A Man Set On Fire For Christ's Sake- The Grace of God in the Life and Ministry of Martyn Lloyd-Jones

In July 1959, Martyn Lloyd-Jones and his wife, Bethan, were on vacation in Wales. They attended a little chapel for a Sunday-morning prayer meeting, and Lloyd-Jones asked those present, “Would you like me to give a word this morning?” The people hesitated because it was his vacation, and they didn’t want to presume on his energy. But his wife said, “Let him. Preaching is his life” (Martyn Lloyd-Jones, 373). It was a true statement. In the preface to his powerful book Preaching and Preachers, he said, “Preaching has been my life’s work . . . to me the work of preaching is the highest and the greatest and the most glorious calling to which anyone can ever be called” (17).  For thirty years he preached from the pulpit at Westminster Chapel in London. Usually that meant three different sermons each weekend: Friday evening and Sunday morning and evening.

At the end of his career, he remarked, “I can say quite honestly that I would not cross the road to listen to myself preaching” (Preaching and Preachers, 14). But that was not the way others felt. When J.I. Packer was a 22-year-old student, he heard Lloyd-Jones preach each Sunday evening during the school year of 1948–1949, and he said that 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” (Five Evangelical Leaders, 170).

Physician of Souls

Lloyd-Jones’s path to Westminster was unique. He was born in Cardiff, Wales, on December 20, 1899. He moved to London with his family when he was 14 and went to medical school at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, where he received his MD in 1921 and became Sir Thomas Horder’s chief clinical assistant. The well-known Horder described Lloyd-Jones as “the most acute thinker that I ever knew” (Five Evangelical Leaders, 56).

Between 1921 and 1923, Lloyd-Jones underwent a profound conversion. It was so life-changing that it brought with it a passion to preach that completely outweighed his call as a physician. He felt a deep yearning to return to his native Wales and preach. His first sermon there was in April of 1925, and the note he sounded was the recurrent theme of his life: Wales did not need more talk about social action; it needed “a great spiritual awakening.” This theme of revival and power and real vitality remained his lifelong passion (Five Evangelical Leaders, 66).

Boldly Proclaiming the Word of God: An Interview with D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

"In this legendary 1970 interview British journalist Joan Bakewell discusses the biblical truth about man with D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones. Please spend a little time watching it and studying the way Lloyd-Jones proclaims the word of God.

I would like to use something that Lloyd-Jones emphasized in this interview as a launching point to briefly discuss the nature of the authority by which we proclaim biblical truth, and the necessity of us as Christians refusing to compromise or give any ground whatsoever to those who would challenge the truth of the gospel.

One truly striking aspect of this interview is that Bakewell appears to genuinely enjoy interacting with Lloyd Jones. I suggest that she enjoys Lloyd-Jones so much because when she challenges him with questions to which she would expect some kind of attempt to accommodate or compromise with a differing point of view, Lloyd-Jones is utterly and yet winsomely uncompromising.

Lloyd-Jones is necessarily dogmatic about two main points: First, he rejects the secular view that mankind is autonomous, self-determining, and merely a highly evolved animal. He confesses, in opposition to this, the biblical view that man is created in the image of God, and that man was originally created perfect and righteous but sinned against God. As a result, man is a rebel against God, and that is the reason for all of his troubles. He asserts that man can only function truly and be truly happy when he “lives his life under God.” That is, he submits to and obeys God from his heart. That is the purpose for which he was originally created.

Second, Lloyd-Jones asserts that the gospel of Jesus Christ is not about giving us a better life or making us more wealthy or comfortable, as it was so often falsely portrayed by segments of the professing church in both his day and still is in ours. The gospel of Christ is about “reconciling us to God”(Rom. 5:10).