Gems from Martyn Lloyd-Jones

Paternoster has recently published An Anthology of Quotations from the Doctor by Dr. Tony Sargent, principal of The International Christian College in Glasgow. Here we offer a selection concerning the cross.

We cannot afford to be vague and uncertain as to the meaning of Christ’s death on the Cross. The Final Perseverance of the Saints, 383

The Cross is the greatest display and exposition of the character of the everlasting God… you do not see that glorious person alone; you look again and see that it is not only the Son that is involved in this Cross. The Father is involved, he is there. Have you ever seen him there? The Cross, 72

The Blood of Christ

There is no greater sinner in the universe than the man who has never seen his need of the blood of Christ. Assurance, 291

All the solutions of the world are insufficient to get rid of the stain of my sins, but here is the blood of the Son of God, spotless, blameless, and I feel that this is powerful. That is our comfort and consolation. Fellowship with God, 144

Spurgeon used to say, and I am increasingly convinced of the rightness of his dictum, that the ultimate way to test whether a man is truly preaching the gospel or not, is to notice the emphasis which he places upon ‘the blood’. It is not enough to talk about the cross and the death; the test is ‘the blood’. God’s Way of Reconciliation, 331

You cannot get away from this blood in the New Testament. It is central; without it there is no salvation. The law of God demands sin’s punishment, and the punishment is death; so our Lord came face-to-face with that demand likewise. Before he could be ‘the Saviour of the world’, he had to satisfy the demands that the law makes upon guilty sinners in the sight of God. The message is that he went to the cross; he set his face steadfastly to go to Jerusalem; he would not be delivered. He told his servants in effect, ‘I could command 12 legions of angels; but if I did how could I fulfil all righteousness? I must meet the demands of the law’. He gave himself as an offering and a sacrifice; he died passively there upon the cross, and God poured upon him his wrath against the sin of man. He is our Saviour by his atoning death as well as by his perfect, blameless, spotless life of obedience. The Love of God, 137-38

People hate what they call this `theology of blood’, but there is no theology worthy of the name apart from the shed blood of Christ. Assurance, 148

The necessity

The hour that produced the cross is the central, pivotal point, of history and God always knew about it, the Lord came for that hour. Saved in Eternity, 111

Is it conceivable that God would have sent his only begotten beloved Son to the shame and the suffering and the ignominy of the Cross if it were not absolutely essential? If teaching could have saved us, the necessary teaching would have been given. Assurance, 148

Penal substitution

At Calvary God was laying your iniquity on his Son. God was taking your sins and punishing them in him. His blood was shed that your sins might be blotted out. That is the only answer and the only explanation for Christ’s death. Authentic Christianity (1), 267

There is a sense in which it can be said that the Lord Jesus Christ is the only one who has ever tasted death in all its bitterness and horror. That is why we see him there sweating blood in the garden. That is why we hear him crying out upon the cross. That is why he died so soon and the authorities were surprised that he was already dead. That is why his heart literally broke, it actually ruptured. It was because he tasted. And my argument is this: would God the eternal Father ever allow His only begotten, beloved Son to endure that if it were not absolutely essential? But take another statement which says the same thing — Romans 8.32: ‘He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?’

Notice especially the first part: The full wrath of God against sin, the full blast of it, descended upon him. Great Doctrines of the Bible (1), 331

The reaction

The cross therefore condemns us before it sets us free. God’s Ultimate Purpose, 167

The offence of the cross is this — that I am so condemned and so lost and so hopeless that if he, Jesus Christ, had not died for me, I would never know God, and I could never be forgiven. And that hurts; that annoys; that tells me I am hopeless, that I am vile, that I am useless; and as a natural man I do not like it. The Gospel of God, 266

I only know that my rags and tatters have really gone when I see them on the Person of Jesus Christ the Son of God who wore them in my stead and became a curse in my place. The Father commanded him to take my filthy rags off me and he has done so. He bore my iniquity; he clothed and covered himself with my sin. He has taken it away and has drowned it in the sea of God’s forgetfulness. And when I see and believe that God in Christ has not only forgiven but also forgotten my past, who am I to try to look for it and to find it? My only consolation when I consider the past is that God has blotted it out. No other could do so. But he has done so. It is the first essential step in a new beginning. The past must be erased, and in Christ and his atoning death, it is! Evangelistic Sermons, 238

These quotations come from Gems from Martyn Lloyd-Jones: An Anthology of Quotations from the Doctor by Tony Sargent, published by Paternoster (£12.99, ISBN 978-1-84227-494-1), and are reprinted with permission.

An Anthology of Quotations from the Doctor

The Blood of Christ

The necessity

Penal substitution

The reaction

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