Category Archives: Martyn Lloyd-Jones

Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Worth of Your Calling (Ephesians 4:1).

29 Wednesday May 2019

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Worthy of Your Calling
Ephesians 4:1–3 (AV)

1 I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called,
2 With all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love; 3 Endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

In this sermon, MLJ considers the command that we walk “worthy of the vocation”.
It is this concept of “calling” which concerns Dr. Lloyd-Jones. First, he briefly considers the matter of “worthy”: we are to walk worthy of our calling. Worthy has two basic meanings: one is balanced – it is of the same weight. To that he contends that our life to be “worthy” must be balanced between doctrine and practice. At this point, I have one of my few disagreements with MLJ. That understanding cannot really be gotten from the text, even though he is correct that one’s life should have balance.
The second use of the word “worthy” is something fitting, proper – or as he says, something “becoming”. We must walk in a matter which is “becoming” of our calling. That leads to the primary concern in the passage: walking worthy of our calling.
His primary concern with the word “calling” or “vocation”. The word “vocation” used in the King James Bible comes from the word for “calling”:

Middle English: from Old French, or from Latin vocatio(n-), from vocare ‘to call’.

Catherine Soanes and Angus Stevenson, eds., Concise Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. The Greek is plainly “called” – not trade or profession, which is the usual understanding of the word vocation.

First he notes that the concept of “calling” has two basic uses in the New Testament. There is a general call which made to all people:

Acts 17:30 (AV)
And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent:

All people are called to repent. But there is another call which applies only to believers:
Romans 8:28–30 (AV)

28 And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.
29 For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. 30 Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified.

It is this “calling” which is the measure of our walk:

That is precisely what the Apostle Paul is arguing here, that we have been called in order that we may show forth these things. Be worthy, he says, of the vocation, the gcalling by which you have been called. We do so by applying the doctrine and knowledge which we have. We have to live as those who realize that we have been called by God into his heavenly calling.

What then are the elements of doctrine which we must keep in mind in order that we have fitting life?
First, we have been blessed:

Ephesians 1:3 (AV)
3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ:

There is no point in talking about our difficulties, or the problems of life in this complicated modern world of the twentieth century. What matters and counts is that we have been blessed with ‘all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ Jesus!

Second, there is a goal to our calling:
Ephesians 1:4 (AV)
4 According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love:

God has called us not merely that we might not go to hell, and not only that we might know that our sins are forgiven; He has chosen us ‘to be holy’ and to be ‘blameless before him in love.’ We have no to argue or to question or query. That is the life to which He has called us.

 ‘
Third, we have been chosen for this life: Ephesians 1:5 (AV)  Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will,

 We have been called into the family of God; we are God’s children. And we are to live in a manner that will reflect credit and glory upon the family and upon our Father.” But this status is not only what I am at the moment, it also entails what I will become. I am destined to be a joint-heir with Christ. We are being fit for an eternal status. “We are to live as realizing that we going on to glory.

Fourth, since we have been blessed in the heavenly places and are so called, “We must live, I say, as realizing that we are seated in the heavenly places even at this very moment.”
Fifth, we must live in the knowledge that this calling is all based upon the free grace of God. This was made possible by the life, death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
So when sin comes and tempts you, or when you are doubtful as to whether you ca go on with the Christian life, or feel that is hard and makes excessive demands, remember the price that was paid for your deliverance, your ransom. Christ gave His life unto death that we might be rescued and that we might be holy.
Finally, notice that Paul writes as a “prisoner of the Lord”. MLJ takes this not to refer to a temporal Roman imprisonment but as Paul’s status before God:

I am living the life of a prisoner; I am actually in prison at the moment. And I am in prison because I do not decide what I do; I am the servant of Jesus Christ, I am His bondslave….We have no right to live as we choose and as we please. We were the prisoners of Satan; we are not the prisoners of Jesus Christ. We should have no desire save to please Him.

MLJ on the Relationship between Doctrine and Application: “Therefore”

22 Wednesday May 2019

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Ephesians 4:1–3 (NASB95)

1      Therefore I, the prisoner of the Lord, implore you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called,

2      with all humility and gentleness, with patience, showing tolerance for one another in love,

3      being diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

In his sermon on Ephesians 4:1-3, entitled, “Therefore”, Dr. Lloyd-Jones explains the importance of the word “Therefore” this point in Paul’s letter. Ephesians breaks down rather nicely into two sections: chapters 1-3 primarily concern doctrine. Chapters 4-6 primarily concern application, living out that doctrine. The word “therefore” ties the sections of the letter together.

MLJ first lays out three conclusions to draw from this conjunction at this point. First, “Therefore is a word which in a very practical way tells us how to read Scripture. The main principle is … that we must never pick and choose in our reading of Scripture.”

“Therefore” demands a context: the second half of the letter hinges upon the first. And just like this particular letter hangs together, so the entire Scripture hangs together. We cannot select portions of the Bible which make us comfortable and ignore those things which do not fit with our pat positions. “Our invariable rule with the Bible should be to read it from Genesis to Revelation, to read it constantly right through, not leaving out anything,, but following through it and being led by it.” A failure to do so creats “unbalanced and lop-sided Christians.”

Second, the movement from doctrine to application protects us from the fault of thinking that Christianity is only a set of propositions of ideas – and not a manner of life. “Doctrine comes first, but we must never stop at doctrine.”

There is a related fault of those who seek “experiences” – they want a sort of apprehension of the idea – and nothing more.

To know carries within it an implied application, “If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them.” John 13:17 (NASB95)

Third, the word therefore, “reminds us that the life which are to live is a life which always results from application of doctrine….the character and nature of that life which I am to live is one that is determined by the doctrine and results from the doctrine.”

He has an interesting illustration of how this works. He refers to a seed planted in the ground – which does not sprout for some length of time. Perhaps it is too cold or too wet. But then the day comes when the conditions are met and the seed sprouts. The life was not in the conditions about the seed, but in the seed. The application flows out of the life which is in the doctrine. The seedling is the application of the seed, so to speak.

 

Listening to Ourselves (a comparison of some recent psychology and a Puritan and a 20th Century Preacher)

14 Tuesday Aug 2018

Posted by in Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Psychology, Richard Sibbes, Uncategorized

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Suicide because we “listen to ourselves”:

the consistent finding of the role of the destructive inner voice in suicide. This voice drives suicidal tendencies, deceptively convincing people that it is better to end their lives than to find an alternate solution to their suffering

This author picks up on that idea and applies to other self-destructive behavior short of suicide:

For many, understanding there is an innate voice that wishes for death and destruction can help to separate, and thereby distance, one from these thoughts. Distance from the thoughts helps one disown them and take away their power. You are not your thoughts. Once these thoughts are recognized, they can be challenged, minimized, and disregarded. Healthier thoughts can be put in their place.

This observation is actually much older than these psychologists realize. First, Richard Sibbes in “The Soul’s Conflict With Itself”, writing of depression, explains:

Whence we may further observe, that we are prone to cast down ourselves, we are accessory to our own trouble, and weave the web of our own sorrow, and hamper ourselves in the cords of our own twining. God neither loves nor wills that we should be too much cast down. We see our Saviour Christ, how careful he was that his disciples should not be troubled, and therefore he labours to prevent that trouble which might arise by his suffering and departure from them, by a heavenly sermon; ‘Let not your hearts be troubled,’ &c., John 14:1. He was troubled himself that we should not be troubled. The ground, therefore, of our disquiet is chiefly from ourselves, though Satan will have a hand in it. We see many, like sullen birds in a cage, beat themselves to death. This casting down of ourselves is not from humility, but from pride; we must have our will, or God shall not have a good look from us, but as pettish and peevish children, we hang our heads in our bosom, because our wills are crossed.

And as for speaking to ourselves about such things, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, taking his cue from Sibbes, formulates the answer thus:

The main art in the manner of spiritual living is to know how to handle yourself. You have to take yourself in hand, you have to address yourself, you have to preach to yourself, question yourself. You must say to your soul, “Why art thou cast down?” — what business have you to be disquieted? You must turn on yourself, upbraid yourself, condemn yourself, exhort yourself, and say to yourself: “Hope thou in God” — instead of muttering in this depressed unhappy way. And you must go on to remind yourself of God, Who God is, and God is and what God has done, and what God has pledged Himself to do. Then having done that, end on this great note: defy yourself, and defy other people, and defy the devil and the whole world, and say with this man: “I shall yet praise Him for the help of His countenance, who is also the health of my countenance and my God.”

Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression, “General Consideration”

Who is the “Old Man” in Romans 6? (Martyn Lloyd-Jones)

14 Wednesday Mar 2018

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Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1538

In his sermon on Romans 6:5,6, Dr. Lloyd-Jones considers the issue of what is meant by the “old man” who has been crucified. He rejects one common understanding  that the old man is “the carnal nature and all its propensities”. Rather, the old man “the man that I used to be in Adam” (Rom. 6, p. 62). “As a Christian I am no longer in Adam; I am in Christ….It is not my carnal, sinful nature. That is still here, but the old man has gone, he has been crucified.” (Rom. 6, p. 63).

That is why those who are in Christ are no longer under condemnation. Rom. 8:1. The condemned man has been crucified; I am someone else.

And here is the implication:

We are never called to crucify our old man. Why? Because it has already happened — the old man was crucified with Christ on the Cross…nowhere does the Scripture call upon you to get rid of your old man, for the obvious reason that he is already gone….What you and I are called upon to do is to cease to live as if were were still in Adam. Understand that the “old man” is not there The only way to stop living as if he were still there is to realize that he is not there. That is the New Testament method of sanctification. the whole trouble with us, says the New Testament, is that we do not realize what we are, that we still go on thinking we are the old man and go on trying to do things to the old man. That has already been done; the old man was crucified with Christ.

Martin Lloyd-Jones in Romans 6:3-4 (Buried and Raised)

28 Monday Aug 2017

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Romans 6:3–4 (ESV)

3 Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

 

I As an objective fact we are joined to Christ in his death: “We He did we have done; because we have been baptized into His death, we died with Him. As we sinned with Adam, we died with the Lord Jesus Christ.”

A He then makes a note of how we tend to miss the objectivity of this event. In part this is because our singing emphasizes the subjective side of the Christian life.

B “We are so subjective that we miss his glorious truth, this objective truth, this great thing that has happened outside of us — our position.”

C.  It has happened to us. “You cannot be a Christian without this being true of you.”

D.  “The Apostle’s statement has nothing to with sanctification as such; it is purely a question of that which is true of every Chritian, and, as it were, an aspect of his justification.”

E. “His death means the end of the relationship to the realm and reign of sin, therefore we have died to the real and the relationship and reign of sin.”

II.  Joined to his resurrection.

A. “So the first thing we have to hold on to is that God raised him from the dead by His own eternal glorious power. The first thing the resurrection proclaims is the tremendous power of God that was exercised and revealed.”

B. “All sin can is to kill us and bury us; but it cannot go further. That is the ultimate of its power. Our Lord resurrection proclaims that, and establishes it. He has finished with it, He is out of it, He has no more do it with it.’

III.  What this means.

A. “The same glorious power of the Father that raised Him fro the dead has done th same to us.”

B. We are in the newness of life: “The Apostle is not saying that we ought to do so, he is not saying that we ought to strive to do so, that we out to strive to crucify ourselves and to die. No! It has happened already, we are in this new position.”

IV. “We shall not be allowed to live a life of sin; it is not only unreasonable as a suggestion, it is in a final sense impossible.”

The Spirit Always Leads People to Think

31 Monday Jul 2017

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So the first effect of Christianity is to make people stop and think. They are not simply overawed by some great occasion. They say, “No, I must face this. I must think.” That is the work of the Spirit. The people in Acts thought again. They repented—the Greek word is metanoia—they changed their mind completely. The Spirit always leads people to think, and, as I have been showing you, the greatest trouble is that men and women go through life without thinking. Or they think for a moment but find it painful, so they stop and turn to a bottle of whiskey or television or something else—anything to forget.
Is it not obvious that the world, speaking spiritually and intellectually, is in a doped condition? In all sorts of ways men and women evade the facts. They can do this with great energy, they can be very intellectual, but ultimately they end up with nothing.
What does the Spirit make us think about? Well, not first and foremost about ourselves. I must emphasize that Christianity does not start with us. It does not say, “Do you want to get rid of that sin that is getting you down? Do you want happiness? Do you want peace? Do you want guidance?” That is not Christianity. That, again, is the approach of the cults. No, these people in Jerusalem were made to think about Jesus Christ! They were given the objective, historical facts about this person. Peter had just said to them, “Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly, that God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ.”
The next verse continues, “Now when they heard this”—they were not thinking about themselves but were beginning to think about Him. That is always the message of the Christian church. The true Christian message brings us face to face with the historical facts.

 

Martyn Lloyd-Jones, “Becoming a Christian,” in Authentic Christianity, 1st U.S. ed., vol. 1, Studies in the Book of Acts (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2000), 53–54.

We have got to believe it.

27 Thursday Jul 2017

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Dr. Lloyd-Jones in his sermon on Romans 6:1-2 comes to the point where he says, “That is what Paul is saying, that we died to the reign and the realm and the rule of sin.”

‘But wait a minute,’ says someone, ‘I still have a final objection. If what you say is true, it if it is true, as yo have been emphasizing so much, that in Christ we are really dead and have finished with the rule and the realm of sin once and forever, how is it that we can still fall into sin?…’

He then gives three analogies: First to slaves freed during the American Civil War. “They were free, they were no longer slaves; the law had been changed, and their status and their position was entirely different; but it took them a very long time to realize it. You can still be a slave experimentally [in experience], even when you are longer a slave legally.”

He gives the example of a child and servants.

Finally, he gives the example of someone moving from one field who then crosses a boundary and live in another parcel.

The whole object of the Apostle in this sixth chapter is to get us to realize it. ‘Reckon yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin.’ You are therefore to realize it, to reckon it. Realize also that you are alive unto God through our Lord Jesus Christ.’ It in not yet true perhaps in your experience; but though it is not yet true in your experience it is true as a matter of fact. We have got to believe it…

‘But I cannot believe that,’ says someone, ‘it is too staggering, it is almost incredible. Here am I on earth, and I listen to the voice of Satan, and fall into sin; and yet you tell me that I am dead to it.’ You are! And I ask you to believe it. I know it is staggering ….Whatever you may feel, whatever your experience may be, God tells us here through His Word, that if we are in Christ we are not longer in Adam, we are longer under the reign and rule of sin. We are in Christ, we are under the rule and under the reign of grace.

 

The danger of preaching salvation by grace (MLJ)

14 Friday Jul 2017

Posted by in Grace, Justification, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans, Uncategorized

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There is a sense in which the doctrine of justification by faith only is a very dangerous doctrine; dangerous, I mean, in the sense that it can be misunderstood. It exposes a man to this particular charge. People listening to it may say, ‘Ah, there isa  man who does not encourage us to live a good life, he seems to say that there is no value inner works, he says that “all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags.” Therefore what he is saying is, that it does not matter what you do, sin as much as you like.’ There is thus clearly a sense in which the message of ‘justification by faith only’ can be dangerous, and likewise with the message that salvation is entirely of grace. I say therefore that if our preaching does not expose us to that charge and to that misunderstanding it is because we are not really preaching the gospel.

Martin Lloyd-Jones, Romans 6, The New Man (Sermon One, Romans 6:1,2), p. 9. But it is precisely that “misunderstanding” which leads to the question and answer of Romans 6:1-2 “What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? God forbid. How shall we that are dead in sin live any longer in it.”

What is the business of grace? Is it to allow us to continue in sin? No! It is to deliver us from the bondage and the reign of sin, and to put us under the reign of grace. So when a man asks, “Shall we therefore continue in sin that grace may abound?” hr id merely showing that he has failed to understand either the tyranny or the reign of sin, or the whole object and purpose of grace and its marvelous reign over those who are saved.

The Activity of God

19 Saturday Mar 2016

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We must get rid of this notion that the church is a national institution or any other form of human institution. She is not a club or a society where people meet together and do certain things. I never like to hear people referring to a building as a church. “I’m going down to the church,” they say. But the church does not consist of a building; it consists of people, living souls with the Lord in their midst. We must get rid of this external notion, this idea of just paying a kind of formal visit upon God and then forgetting all about Him. That is religion, the very antithesis of the Christian faith.
Any notion that Christianity is mainly the result of something that we do is always completely, fatally wrong. We must cast off any idea that the Christian church is the result of our action and that we are perpetuating some tradition. If that is our view of Christianity, it is false. That was the curse of the Jews who finally crucified the Lord Jesus Christ. They were traditional religionists, and such have always been—and are today—the greatest enemies of the true church and of the true Christian faith and message. But how much of so-called Christianity is just this!
Let me ask you a serious question: Why do you attend a place of worship? Have you thought enough about it even to ask that question? Are you going simply because it is a tradition? People, you say, have always gone to church on Sundays. But church attendance is something you do. You are simply perpetuating a tradition. Large numbers of people have gone to church out of a sense of duty, hoping each week that the service will not be too long. Each week they have felt nothing at all; the service has been absolutely lifeless, the singing miserable, the intoning of the Scriptures boring. There has been no power, no vigor. And because they have thought that is Christianity, they have turned their backs upon it. And they are perfectly right to do so. That is the logical step. God knows, I myself did that many years ago. And I would not be in a Christian pulpit now but for the fact that I saw through that false view. You cannot fit that into the book of Acts. That is traditional, formal religion, whatever form it may happen to take and in whatever denomination it may appear.
Let me be still more specific. There are some people who seem to have seen through the formality and who compensate for it by producing an exciting kind of worship and have stunts and entertainment to make services lively and bright. But that does not make the slightest difference because it is still men and women who are organizing it. True Christianity is always the activity of God. “Suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind”—God. So, bright services and an entertaining and varied program is not Christianity either. It is livelier, but the life is not the life of the Spirit. Anything controlled by us, whether lifeless or lively, is not Christianity. Christianity is that which controls us, which masters us, which happens to us
David Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Authentic Christianity, 1st U.S. ed., vol. 1, Studies in the Book of Acts (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2000), 22.

An Up To Date Book

11 Friday Dec 2015

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But the Word of God is in an entirely different category. It is a very old book, one of the oldest books in the world. And the amazing thing is that it is as alive today as it ever has been. “[Moses] received the living oracles,” and this Word is as alive now as it was in the days of Moses. A part of this living quality that belongs to it is that it is always contemporary, it is always up-to-date.

Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Triumphant Christianity, vol. 5, Studies in the Book of Acts (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2006), 79.