Prayer our dealings with others —Martyn Lloyd-Jones

"Prayer is also equally necessary in our dealings with others. That is what is most prominent here, of course. Paul was writing this rich, profound doctrine, and he knows that the Ephesians were going to read and discuss and study it together. But he knows that that is not enough, so he is praying that his teaching of them may be made real to them. And he knows that it never can be made real to them except under the direct blessing of God. The best teaching in the world is useless unless the Holy Spirit takes hold of it and applies it and opens our understanding to it, and gives it a deep lodging place in our whole being. We have already seen in the first chapter how the Apostle had been praying for the Ephesian Christians that ‘the eyes of their understanding might be enlightened’. For if the Holy Spirit did not open ‘the eyes of their understanding’ Paul’s teaching would be quite useless and void.

Let us learn a very practical lesson from this. We all have friends who are not Christians, about whom we are concerned. We are anxious to help them, and we talk to them about these things. We quote Scriptures to them and explain them. We try to show them the Christian attitude and position with respect to present conditions and the whole of life. But I must emphasize that if we leave it at that, it may come to nothing. You cannot reason anyone into the Christian life. You can give the reasons for believing but you cannot reason them into belief. You can put the case before them, but you cannot prove it as if it were a matter of a theorem in geometry. We must realize that while we are instructing them, we must also be praying for them. It is only as the Holy Spirit deals with them and prepares them and opens their understanding that they can receive the truth.

The Apostle is perfectly consistent with his own doctrine. He knew that it was as essential that he should pray for these Ephesians as that he should instruct them by his Epistle. We, likewise, must never forget that instruction and prayer go together. If you are interested in a particular person, and desire his salvation, you must not stop at befriending him, helping him, spending time with him, and putting the truth before him; equally you must pray for him. Indeed I would go so far as to say that unless you are giving more weight to your prayer than to your instruction your work is likely to be a failure.

Note the place that is given to intercessory prayer in the New Testament. It is extraordinary and quite amazing, and is exemplified particularly in the Apostle Paul. Notice, too, how very dependent Paul was upon the prayers of other Christians. In most of his letters he pleads with them to pray for him. He urges them to pray that he may have a door of opportunity, that he may have liberty, and so on. He fully realized his dependence upon the prayers of others."

—Martyn Lloyd-Jones (1972). The Unsearchable Riches of Christ: An Exposition of Ephesians 3 (pp. 110–111). Grand Rapids: Baker Book House.

the effectual working of God's power —Martyn Lloyd-Jones

"Whereof I was made a minister, according to the gift of the grace of God given unto me by the effectual working of his power." —Ephesians 3:7

"One of the most fundamental questions confronting us as we preach the gospel is, What can turn any man from being a hater of God into one who loves God? What is it that can turn the natural man, to whom the things of God are ‘foolishness’, into a man who delights in them, and enjoys them, and lives for them, and whose highest ambition is to know them more and more? According to the Apostle there is only one answer; it is the ‘effectual working’ of the power of God—nothing else!

The Apostle Paul himself was very conscious of this power. Had he been left to himself he would still have been the persecuting, blaspheming Pharisee. He had heard about the preaching of Christ, he had heard the preaching of Stephen; he knew all that Christians claimed. But he hated the ‘good news’: he saw nothing in it except blasphemy. What happened to this man? There is only one answer; he had been made a new man. He had been regenerated, born again, ‘a new creation’, nothing less than that! And this was the result of the ‘effectual working’ of the power of God.

It is the effectual working of the power of God that makes anyone a Christian. It means a rebirth, a regeneration. It is not the result of our decision, it is not something that you and I decide to do; it is what is done to us! ‘The effectual working of his power!’ Paul would never have been a Christian at all were it not for this power. But even after becoming a Christian he would have been ineffective apart from this same power. It is this working, it is this power of God, that not only transformed his whole outlook, but it called him into the ministry and gave him the gifts that are requisite to the ministry, the understanding of the truth, the power to speak, the power to write, the power to teach. It was all of God."

—Martyn Lloyd-Jones (1972). The Unsearchable Riches of Christ: An Exposition of Ephesians 3 (p. 55).

why did our Lord weep? — Martyn Lloyd-Jones

"We are modern people, are we not, men and women of great understanding? So I am going to ask you the question that Philip put to the Ethiopian eunuch. I am going to test your understanding. The poor eunuch was dealing with Isaiah 53, which all expositors agree is an extremely difficult passage to expound. So we have every sympathy with him. But here is a very simple problem. I am asking you to expound a verse of two words, the shortest verse in the whole Bible: "Jesus wept" (John 11:35). Do you understand it?

"Oh, yes," you say, "it's quite simple."

All right, what does it mean?

"Well," you say, "this happened at the grave of a man called Lazarus, a friend of the Lord Jesus Christ, who had been dead for four days. And it was there, standing by that grave, that Jesus wept. Next to him were Lazarus's two sisters-Martha and Mary-and other people were also weeping and bewailing their loss. So the reason Jesus wept was because He had lost a great friend. It is very natural that when one loses a close friend one is filled with sorrow; and He was but a man, after all, and He wept as others weep."

 Yes, that is one suggested explanation.

"Not only that," says somebody else, "He wept also because of His sympathy with the sisters. They had lost their darling brother, and it was only natural that He should be sympathetic toward them."

I believe those explanations are all wrong. I can prove that to you quite simply from John 11. The first reason I would give is that when our Lord was first told about the illness of His friend Lazarus, instead of at once setting off to heal him, He delayed going-deliberately. Check the account for yourselves. He even gave the reason for not going. When the message of Lazarus's illness reached Him, He said, "This sickness is . . . for the glory of God" (v. 4). So He deliberately did not go to save the man's life. And John says, "When he had heard therefore that he was sick, he abode two days still in the same place where he was. Then after that said he to his disciples, Let us go into Judaea again. His disciples say unto him, Master, the Jews of late sought to stone thee" (vv. 6-8), and so on. So there is the first answer.

But there is a greater answer, of course, which is this: when our Lord did go to the grave, He knew perfectly well that He was going to raise this man Lazarus. This is what we read: "Then said Jesus unto them plainly, Lazarus is dead. And I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, to the intent ye may believe; nevertheless let us go unto him" (vv. 14-15). He went in order to raise Lazarus from the dead. So if He knew He was going to raise him from the dead, why waste time weeping because he was dead? Why waste tears in sympathy with the sisters when He knew that in the next moment He would restore Lazarus to them? That is not why Jesus wept!

So why did our Lord weep? It is the reason why he was "a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief." It was not natural human sympathy or concern about the loss of His friend. It was this terrible thing called death, this thing that comes in and robs a man of his friend and sisters of their brother, this thing that breaks people's hearts and spoils life-this horrible thing! What causes death? Is it the course of nature? No, it is sin, it is evil, it is hell, it is the devil; it is this thing that is fighting His Father. He saw it there, and it made Him weep. Not only that, He realized that before He could deal with it He had to die Himself.

So never interpret "Jesus wept" sentimentally. I say again that it was this horror of sin, this horror of evil, this terrible problem of the human race that made Him cry. It is there in the shortest verse in the Bible: "Jesus wept." And that was not the only time. I read in John 12, the very next chapter, that when He was dealing with the whole question of His death, He said, "Now is my soul troubled" (v. 27). Indeed, I should have pointed out to you that over this very question of the resurrection of Lazarus we read, "When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews also weeping which came with her, he groaned in the spirit, and was troubled" (John 11:33). Why? Because He knew He was going to raise him? No. Again it was because of this terrible, evil problem of sin, the thing that gets us down and makes us fools and the slaves of sin and causes death. It is this thing that has raised itself up against God and brought about the ruination of God's universe. He saw it, and knowing that He had to die, He said again, "Now is my soul troubled."

Martyn Lloyd-Jones. Compelling Christianity (Studies in the Book of Acts)

Consider the possibility that you may be wrong as to what the Christian message really is —Martyn Lloyd-Jones

“So that raises for us the question of what exactly repentance is. How do I know whether I have repented? The details given to us here about what happened in this city of Samaria tell us exactly what repentance means (Acts 8:1-25)…

So let us look at this passage. First, the people "gave heed" (Acts 8:6). This means they gave earnest heed. They not only heard, they listened. Now this must be examined because it is a vital term. What does it imply? Obviously it implies in the first place a readiness to hear. It is an astounding fact that many people are not Christians because they have refused to hear, and this is because they have been blinded by their prejudices…

It is possible for you to refuse to hear. You can stop yourself from hearing, from listening. God knows, many people have done that, and a large number of people are still refusing to hear the Gospel. They sometimes take this stance because they feel they know all about it and think it is a lot of nonsense…

Take the man who says, "I'm not a Christian." So you say, "Why not?" And he pours out a whole lot of cliches: "There's nothing in it. Tommyrot. Science has disproved it." Then you begin to ask him about the contents of the Bible, and you find out at once that he does not know anything about it. He has never read the Bible, and he has not the slightest idea as to what the Christian message really is. He may think it is a lot of sob stuff and that Christian people just spend their time singing hymns and choruses and complimenting one another…

My dear friend, do you have an open mind? Are you really ready to listen to this message? Have you ever given it a fair hearing? Is it not wrong from every standpoint to dismiss a message, a teaching, before you have ever listened to it, when you know nothing about it? But that is the tragedy of the times.

Oh, people may attack the church or a preacher or Christian people whom they happen to know, but that is not attacking Christianity; that is attacking the failure of particular Christians, which is very different. It is quite impossible for anybody to become a Christian without listening to the message. Of necessity the first thing we must do is listen to it, and listen to it fairly, listen to it honestly.

Now let us be frank: you do not like a prejudiced person, do you? What do you think of a man who will not listen to what you happen to believe, your hobby or your pet theory? Perhaps you are a politician, and you hold particular political views. What would you think if, when you went to address a meeting, the people just began singing the moment you began speaking and did not allow you to utter a single word? But perhaps you have been behaving just like that with regard to the Gospel.”

—Martyn Lloyd-Jones. Compelling Christianity (Studies in the Book of Acts)

To make no decision is always to make a decision against God — Martyn Lloyd-Jones

"There are only two ultimate possibilities in life. We are, all of us, either for God or else we are against Him, and nothing else matters. The color of your skin does not matter at all; you may be very clever, you may be very learned, or you may be ignorant and illiterate—it does not matter. The one question is: Are you one of God’s people, or are you one of the people who are against Him?

There is no other possibility. There is no such thing as neutrality in the realm of the spirit.

To make no decision is always to make a decision against God, for we are all by nature against Him.

“The carnal [natural] mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be” (Rom. 8:7). We are all born God-haters; we are all against God. Some people, I know, say, “I’ve always believed in God.” But that means that they have never believed in Him. What they have believed in is some figment of their own imagination. If you confront such people with the God of the Bible, they will soon begin to show their hatred of Him. They have a God whom they can manipulate and handle, a God made after their own image and likeness, and they hate the living God who is revealed in the Bible.

So there is no such thing as neutrality. I repeat that we are either for God or we are against Him. There is no no-man’s-land in this matter. We all of us are inevitably in one of two camps. Our Lord Himself said it: “He that is not with me is against me” (Matt. 12:30)."

— Martyn Lloyd-Jones (2004). Vol. 4: Glorious Christianity (1st U.S. ed.). Studies in the Book of Acts (252–253). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books.

God is no philosophic concept — Martyn Lloyd-Jones

"My dear friends, God is no philosophic concept! God is a person and, as a person, God is, and God loves, and the essence of the life of the blessed Trinity is the love of the Father to the Son and the Spirit, and the love of the Son to the Father and the Spirit, and the love of the Spirit to the Father and the Son. We cannot conceive of that perfect unity, that perfect bliss, that absolute love, and yet it is all found in salvation. ‘God so loved the world that he gave …’ (John 3:16)—yes, and I put it negatively, too, as Paul puts it in writing to the Romans: ‘He that spared not his own Son’ (Romans 8:32). It is there, you see, the love of God, in that he sent the Son of his love, the only begotten Son, into this cruel, sinful world; allowed him to live life in that way as a man, and allowed him to suffer ‘such contradiction of sinners against himself’ (Hebrews 12:3). And he placed your sins and mine upon him on the cross in such a way that at that moment Father and Son were separated, and the Son cried out, ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ (Matthew 27:46) When I believe that that is possible within the Father-heart of God, then I cannot believe the doctrine of the impassivity of God. I say that God in his love suffered in his Son, and it is there I see the marvellous love of God displayed. And this great gospel manifests, too, the glory of God in revealing his character in this way."

— Martyn Lloyd-Jones (2000). The assurance of our salvation: Exploring the depth of Jesus' prayer for His own: Studies in John 17 (51). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books.