Working out Salvation with Fear and Trembling

Greetings,

It was unfortunate but I only had two entries for the Lloyd-Jones contest! It perhaps is indicative of the fact that I don’t have a lot of readers to my blog! But, since I usually get about 40 hits a day I would have figured that more people had been influenced by Lloyd-Jones. The first entry I received from Crawford Gribben who was formerly Lecturer in Renaissance Literature and Culture at the University of Manchester but who is now heading to Trinity College, Dublin. His entry is found below:

Martyn Lloyd-Jones died on my sixth birthday. I never heard him preach, though friends in our Brethren assembly had travelled long distances to benefit from his ministry of the Word of God, and Presbyterian friends in our town had known him intimately over several decades. I was in my late teens before I discovered that he had ever existed. But what a difference that discovery made! In a crucial period of my life, I turned again and again to Lloyd-Jones for encouragement, guidance and pastoral help. He helped me by pointing me back to the Bible.

When I think about my experience of the ministry of Lloyd-Jones, it’s hard to pick one title or one sermon that has made a particular impact. I can vividly remember reading his biography while on holiday in Ireland; reading his series of books on Romans as I rode on the bus to and from university; listening to his sermon on worship in 1 Cor 14:26 while driving back from church; and reading his book on Preachers and Preaching while learning what the source, duties and goal of Christian ministry might be. It’s hard to distinguish these experiences. But I think that’s the point. The texts and tapes made sense when they were combined together. The theology fed into the preaching, the preaching into the worship, and the life informed and was informed by it all. That’s what made sense of his ‘logic on fire.’

The other is not necessarily an entry per se but someone was recommended for the prize because of their work on Lloyd-Jones. Tim Ashcraft has written extensively on Lloyd-Jones on the blog TheoSource. His entries can be found in the following series, “Lloyd-Jones on Ministerial Reading”:

Read Scripture for Personal Nourishment

Storing up for Winter

Reading to Counter your Mood

Reading to Balance your Thinking

Summing Up

In hearing though of his awarding of a free issue, Tim provided me the following:

I had just gotten married when Dr. Lloyd-Jones went to be with the Lord. I had never heard of him and wouldn’t for several more years. I “stumbled” across his works in an unusual way – through reading homiletics. Long story, but the newer books I was reading kept referring to a book titled Preaching and Preachers, so I bought a copy and was blown away by this man’s handling of his subject. I obtained more of his books and the biography by Iain Murray, which I’ve read three times. I felt almost like I had known ML-J personally. His works have helped me through some doctrinal struggles, mainly God’s sovereignty in salvation and Keswick teaching. I’ve been glad to commend Lloyd-Jones to many friends, especially those in the ministry.

Both Crawford and Tim then will receive a free copy of the newest issue of Eusebeia: The Bulletin of the Andrew Fuller Centre for Reformed Evangelicalism dedicated to D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones. I encourage you to read widely in the great corpus of works by Lloyd-Jones. He is continuing to influence many people even today! “He sleeps yet still speaks!”

This entry was posted on Monday, June 11th, 2007 at 2:10 pm and is filed under Contest, D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.