Category: D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

‘Christianity is Christ.’  He is central, He is vital, He is all in all.  It does not matter how good a life may be, how moral it may appear to be, if it is not entirely dependent upon the Lord Jesus Christ and what He has done, it is not Christianity.  It may be morality, it may be some other religion, but it is not Christianity.  You can have religion without Christianity; you may have morality without Christianity; but the thing that makes Christianity Christian is the centrality, is the cruciality of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  Hence, any claim that is made, if it does not directly relate everything to Him, and give the glory to Him, proves at once that it is not Christian at all. … If your position is not entirely dependent upon this blessed Person it is not Christianity at all; it is a sham, it is counterfeit.  – D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans Vol. 6, p. 35

On Romans 6:22

The Christian is meant to glory in the ‘But now’.  He asserts it.  That is why I maintain, and maintain stoutly, that a man who understands this truth cannot merely lecture on it.  A man who can lecture on this does not really appreciate what it means.  If you know anything about this you are bound to preach!  A man who can say ‘By now” coldly, and merely regard them as two words, just a part of the construction of a sentence, a part of the syntax, has never seen their real meaning.  No, the Christian cannot look at these words without being moved to the depth of his being.  He worships, he praises God, he must shout ‘But now’.  This is in many ways the best test of our profession of the Christian faith.  If these words do not thrill us and move us, then I think we has better re-examine our whole position.  – D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans Vol. 5, p. 286

I end with this question.  What kind of food can we take?  Are we still only capable of taking milk, or are we beginning to develop a taste for meat?  Are illustrations and analogies still essential, or do we know that our minds are expanding under the illumination of the Spirit and rejoicing in the deep things of God?  ‘The Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.’  I must confess that there is nothing which ever happens in my experience which depresses me more than the following. Sometimes when I am preaching away from him, and have preaches what I would have thought were the mere elements and beginnings of the Christian faith, people come to me and say, ‘You were making rather heavy demands upon us this evening’.  They add, ‘We are not accustomed to these deep things’.  Deep things! and I thought I was being elementary!  That occurs among Christians, and evangelical people.  – D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans Volume 5, p. 253

What I desire to emphasize at the moment is the greatness of this change.  It is not enough for us merely to know that we have been changed, or that a Christian is a man who must undergo a change; we must have some inadequate conception of the greatness of the change which is undergone.  We see the greatness in this way, that it is a change which affects the whole of a man’s personality.  Look at it again.  ‘Ye have obeyed’ – there is you will.  ‘From the heart’ – there is you emotion.  What have you obeyed from the heart?  ‘The form of doctrine delivered you’.  How do you apprehend doctrine?  You do so with you mind.  So the change a man undergoes to become a Christian is a change that affects him in his mind, in his heart, and in his will; the entire personality is involved.  – D. Martyn Lloyd Jones, Romans Volume 5, p. 207

Because of what the Lord Jesus Christ has done, and because of what has happened to Him, and because of our union with Him, it is true to say of us that our whole relationship to sin and all it can do has been fundamentally changed.  We are no longer in the position in which we were when we were born as the children of Adam.  We were under the dominion, under the reign, and the rule of sin.  That is no longer the position, we have been ‘translated’ out of that ‘into the Kingdom of God’s dear Son’ (Colossians 1:13).  – D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans Vol. 5, pp. 124-125

As we come to this detailed outworking of his argument by the Apostle it is essential that we should hold clearly in our minds what he is setting out to do.  He is refuting the charge brought against his teaching stated in the first verse, ‘Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?’  He is not giving an exposition of the way of holiness and of sanctification, as is commonly suggested; he is simply refuting the charge that is brought against the doctrine of justification by faith, and against the finality and certainty of our salvation in Christ.  – D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans Vol. 5, p. 42

The true preaching of the gospel of salvation by grace alone always leads to the possibility of this charge [antinomianism] being brought against it. There is no better test as to whether a man is really preaching the New Testament gospel of salvation than this, that some people might misunderstand it and misinterpret it to mean that it really amounts to this, that because you are saved by grace alone it does not matter at all what you do; you can go on sinning as much as you like because it will redound all the more to the glory of grace. If my preaching and presentation of the gospel of salvation does not expose it to that misunderstanding, then it is not the gospel.  – D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans Vol. 5, p. 8

If you want to measure grace, that is how you do so – from the highest heaven down to the cross, and beyond that even to the grave, down amongst the dead.  This is the way to see the character of the reign of grace.  It was grace, the grace that was in His heart, and in the heart of the Godhead, that led Him to do all of this – eventually to give His very life a ransom for our sins…  It is there you see the bounty, the abundance, the munificence of it all.  He gave himself even unto the death of the cross.  So that aspect of grace is seen most gloriously and most brightly in Him.  – D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans Volume 4, p. 364

I would say that the greatest sinners in the world are the self-satisfied, self-contained, good moral people, who believe that, as they are, they are fit to stand in the presence of God.  Moreover, they are in reality telling God that He need never have sent His Son into the world as far as they are concerned, and that the Son need never have died upon the Cross.  There is no greater insult to God than that; but that is precisely what they are guilty of.  There is no greater sinner in the universe than the man who has never seen his need of the blood of Christ.  There is no greater sin than that – murder and adultery and fornication are nothing in comparison with it.  – D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans Vol. 4, p. 291

[W]e must not begin to question our relationship to the world’s first man, Adam, because every time you put the question I will make you ask the same question about our relationship to the Lord Jesus Christ.  If you say to me, ‘Is it fair that the sin of Adam should be imputed to me?’ I will reply by asking, ‘Is it fair that the righteousness of Christ should be imputed to you?’  – D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans Vol. 4, p. 219