Martyn Lloyd-Jones was born in Wales in 1899 and lived there until he was a teenager when his family moved to London. Despite spending most of his life in London, Lloyd-Jones never lost either his Welsh language or his Welsh identity. He studied medicine and began to rise rapidly in the medical profession. His life changed when he had a series of deep experiences of God which gave him a love and zeal for Christ. Soon, despite having the most promising of medical careers before him, Lloyd-Jones felt called to preach. In 1927, without any formal theological training, he left medicine and, taking a massive salary cut, went with his wife Bethan to pastor a struggling church in Port Talbot, one of the poorest areas of South Wales.
There, Lloyd-Jones’s church grew rapidly and saw remarkable conversions. The reputation of ‘the Doctor’, as he was increasingly referred to, became widespread. In 1939 Lloyd-Jones returned to London to become associate pastor at Westminster Chapel, one of the capital’s largest nonconformist churches, becoming its pastor in 1943. For the next twenty-five years, as the world changed about him, the Doctor preached faithfully and consistently filled the 1,500-seater Westminster Chapel. Lloyd-Jones was involved in many things: conference speaking, training of preachers and ministry amongst students. But it was his regular weekly preaching – once on Friday evening, twice on Sunday – where his impact was most felt.
The Doctor’s preaching ministry was a phenomenon and the painstaking way in which he dealt with Bible books became legendary. So for example, he preached on Romans for twelve years on Friday nights with 366 sermons published in fourteen volumes. Most of his sermons are still in print and many of the later ones were recorded. Lloyd Jones’s preaching was always serious, clear and logical. What his sermons had was a sense of the presence of God. In 1968 ill-health finally forced the Doctor’s retirement, but he continued writing and teaching until his death in 1981.
There were three great influences on Lloyd-Jones. The first was his Welsh identity and his awareness of a nation periodically transformed by great revivals given by God. The second was his love of the seventeenth-century Puritans: he himself was often described as the ‘last of the Puritan preachers’. The third was his medical training, which gave him his analytical approach and his calm, precise diagnostic preaching in which he sought to identify both problems and cures.
As an evangelist, what encourages me is Lloyd-Jones’s supreme commitment to preaching. He saw his life’s work as publicly declaring the gospel so that men and women would be converted to Christ and built up in the faith. Beneath his calm, measured language in the pulpit was a profound passion to see people born-again and strengthened as believers. An enduring legacy from this is his wonderful book, Preaching and Preachers, which I have found to be extraordinarily helpful.
Here are some of my favourite Martyn Lloyd-Jones quotations:
‘You are either a Christian or you are not a Christian; you cannot be partly a Christian. You are either “dead” or “alive”; you are either “born” or “not born”.’
‘If we only spent more of our time in looking at him, we should soon forget ourselves.’
‘Have you realised that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself.’
The church is always to be under the Word: she must be; we must keep her there. You must not assume that because the church started correctly, she will continue so. She did not do so in the New Testament times; she has not done so since. Without being constantly reformed by the Word, the church becomes something very different.
Let me suggest three things about Lloyd-Jones’s preaching that are challenging.
First, his preaching was biblical. The Doctor had an unshakeable trust in Scripture as the written word of God. Although never formally trained in theology, Lloyd-Jones was well read and was all too aware of how the liberal theology which watered-down the Bible was infecting churches. Lloyd-Jones rejected liberalism and instead preached with confidence in the truth and relevance of God’s word. This high view of Scripture could also be seen in the way that in preaching, his goal was always to simply let God speak. I believe the Doctor was right and indeed that history has vindicated him. Liberalism has produced no fruit.
Second, his preaching was spiritual. Lloyd-Jones may have been the ‘last of the Puritans’ and had a deep commitment to Reformed theology but he never fell into the temptation to simply proclaim some correct and formal faith. He was a man who preached with a firm expectation that the Holy Spirit would work. Indeed, the Doctor encouraged Christians to seek the deepest possible experience of the Spirit in their lives. Longing for revival, he prayed for God’s Spirit to move in power, in people and in nations. So should we.
Third, his preaching was pastoral. In a way, Lloyd-Jones never outgrew his medical training; he simply switched to caring for souls. In his sermons we often hear him speak of diagnosis and prescription; he saw humanity as deeply diseased by sin and in desperate need of God’s healing through Christ. One lasting testimony to this approach is another excellent book, Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Its Cure, a volume that has helped many who have found themselves struggling in life.
Like all of us, Lloyd-Jones was a man of his time, but what he proclaimed was eternally true. That’s the challenge for us all!
J.John
Reverend Canon
Image from www.oneplace.com/ministries/living-grace/listen
