Category: D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

The reconciliation of the apparent contradiction lies in the difference between respect and fear.  When you respect a person you do not fear that person.  What you fear is that you may do something that displease him, and that, not because you feat that he may punish you, but sometimes  even because you may feel that, because he is who and what he is, he will not punish you!  Reverence is ultimately based upon love, it is the recognition of this greatness of the privilege of being allowed to approach God.  There is nothing craven about that; there is not torment in it; there is no bondage in it.  – D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans Vol. 7, p. 224

He is always ready to receive us, and to listen to us, and to grant us His blessing.  He is more ready to give than we are to receive.  Our Lord says, ‘Your heavenly Father knoweth the things that you desire of him before you even ask him.’  All this is a manifestation of the great Father-heart and love of God towards His children, those who are His sons.  – D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans Vol. 7, p. 163

The most terrible aspect of falling into sin is not so much that I have failed, or that I have fallen, or that I am miserable, or that I need release, but that I have failed God and misrepresented Him, and that men and women in the world will know nothing about His praise, His glory, His virtues, His excellencies.  They will say that to be a Christian makes no difference, that Christians are like themselves after all.  They will ask, Where is the difference?  So they may dismiss Christianity and Christ.  It is as we realize that we are His representatives, that we are the channels that He has chosen by means of which He will show forth His own glory, His own excellency, His own power and the wonder of His ways, that we shall proceed to deal with the problem of sin.  – D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans Vol. 7, p. 147

Is our religious life a mechanical effort, or is it there within us and mastering us?  That is how we should think about the matter.  The man who is trying to be a Christian is trying to hold on to something.  The man who is a Christian feels that he is being held by something.  It has been put into him, it is there; it may even seem to be in spite of him, but it is there.  It is not what he is doing that matters to him; it is what has been done to him, it is what he has become, it is the awareness of this power within him – ‘life’.  – D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans Vol. 7, p. 40

What then are the characteristics of the Christian? May God the Holy Spirit grant us understanding here, not only that we may derive assurance, but that we may see something of the glory of being a Christian, the wonder of it all, the amazing thing that God has done for us in Christ Jesus. What is a Christian? It is obvious that he is the exact opposite of the non-Christian, the man we have already considered. But that is not a good way of describing a Christian, although it is done far too often. The Christian’s position is essentially positive; and we must follow the Apostle as he puts it in positive terms. The Christian is not merely a man who no longer does what he used to do. Of course that is true of him, but that is the very least you say about him; that is introduction, that is preamble. What we have to say about the Christian is essentially positive, gloriously positive. God forbid that we should be giving the world the impression that we are mere negations, that we are simply people who do not drink, who do not go to cinemas, who do not smoke, and do not do this and that. What a travesty of Christianity that is, and especially in the light of all the glorious positives that the New Testament puts before us.  – D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans Vol. 7, p. 17

On Romans 8:3-4:

Notice that here, as everywhere, the Apostle mentions the names of the Three Persons of the blessed Holy Trinity.  “God sending his own Son’, and the end of the statement is, ‘We walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit’ – Father, Son, Holy Spirit.  The real explanation of the trouble in most Christian lives is the fact that believers start thinking about salvation in terms of themselves, and not in terms of God, the Holy Trinity, and what God has planned and prepared before time.  They start by looking into themselves, and they spend their lives doing so.  If they but looked at Him, looked out and saw it all there, then they would humble themselves and be filled with praise to God for ever having brought them into relationship with his great and glorious plan.  This is the way to look at salvation: ‘God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh, that…’.  Work that out, I say!  Let us spend our whole lives in looking at that and working that out.  – D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans Vol. 6, p. 312

We come here to the great 8^th chapter of this Epistle.  There is a general agreement about this chapter, not only from the standpoint of interpretation, but in saying that it is one of the greatest chapters in the Bible.  There is a sense in which it is invidious to draw such distinctions, and yet we must agree that there are certain chapters and passages in the Scriptures which have always meant more to God’s people than others.  There is nothing wrong with in that; it is simply that there are variations.  As the Apostle says of the body that there are some parts which are more comely than others, so it is in the great body of truth which we call the Scripture; and as long as that does not lead us to disparage other chapters and passages there is no harm done in saying that this is an outstanding chapter.  I agree with those who say that it is one of the brightest gems of all.  Someone has said that in the whole of the Scriptures the brightest and most lustrous and flashing stone, or collections of stones, is this Epistle to the Romans, and that of these this is the brightest gem in the cluster.  Personally, if I were pressed for an opinion, I would say that the most important chapter in this Epistle is chapter 5, but in many senses the most moving chapter is this chapter 8.  – D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans Volume 6, pp. 258-259

We must not give up because the subject matter is difficult.  You will then find happening to you what is the almost universal experience of all raw students.  When students first begin to listen to lectures on a subject they often feel on the first few occasions not only that they know nothing at all of what is being said, but that they will probably never be able to understand.  There is only one thing to do at that point, and that is to go on listening.  If you go on listening then you will begin to find that more than you had ever realized is sinking and seeping in, and you will wake up one day and say, “Ah, I now see what it is about, I am beginning to understand’.  Do not be impatient with yourself when you are studying a difficult passage in Scripture; keep on, hold on, reading or listening; and suddenly you will find not only do you know much more than you thought you knew, but you will be able to follow and understand.  – D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans Volume 6, p. 189

Concerning Romans 7:9:

[T]here is no more complete misunderstanding of the Law, and of ethics and morality, than to think that ‘obligation implies ability’.  That is a very familiar argument.  Most people today who think at all, and who reject the gospel of salvation, do so for this fundamental reason, that in their view obligation implies ability.  They believe that God would never command us to do anything unless we were able to do it.  So, they argue, the fact that God has given us the Ten Commandments and the Moral Law implies that we are able to carry them out and observe their dictates.  And they further believe that they can obey them and that they are actually doing so.  The final answer to such persons and claims is that the very Law that ‘came’ to Paul and said ‘Thou shalt not covet’, the very Law that reminded him of his obligation was the very thing that proved to him that he could not perform it!  ‘Sin revived and I died’ when ‘the commandment came’.  Far from the obligation implying ability in this realm, the exact opposite is true.  The whole function of the law is not to enable a man to justify himself, but to show him that he cannot do so; it is to bring out ‘the exceeding sinfulness of sin’, as the apostle will tell us later.  But that misunderstanding of the law is the popular view today.  The moral man says,  ‘Ah yes, here are the ethical demands of the gospel.  They address me; very well, I rise up and do them.  The fact that they come to me means that I can carry them out.’  But the whole function of the Law was the exact opposite of that; it was to ‘kill’ you, to show you that you cannot do it, to take pride and self-confidence out of you, to take the ‘life’ out of you, to make you feel that you are weak and helpless and hopeless.  – D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans Volume 6, pp. 143-144

On Romans 7:4

It is even worse to feel condemned by the Law.  I desire to emphasize this.  A Christian who continues to feel the condemnation of the Law is like a wife who still feels afraid of her first husband from whom she has been separated by death.  You must never go back ‘under the law’.  You must really learn to say, ‘There is therefore no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus’.  ‘But’, you say, ‘I feel that I am such a failure, I feel that I am such a sinner, I feel I am so unworthy.’  That may be well true – I often feel the same, but I will never allow myself to go back under condemnation.  I may be unworthy of my new husband, but that does not mean I am going back to be married to the old husband.  That is nonsense, that is confusion, that is impossible.  Whatever you may feel about yourself, and whatever you may know to be true about yourself, ‘there is now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus’.  None!  You must not think of yourself and your life in that way; you should now think of it as your lack of faithfulness to the new husband.  You must think of it in terms of Christ, and never again in terms of the Law, otherwise you are contradicting what you believe.   – D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans Vol. 6, p. 50