Heavenly Springs

Holding Fast The Doctrines of Grace

“The Christian life starts with grace, it must continue with grace, it ends with grace.”

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Thanks to my friend David for sharing this encouraging exchange between D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones and a good friend.   The discourse confirms what is already evident from his legacy. By the renewal of the Holy Spirit, Christ was being formed in this man’s soul.  He writes, “Do not pray for healing. Do not hold me back from the glory.”  Only someone who has passed into a state of justification by grace could utter such words. May the principle of grace, so powerfully at work in Martyn Lloyd-Jones, teach us to depend not on the law, but on the grace of God that is in Christ alone.

My Dear Gerald,                                                             October 29, 1980

How kind of you to write to Bethan [wife of Martyn Lloyd-Jones] and show such loving concern for me – indeed for both of us.

I believe I have told you that had to have my prostate removed four years ago. All went well until last May when I had a recurrence and was operated upon on June 10. Since then I have been going into hospital every three weeks for chemotherapy and stay in from one night to a week. . . . Yours ever, Martyn

 

My Dear Friend,                                                            December 4, 1980

. . . .We have both been passing through new experiences and I am sure that you feel as I do that finally nothing matters but the fact that we are in God’s hands. We and our works are nothing. It is His choosing us before the foundation of the world that matters and He will never leave us nor forsake us. More and more do I see that what we need is simple child-like faith, just to believe His word and surrender ourselves to Him utterly. . . . Yours ever sincerely, D.M. Lloyd-Jones

 

My Dear Philip,                                                               January 20, 1981

. . . .My health is still very much the same and I have not been able to preach or do anything else since the beginning of June. I thank God for all His bountiful goodness to me over the long years, and for all He has graciously allowed me and enabled me to do. My supreme desire now is to testify more than ever to the glory and wonder of His grace. I shall greatly value your prayers that I may be given strength to do so to His glory. I am glad to say that God in a marvelous manner is granting Bethan most remarkable health and vigour. He is indeed a gracious God. . . . Yours ever sincerely, D.M. Lloyd-Jones

 

His mind remained entirely lucid, and he was never confined to bed, but by February 24 he was so weak that he could hardly speak. A few days later his speech was gone. In a shaky hand, he wrote on a scrap of paper for Bethan and the family, ‘Do not pray for healing. Do not hold me back from the glory.’ By smiles and gestures he was able to continue to express himself until the early morning of Sunday, March 1, 1981 the day broke and all shadows fled away.

“This is my final comfort and consolation in this world. My only hope of arriving in glory lies in the fact that the whole of my salvation is God’s work.”

“It is grace at the beginning, grace at the end. So that when you and I come to lie upon our deathbeds, the one thing that should comfort and help and strengthen us there is the thing that helped us at the beginning. Not what we have been, not what we have done, but the grace of God in Jesus Christ our Lord. The Christian life starts with grace, it must continue with grace, it ends with grace. Grace, wondrous grace. “By the grace of God I am what I am.” “Yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me.”

Martyn Lloyd-Jones Letters 1919-1981, Selected with Notes by Iain Murray, Banner of Truth

Martin Luther on Justification

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luther justification by faith“All heretics have continually failed in this one point, that they do not rightly understand or know the article of justification.  If we had not this article certain and clear, it were impossible we could criticize the pope’s false doctrine of indulgences and other abominable errors, much less be able to overcome greater spiritual errors and vexations.  If we only permit Christ to be our Saviour, then we have won, for he is the only girdle which clasps the whole body together, as St. Paul excellently teaches.

If we look to the spiritual birth and substance of a true Christian, we shall soon extinguish all deserts of good works; for they serve us to no use, neither to purchase sanctification, nor to deliver us from sin, death, devil, or hell.

Little children are saved only by faith without any good works; therefore faith alone justifies.  If God’s power be able to effect that in one, then he is also able to accomplish it in all; for the power of the child effects it not, but the power of faith; neither is it done through the child’s weakness or disability; for then that weakness would be merit of itself, or equivalent to merit.  It is a mischievous thing that we miserable, sinful wretches will upbraid God, and hit him in the teeth with our works, and think thereby to be justified before him; but God will not allow it.”

Martin Luther, “The Table Talk of Martin Luther”

Joel Beeke On The Doctrine Of Justification By Faith Alone

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Preparing for Part II of our series on “Justification by Faith” and came across this article by Joel Beeke. If you have time, read the whole thing.  It’s worth every second. If not, here’s an excerpt  in which Dr. Beeke conveys the urgency of this all important doctrine upon which the church — and every Christian will stand or fall before God.

“The precious and momentous doctrine of justification by faith alone, when biblically preached and rightly balanced, is not a denominational or sectarian peculiarity. It is not a mere species of Christianity. It is the heart of the evangel, the kernel of the glorious gospel of the blessed triune God, and the key to the kingdom of heaven. “Justification by faith,” John Murray writes, ” is the jubilee trumpet of the gospel because it proclaims the gospel to the poor and destitute whose only door of hope is to roll themselves in total helplessness upon the grace and power and righteousness of the Redeemer of the lost.” In our decadent and desperate day there is a crying need to reestablish and defend, with prayer and hope, in the power of the Spirit, the scriptural proclamation of this doctrine. The relevance and urgency of this doctrine relate to the identity of the church, the essence of Christian theology, the proclamation of the gospel, as well as to the scriptural-experiential foundations of the Christian faith for every one of us. Not only is justification by faith still, in Luther’s words, “the article by which the church stands or falls” (articulus stantis et cadentis ecclesiae), but by this doctrine each of us shall personally stand or fall before God. Justification by faith alone must be confessed and experienced by you and me; it is a matter of eternal life or eternal death.”

And to that I say, “Amen!”

Click here to read the whole article.

The Most Important Banquet Of All

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Funny thing about studying doctrine — once a teaching gets a hold of your mind, you start to see it everywhere. The doctrine of “Justification by Faith” teaches that what God demands He provides.  Piper sums it up nicely, “God requires two things of us: punishment for our sins and perfection in our lives. Our sins must be punished, and our lives must be righteous. But we cannot bear our own punishment (Ps. 49:7-8), and we cannot provide our own righteousness. “None is righteous; no, not one” (Rom. 3:10). Therefore, God, out of His immeasurable love for us, provided His own Son to do both. Christ bears our punishment, and Christ performs our righteousness. And when we receive Christ (John 1:12), all of His punishment and all of His righteousness is counted as ours (Rom. 4:4-6; 5:1, 19; 8:1; 10:4; 2 Cor. 5:21; Phil. 3:8-9).”

This gospel hymn, so rich in biblical theology, expresses all we have to be thankful for. There is much! One day when you were at war with God – not looking for peace, God subdued you and miraculously opened your eyes. He didn’t do this because He saw something special, spiritual, or even willing in you. He did it because He is Sovereign.Whereas you should have been an object of His wrath, you received mercy.  He forgave all your sins (and there were many!) and He covered you in the righteousness of His perfect Son, Jesus Christ.  And one day, when this life is over, you will be seated, clothed in robes of righteousness, at the most important banquet of all!

How Sweet and Awful is the Place

How sweet and awful is the place
With Christ within the doors,
While everlasting love displays
The choicest of her stores.

While all our hearts and all our songs
Join to admire the feast,
Each of us cries, with thankful tongues,
“Lord, why was I a guest?”

“Why was I made to hear Thy voice,
And enter while there’s room,
When thousands make a wretched choice,
And rather starve than come?”

‘Twas the same love that spread the feast
That sweetly forced us in;
Else we had still refused to taste,
And perished in our sin.

Pity the nations, O our God,
Constrain the earth to come;
Send Thy victorious word abroad,
And bring the strangers home.

We long to see Thy churches full,
That all the chosen race May,
with one voice and heart and soul,
Sing Thy redeeming grace.

Isaac Watts, 1674-1748