Martyn Lloyd-Jones

David Martyn Lloyd-Jones (December 20, 1899 – March 1, 1981) was a Protestant Christian minister who was hugely influential in the reformed wing of the British evangelical movement in the 20th century. For almost 30 years, he was the minister of Westminster Chapel in London. Lloyd-Jones was strongly opposed to the liberal theology that had become a part of many Christian denominations in Wales and England, which he saw as unbiblical. He disagreed with the broad church approach and encouraged evangelical Christians (particularly Anglicans) to leave their existing denominations, as he felt that true Christian fellowship could only take place amongst those who shared the same views.

Early life and ministry

Lloyd-Jones was born in Cardiff and raised in Llangeitho, Ceredigion. Llangeitho is associated with the Welsh Methodist revival, as it was the location of Daniel Rowland's ministry. Attending a London grammar school between 1914 and 1916 and then St Bartholomew's Hospital as a medical student, in 1921 he started work as assistant to the Royal Physician, Sir Thomas Horder. After struggling for two years over what he sensed was a calling to preach, in 1927 Lloyd-Jones returned to Wales, having married Bethan Phillips (with whom he later had two children, Elizabeth and Ann), accepting an invitation to minister at a church in Aberavon (Port Talbot).

Westminster Chapel

After a decade ministering in Aberavon, in 1939 he went back to London, where he had been appointed as co-pastor of Westminster Chapel, working alongside G. Campbell Morgan. The day before he was officially to be accepted into his new position, war broke out in Europe. During the same year, he became the president of the Inter-Varsity Fellowship of Students (known today as the Universities and Colleges Christian Fellowship (UK)). During the war he and his family moved to Haslemere, Surrey. In 1943 Morgan retired, leaving Jones as the sole Pastor of Westminster Chapel.

Lloyd-Jones was well-known for his expository style of preaching, and the Sunday morning and evening meetings at which he officiated drew crowds of several hundred, as did the Friday evening Bible studies – which were, in effect, sermons in the same style. He would take many months – even years – to expound a chapter of the Bible verse by verse. His sermons would often be around fifty minutes to an hour in length, attracting many students from universities and colleges in London. His sermons were also transcribed and printed (virtually verbatim) in the weekly Westminster Record, which was read avidly by those who enjoyed his preaching.

In 1966 he caused controversy in the Christian press when, at an Evangelical Alliance assembly, he called on all clergy of evangelical conviction to leave denominations which contained both liberal and evangelical congregations, referring primarily to the Church of England. He was publicly rebuked by John Stott, a leading evangelical Anglican, and at the first National Evangelical Anglican Congress the following year the Anglican evangelicals committed themselves to working within their denomination, distancing themselves from Lloyd-Jones' separatist approach.

Later life

Lloyd-Jones retired from his ministry at Westminster Chapel in 1968, following a major operation. He spoke of a belief that God had stopped him from continuing to preach through Romans because he did not know enough about "joy in the Holy Spirit" which was to be his next sermon (based on Romans 14:17). For the rest of his life he concentrated on editing his sermons to be published, counseling other ministers, answering letters and attending conferences. Perhaps his most famous publication is a series of commentaries on the Epistle to the Romans, the first volume of which was published in 1970.

Despite spending most of his life living and ministering in England, Lloyd-Jones was proud of his roots in Wales. He best expressed his concern for his home country through his support of the Evangelical Movement of Wales: he was a regular speaker at their conferences, preaching in both English and Welsh. Since his death, the movement has published various books, in English and Welsh, bringing together selections of his sermons and articles.

He preached for the last time on June 8, 1980 at Barcombe Baptist Chapel. After a lifetime of work, he died peacefully in his sleep at Ealing on March 1, 1981, St David's Day. He was buried at Newcastle Emlyn, near Cardigan, west Wales. A well-attended thanksgiving service was held at Westminster Chapel on 6 April.

Since his death there have been various publications regarding Lloyd-Jones and his work, most popularly a biography in two volumes by Iain Murray.

Legacy

Charismatic movement

Martyn Lloyd-Jones has admirers from many different denominations in the Christian Church today. One little-discussed aspect of his legacy is his relationship to the charismatic movement. Though not directly associated with this movement, he did teach the Baptism with the Holy Spirit as a distinct experience from conversion or regeneration rather than identification with Christ. Indeed towards the end of his life he urged his followers to actively seek an experience of the Holy Spirit. For instance, in his exposition of Ephesians 6:10-13, published in 1976, he says, "Do you know anything of this fire? If you do not, confess it to God and acknowledge it. Repent, and ask Him to send the Spirit and His love into you until you are melted and moved, until you are filled with his love divine, and know His love to you, and rejoice in it as his child, and look forward to the hope of the coming glory. 'Quench not the Spirit', but rather 'be filled with the Spirit' and 'rejoice in Christ Jesus'".

Part of Lloyd-Jones' stress on the Christian's need of baptism with the Holy Spirit was due to his belief that the baptism with the Spirit provides an overwhelming assurance of God's love to the Christian, and thereby enables him to boldly witness for Christ to an unbelieving world.

Aside from his insistence that the baptism with the Spirit is a work of Jesus Christ distinct from regeneration rather than understanding the literal meanting of the word baptism as identification, Lloyd-Jones also opposed cessationism, claiming that the doctrine is not founded upon Scripture. In fact, he requested that Banner of Truth Trust, the publishing company which he co-founded, only publish his works on the subject after his death. He went as far as to claim that those who took a position such as B.B. Warfield's on cessationism were 'quenching the Spirit.' He continued to proclaim the necessity of the active working of God in the world and the need for him to miraculously demonstrate his power so that Christian preachers (and all those who witness for Christ) might gain a hearing in a contemporary world that is hostile to the true God and to Christianity in general.

Preaching

Lloyd-Jones seldom agreed to preach live on television, (we do not know the exact number, but it was most likely once or twice). His reasoning behind this decision was that this type of "controlled" preaching, that is, preaching that is constrained by time-limits, "militates against the freedom of the Spirit." In other words, he believed that the preacher should be free to follow the leading of the Holy Spirit concerning the length of time in which he is allowed to preach. He recorded that he once asked a television executive who wanted him to preach on television, "What would happen to your programmes if the Holy Spirit suddenly descended upon the preacher and possessed him; what would happen to your programmes?"

Perhaps the greatest aspect of Lloyd-Jones' legacy has to do with his preaching. Lloyd-Jones was one of the most influential preachers of the twentieth century. Many volumes of his sermons have been published by Banner of Truth, as well as other publishing companies. In his book, Preaching and Preachers (Zondervan, 1971), Lloyd-Jones describes his views on preaching, or what might be called his doctrine of homiletics. In this book, he defines preaching as "Logic on fire." The meaning of this definition is demonstrated throughout the book, in which he describes his own preaching style which had developed over his many years of ministry.

His preaching style may be summarized as logic on fire for several reasons. First, he believed that the use of logic was vital for the preacher. But his view of logic was not the same as that of the Enlightenment. This is why he called it logic "on fire." The fire has to do with the activity and power of the Holy Spirit. He therefore believed that preaching was the logical demonstration of the truth of a given passage of Scripture with the aid, or unction, of the Holy Spirit. This view manifested itself in the form of Lloyd-Jones' sermons. Lloyd-Jones believed that true preaching was always expository. This means he believed that the primary purpose of the sermon was to reveal and expand the primary teaching of the passage under consideration. Once the primary teaching was revealed, he would then logically expand this theme, demonstrating that it was a biblical doctrine by showing that it was taught in other passages in the Bible, and using logic in order to demonstrate its practical use and necessity for the hearer. With this being the case, he labored in his book Preaching and Preachers to caution young preachers against what he deemed as "commentary-style" preaching as well as "topical" preaching.

Lloyd-Jones' preaching style was therefore set apart by his sound exposition of biblical doctrine and his fire and passion in its delivery. He is thereby known as a preacher who continued on it the Puritan tradition of experimental preaching. A famous quote on the effects of Lloyd-Jones preaching is given by theologian and preacher J.I. Packer, who wrote that, upon his first hearing of Lloyd-Jones' preaching, he had, "never heard such preaching." It came to him "with the force of electric shock, bringing to at least one of his listeners more of a sense of God than any other man".

Lloyd-Jones was also an avid supporter of the Evangelical Library in London.

Quotes

"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.”..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." [1] Martyn Lloyd-Jones and Logos Bible Software

"The glory of the gospel is that when the Church is absolutely different from the world, she invariably attracts it. It is then that the world is made to listen to her message, though it may hate it at first. That is how revival comes. That must also be true of us as individuals. It should not be our ambition to be as much like everybody else as we can, though we happen to be Christian, but rather to be as different from everybody who is not a Christian as we can possibly be. Our ambition should be to be like Christ, the more like Him the better, and the more like Him we become, the more we shall be unlike everybody who is not a Christian" [2] Introduction to the Beatitudes

"With these two words we come to the introduction to the Christian message, the peculiar, specific message which the Christian faith has to offer to us. These two words, in and of themselves, in a sense contain the whole of the gospel. The gospel tells of what God has done, God’s intervention; it is something that comes entirely from outside us and displays to us that wondrous and amazing and astonishing work of God which the apostle goes on to describe and to define in the following verses" [3] Martyn Lloyd-Jones and Logos Bible Software

"If we give the impression that the main effect of Christianity is to make us miserable, then it is not surprising that ninety per cent of the people are outside the Christian church. 'Miserable Christians,' they say, 'look at them!' And they add that they have life, they have joy, they have fullness. Shame on us Christian people! But it is not merely a question of saying shame on us. What a terrible responsibility is ours if we are so misrepresenting this 'glorious gospel of the blessed God' (1 Timothy 1:11). We are meant to be witnesses to all people that we are filled to overflowing. We are meant to show the truth of the psalmist's words: 'My cup runneth over!' (Psalm 23:5)." [4] A Superabundance of Blessing

References

• Davies, Gwyn (2002). A Light in the Land: Christianity in Wales 200-2000. Bridgend: Bryntirion Press. ISBN 1-85049-181-X.
• Lloyd-Jones, David Martyn (1994). D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones: Letters 1919-1981. selected with notes by Iain H. Murray. Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust. ISBN 0-85151-674-2.
• Murray, Iain Hamish (1990). David Martyn Lloyd-Jones: The Fight of Faith 1939-1981. Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust. ISBN 0-85151-564-9.
• Peters, John (1986). Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Preacher. Exeter: Paternoster. ISBN 0-85364-416-0.
• Murray, Iain Hamish (1982). David Martyn Lloyd-Jones: The First Forty Years 1899-1939. Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust. ISBN 0-85151-353-0.
• Larsen, David L. "D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones: Servant Of The Word". preaching.com. Retrieved 2007-08-26.

External links

• Online recording of Martyn Lloyd-Jones sermons
• Selection of Martyn Lloyd-Jones books
• Martyn Lloyd-Jones Online