Conclusion

They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick. MATTHEW 9:12

We have covered a good deal of ground in seventeen short chapters, and it would be easy to come away with the impression that Martyn Lloyd-Jones taught many things. He did. He preached for more than fifty years, and he rarely preached on a text without taking it apart word by word. But in truth, like every great physician, he was concerned with one thing. He wanted to know what was really wrong with people, and he wanted to bring them to the only cure.

The diagnosis and the cure

Look back over the chapters and the pattern is plain. The doctor’s method, in chapter three, was the key to all the rest. The plight of man in Ephesians 2 was his diagnosis: dead in sins, walking according to the course of this world, by nature children of wrath. The sovereignty of God, justification by faith, the cross and union with Christ were the cure — God’s free and total remedy for a disease man could not touch. The Sermon on the Mount showed what the cured patient looks like: poor in spirit, meek, hungry for righteousness, salt and light in a corrupting world. Spiritual depression was his treatment of the patient who has been cured and does not feel it. And his teaching on the Spirit, on revival and on preaching all sprang from the conviction that the remedy is not a technique but the living God Himself, acting by His Word and Spirit.

But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;) EPHESIANS 2:4–5

If this book has done its work, the reader will not come away chiefly admiring the Doctor. He will come away having been examined — and, if he has been honest, having found in himself the disease the Doctor spent his life describing, and having gone to the Physician who alone can heal it.

What to do with it

Lloyd-Jones believed that truth which is merely understood has not yet done its work. It must be applied, felt and obeyed. So here is the plainest counsel this book can give.

Go back to the chapter that searched you most. Not the one you found most interesting or agreed with most readily, but the one that touched a nerve. That is probably where God is dealing with you. Take the questions at the end of it, and work through them slowly, over weeks rather than days. Then go on to the next.

Learn to talk to yourself. Of all his counsels, this is perhaps the most immediately useful. When your moods speak, do not simply listen. Answer them with what God has said.

Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? hope in God: for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God. PSALM 43:5

And go to the Word. Lloyd-Jones would be dismayed to think that anyone had read a book about him instead of reading the Bible. His whole ministry was an attempt to get people to open the Scriptures and hear God speak. Read slowly, read whole books, and ask of every passage what it says, why, and what it requires of you.

A word about the man

We have been honest in these pages about the places where Lloyd-Jones must be read with care. His call of 1966 divided brethren who should have stood together, and the costs were real. His teaching on the baptism with the Spirit was disputed by some of his closest friends, and most Reformed interpreters today do not follow his exegesis. His criticisms of the church life and evangelism of his day could be sweeping, and he was not always generous to methods he distrusted. His long series and severe manner did not suit everyone.

None of this has been said to diminish him. It has been said because he himself taught that no preacher is to be followed blindly, that every man’s teaching must be tested by the Word of God, and that the servant is nothing and the Master everything. He would have been uncomfortable with a book that made him its hero.

For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord; and ourselves your servants for Jesus’ sake. 2 CORINTHIANS 4:5

What remains, when the controversies have been weighed, is a man who gave up one of the most enviable careers in Britain because he had become convinced of what was really wrong with people, and who spent the rest of his life offering them the one remedy he trusted. He believed that the deepest trouble in every human heart is curable. He believed it because he had found the cure himself.

The last word

The last word belongs not to him but to the Lord he preached. The gospel Lloyd-Jones preached for half a century was not his message but Christ’s, and it is addressed now to the reader of this book as directly as it was to the congregations at Sandfields and Westminster.

Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. MATTHEW 11:28

The Doctor has done his work if he has sent you to the Physician.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Look back over the chapter titles and choose the one that searched you most. Return to it this week and do its application points slowly.

2. Write down, in a few sentences, the diagnosis of your own soul as Scripture gives it — and then the cure.

3. Practise talking to yourself every morning this week, answering your moods with specific promises of God.

4. Choose one of Lloyd-Jones’s books named in the Reader’s Guide, obtain it from its publisher, and read it slowly with your Bible open.

5. Pray for the preachers and churches of your land, that God would visit them again.

A PRAYER

Lord Jesus, Great Physician, You have shown me my disease, and You have not left me in it. You are the cure.

Do not let me admire the doctor and neglect the medicine. Do not let me become a student of the gospel instead of a partaker of it.

Search me, humble me, and bring me again and again to Your cross.

And when I am cast down, teach me to preach Your truth to my own soul, and to hope in You. Amen.