Is good advice any use to us? ― Martyn Lloyd-Jones

“Good advice! But is good advice any use to us? What would be your position if I had nothing to say to you except that you ought to give up sinning, that you ought to live a good life? Suppose I just left you at that? Is it easy to live a good life? Is it easy to resist temptation and sin? Put a reform program before people, and the answer in the Old Testament is this: "Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots?” (Jer. 13:23). Listen to Solomon writing in the book of Ecclesiastes — a wise man, a man with great experience. He came to the conclusion: “That which is crooked cannot be made straight” (Eccl. 1:15). It cannot be done. Education cannot straighten out men and women, can it? Read the proceedings of the police courts and the divorce courts and of any other court you like. No, no — “That which is crooked cannot be made straight.” It is no use telling us to do good things, for we cannot.

These people talk beautifully, they write very well, but they leave me with no power, they give me no help. There is the standard, and I am left alone to live it, to imitate Christ! How can I? Oh no, it is all useless. These people know nothing about the power of the devil. “Ah,” they say, “but that is apostolic doctrine. People today cannot possibly believe in the devil. The apostles believed in the devil, of course, but they lived 2,000 years ago. We are modern men and women; we know biology, we know geology — we don‘t believe in the devil.”

Don‘t you? Then in the name of God I ask you to explain your world. Freud goes a good way, but he does not go far enough. The Bible says there is only one explanation of the state of the world, and that is the power of the devil and the power of evil. But these people do not know life; they do not know themselves. The world is as it is because of the power of the devil. We are under the dominion of Satan. “The god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not,” wrote Paul (2 Cor. 4:4). The world is enslaved; it is in bondage. The world is not free. Behind all that psychoanalysis may reveal, there is a malign power — “the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now works in the children of disobedience,” as Paul describes him in Ephesians 2:2. So what is the use of good advice? The devil defeated everyone of the greatest saints of the Old Testament — every one of them. He not only defeated the first man and woman — Adam and Eve — when they were perfect, but he has defeated all their progeny, the greatest included. What is the value of good advice when you are fighting the devil?

I do not know what you feel, but what I feel like saying is this: Thank God for apostolic doctrine! Thank God for this teaching that the first Christians coveted and in which they desired to be built up. What is it? It is this: “I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ” — why? — “for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believes; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek" (Rom. 1:16).”

― Martyn Lloyd-Jones