Lloyd-Jones

The Doctor in dispute

LLOYD-JONES
Messenger of Grace
By Iain Murray
Banner of Truth. 274 pages. £16.00
ISBN 978-0-85151-975-3

Of Dr. Lloyd-Jones, Mark Dever of Capitol Hill Baptist Church, Washington has said: ‘The longer time goes on, my admiration for him increases. He had a more profound spiritual vision than anyone else I know.’

This new book by MLJ’s biographer and one-time assistant Iain Murray, is not so much a book of reminiscences as an engagement with current assessments of the great man and his ministry.

The larger part of the book is a most helpful treatment of MLJ’s preaching, and for those who have never heard him preach the book carries with it a CD of his sermon on John 8.21-24. A number of well-known Lloyd-Jones’s emphases are drawn out, including his insistence on the need for the unction of the Spirit on the preacher to make the message effective and that he saw evangelistic preaching as a special category which needs to be re-established in the churches. Seen as the expositor par excellence, it is perhaps surprising to realise that he had more than 20 years in ministry before he undertook consecutive preaching through a whole book of the Bible — 2 Peter begun in the autumn of 1946.

Two chapters of the book stand out, both of which consider MLJ’s views on controversial issues, the ramifications of which are still very much with us today.

Charismatic?

First, Dr. Lloyd-Jones has been represented by some as an advocate of the charismatic movement. The main substantiation for this is the book Joy Unspeakable, published after the doctor’s death and based on his teaching on the baptism of the Spirit given in the mid-1960s. Murray argues that at the time of preaching this material MLJ was seeking to oppose what he saw as a cold, intellectual evangelicalism which did not look for or stimulate prayer for a fuller experience of the Spirit or for revival. Certainly MLJ believed in an experience of the Spirit subsequent to conversion, but, by 1971, when the charismatic movement was getting into full swing, he is quoted as warning of dire dangers of the movement: ‘There is a factor which to me is a very serious one at the present time, and that is what is known as the charismatic movement … The teaching of this movement is that nothing matters but ‘the baptism in the Spirit’ … they have their congresses and conferences, and they are virtually preaching that doctrine does not matter at all.’

Not only does Murray go on to point out the inconsistencies in MLJ’s own view of the baptism in the Spirit, but he implies that it was mischievous to publish Joy Unspeakable in such a way as to represent him as a charismatic recruit.

Sectarian?

Secondly, there is a chapter on Dr. Lloyd-Jones’s much maligned and misrepresented call at the Evangelical Alliance meeting in London in 1966 for evangelicals to be more committed to each other than to their denominations. Here we are given insight into MLJ’s differences with John Stott and Jim Packer.

The background to this meeting was that Anglican evangelicals had already planned their milestone conference due to take place at Keele in 1967 at which they would take the momentous decision that their churchmanship must take priority over other things in order to win the denomination for evangelicalism. In a sense, they would be Anglican before they were evangelicals. With this in mind the 1966 EA meeting is seen in a new light and explains why John Stott was so keen to immediately counter the Doctor’s call at that meeting. ‘The plea of MLJ in 1966 was that evangelicals in the mixed denominations should give their time to working alongside fellow evangelicals, not with those who were no guardians of the faith. It was because MLJ’s thinking so cut across the course already set by Anglican evangelical leaders that it provoked the disturbance that it did. Unlike the resistance of Anglican evangelicals in 1927, secession was not even to be considered as a possibility at Keele. His 1966 address was the occasion more than the cause of the division. The cause was the changed evangelical policy towards those who were not evangelical, a policy about which the Evangelical Alliance sought to be neutral’ (p. 180).

No doubt others will dispute Murray’s understanding. But some have readily cited 1966 and called MLJ sectarian and divisive in his outlook, accusing him of forcing Jim Packer out of the Puritan conference. But the letters and evidence which Iain Murray lays before the reader tell a very different and gracious tale.

And one cannot but stand back, looking at the present disaster which the Church of England has become and, with deep sadness, reflect that after 40 years the policy adopted at Keele has come to nothing or, indeed, worse than nothing. Oh, how things might have been different if the doctor had been listened to. Perhaps it is with this in mind that Mark Dever spoke of the doctor as having more spiritual vision than anyone else he knows.

Messenger of grace

The Doctor in dispute

Charismatic?

Sectarian?

John Benton

Main Articles

Other articles