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This Christmas I received a copy of the recent book Engaging with Martyn Lloyd-Jones. So far I have only glanced at it and it will not be for some days yet that I can get down to serious reading. Already, however, it has brought back memories of Westminster Chapel during student days and the limited personal contact that I had with the Doctor. I want to start by noting some reasons why some of us found his ministry different and particularly helpful; reasons which I think are important but perhaps easily overlooked.
Jack Sprat and his wife
The important thing about Jack Sprat and his wife, according to the Doctor, is that they were quite different from each other. It was no use trying to get Jack to eat fat, nor to get his wife to eat lean meat: in that respect they were opposites. So the Doctor stressed that we are all individuals and our personalities and temperaments differ. This may not seem earth-shattering news, but the tendency amongst evangelicals at that time seemed to be that Christians should all be much the same, conforming to some norm that was best seen in the most dedicated of Christians – usually missionaries. The Doctor’s preaching, while it was often searching, seems to me also to have been liberating. God has made us individuals and he uses us as the persons he has made us to be. We are to pursue holiness of life but that does not make Christians clones. A Christian church should be a wonderfully variegated collection of people.
