do not assume, do not take it for granted the blood of Calvary & the death of Christ - Martyn Lloyd-Jones

“For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father.” - Ephesians 2:18

“Furthermore, the Holy Spirit does the work which our Lord Himself says is His most special and peculiar work of all, namely that He keeps our eyes on the Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord said that the Holy Spirit would glorify Him: ‘He shall glorify me’ (John 16:14). That is His supreme task and purpose. And that is exactly what He does. Having shown us our utter sinfulness and helplessness and smallness, and the glory of God, He leads us to the Lord Jesus Christ. He makes us see Him in all the glory and wonder of His Person, an all the glory and the wonder of His work. We see Him as the Mediator. Let me put that in the form of a question. Do we always realize, when we pray, our utter, absolute dependence upon the Lord Jesus Christ and His atoning work? We would all have to confess, surely, that thousands of times as we have prayed, we have ‘taken it for granted’. This is what we take for granted. The most glorious fact in history we take for granted. We do not thank God for it, we do not meditate upon it, we do not think of it until our hearts are ravished. We assume it. Is there anything more terrible, or, in a sense, verging more upon the blasphemous, that to assume the blood of Calvary and the death of Christ? The Holy Spirit will never allow us to do that. He will reveal the Lord Jesus Christ to us in all His glory, and, thank God, in His all-sufficiency. So that as you are there in the presence of God, and terribly conscious of your sinfulness, your unworthiness, your uncleanness, your vileness, and your weakness, the Holy Spirit will reveal to you that it was ‘when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly’ (Rom. 5:6); it was ‘while we were enemies’ (Rom. 5:10) we were saved by the death of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is then that the Spirit will remind you that Christ said ‘I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance’ (Luke 5:32)…When you engage in prayer, have you those exalted views of the Person and the work of the Lord Jesus Christ? That is the test whether you are praying ‘in the Spirit’. You cannot pray in the Spirit without being led to see Him and to realize Him in a manner that you have never done before…”

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, God's Way of Reconciliation: An Exposition of Ephesians 2

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