which we are exhorted to try to find this peace. . . . The claim of the gospel is not only that it can give us a quiet heart, but also that nothing else can do it. –Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Let Not Your Heart Be Troubled (Crossway, 2009),
Video interview with Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones
From Adrian Warnock: In this rare interview footage you will get up close and personal with possibly the greatest expositional preacher the English speaking world has ever known. This footage is newly released to mark the 30 year anniversary this week of his death.
Martyn Lloyd-Jones
My thanks to Justin Taylor for this: Dr. Lloyd-Jones, one of the great preachers of the twentieth century, died 30 years years ago today: March 1, 1981. Here is a 10-minute biographical video overview of his life: For free audio and audio that can be ordered, see the Martyn Lloyd-Jones Recordings Trust. For biographical resources, see: Iain Murray, D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones: The First Forty Years, 1899-1939 Iain Murray, D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones: The Fight of Faith, 1939-1981 Iain Murray, Lloyd-Jones: Messenger of Grace Crossway continues to publish numerous titles by Lloyd-Jones, mainly drawn from his sermons.
It is a power
Dr. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones: What is the gospel? Well, you remember the answer of the Apostle Paul, ‘It is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth’ (Rom. 1.16). How easy it is to forget that. How easy to preach it as a system, to preach it as a collection of ideas, or just to preach it as a truth. Ah, but you can do that without power. There are people, say the Apostle Paul, who ‘have a form of godliness, but deny the power thereof’ (2 Tim. 3.5). Christianity is primarily a life. It is a power. It is a manifestation of energy. –Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Revival (Crossway, 1987), 123 (HT: Dane Ortlund)
Lloyd-Jones: The Greatest Snare in the Christian Life
If your knowledge of the Scriptures and of the doctrines of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ has not brought you to this knowledge of the love of Christ, you should be profoundly dissatisfied and disturbed. All biblical doctrine is about this blessed Person; and there is no greater snare in the Christian life than to forget the Person Himself and to live simply on truths concerning Him. . . . We should never study the Bible or anything concerning biblical truth without realizing that we are in His presence, and that it is truth about Him. And it should always be done in an atmosphere of worship. Biblical truth is not one subject among others; it is not something that belongs to a syllabus. It is living truth about a living Person. That is why a theological college should be different from every other kind of college; and that is why a religious service is essentially different from
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Romans 1:2
From David Martyn Lloyd-Jones’ exposition of Romans 1, The Gospel of God; specifically Romans 1:2. Why was the gospel hidden? To reveal the depth of our sin To show mankind cannot save himself To show God’s lordship and sovereignty Why does Paul appeal to the Old Testament? To show the gospel was not something strange and new To show the Bible as complete, authoritative, unified, essential To show the New never contradicts the Old To show the New fulfills the Old To show salvation is for the world. (HT: Jude St.John)
Martyn Lloyd-Jones on social justice
It is not the task of the church to deal directly with these problems. The tragedy today is that while the church is talking about these particular problems and dealing directly with politics and economics and social conditions, no Christians are being produced, and the conditions are worsening and the problems mounting. It is as the church produces Christians that she changes the conditions; but always indirectly… The church cannot change conditions; and she is not meant to change conditions. And the moment she tries to do so she is in various ways shutting the door of evangelistic opportunity…My concern as a preacher of the Gospel is with the souls of men, my business is to produce Christians; and the larger the number of Christians the greater will be the volume of Christian thinking. It is the business of individual Christians to enter Parliament, as Wilberforce did, or to speak in the House of Lords as did the Earl of
Christ, not feelings
“Do you want to know supreme joy, do you want to experience a happiness that eludes description? There is only one thing to do, really seek Him, seek Him Himself, turn to the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. If you find that your feelings are depressed do not sit down and commiserate with yourself, do not try to work something up but go directly to Him and seek His face, as the little child who is miserable and unhappy because somebody else has taken or broken his toy, runs to its father or its mother. So if you and I find ourselves afflicted by this condition, there is only one thing to do, it is to go to Him. If you seek the Lord Jesus Christ and find him there is no need to worry about your happiness and your joy. He is our joy and our happiness, even as He is our peace. He is life, He is everything. So
Lloyd-Jones on the Mission of the Church
From Kevin DeYoung: Here is Martyn Lloyd-Jones, the great Welsh preacher and longtime pastor at Westminster Chapel in London, explaining what Acts 6 can teach us about the mission of the church and the pastor: But, and in many ways the most interesting statement of all, I sometimes think in this connection, is one that is found in the sixth chapter of the book of the Acts of the Apostles where we are told that a great crisis arose in the life of the early Church. I know of nothing that speaks more directly upon the present state and condition of the Church, and what is her primary task, than this sixth chapter of the book of the Acts of the Apostles. The essential message is in the first two verses: ‘And in those days, when the number of the disciples was multiplied, there arose a murmuring of the Grecians against the Hebrews, because their widows were neglected in the
Lloyd-Jones on Thinking and Faith
From Scott Anderson at Desiring God: Although he may overstate the case a little—thinking is not the essence of faith—he is right that thinking is essential to faith. Faith, according to our Lord’s teaching in this paragraph [Matthew 6:25-34], is primarily thinking; and the whole trouble with a man of little faith is that he does not think. He allows circumstances to bludgeon him. That is the real difficulty in life. Life comes to us with a club in its hand and strikes us upon the head, and we become incapable of thought, helpless and defeated. The way to avoid that, according to our Lord, is to think. We must spend more time in studying our Lord’s lessons in observation and deduction. The Bible is full of logic, and we must never think of faith as something purely mystical. We do not just sit down in an armchair and expect marvelous things to happen to us. That is not Christian faith. Christian
JI Packer interview
(HT: Jimmy Davies)
Already Not Yet 