Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, who led Westminster Chapel through World War II and a large part of the Cold War, was the epitome of biblical faithfulness in the pulpit. When a V-2 rocket exploded next to his church and anointed him and his congregation with a fine coat of ceiling dust, he brushed off the dust, took a quick break, and then continued with his sermon. Nothing could deter Lloyd-Jones from preaching the gospel of his Lord and Savior. As the Welsh pastor noted during a Cold War era sermon, “The greatest trouble in the world is not the nuclear bomb but humanity’s rejection of the Gospel.” As he noted in another sermon, the gospel is “the one and only remedy that can cure the disease which is the cause of all our local and particular problems.” And so he preached in both the best and worst of times.
A Man of Integrity
What was true of the Doctor in his famous pulpit was also true of him in the quiet recesses of his home. As his reconciliation with the Anglican pastor John Stott made clear, he lived out gospel convictions just as faithfully in private as he did in public.
In a sermon preached during his rise to fame in 1949, Lloyd-Jones warned his audience against the bitterness of unforgiveness. To illustrate his point, Lloyd-Jones recounted a story about two men who sought to be reconciled with one of their former pastors who was on his deathbed. Lloyd-Jones recalled:
So they took the journey, and they arrived at his house. His wife went up into the bedroom and told him they were there, but he refused to see them. I could not do that! How could I go out and face God in eternity and my whole eternal destiny and refuse to forgive a man who came to me with an outstretched hand?
In contrast to the man in the story, Lloyd-Jones understood that those who had been forgiven had to forgive.
When Lloyd-Jones preached this on 1 John 4, he was still more than thirty years away from his death and was enjoying a budding relationship with Stott, a minister who shared the Doctor’s passion for expository preaching, evangelism, and discipling the next generation. Lloyd-Jones so valued Stott’s friendship and insights into the Scriptures that the Doctor asked Stott to take over Westminster Chapel upon his retirement.
A Conflict
But then on October 18, 1966, their relationship unexpectedly soured. That night at the Second National Assembly of Evangelicals (NAE), Lloyd-Jones delivered a powerful address, calling for British evangelicals to exit liberal denominations that allowed for the denial of essential doctrines, such as justification by faith alone. As Lloyd-Jones noted, “To leave a church which has become apostate is not schism. That’s one’s Christian duty and nothing else.” Lloyd-Jones hoped his call for gospel unity built upon gospel purity would spark an evangelical revival. The Welsh pastor said, “If those of us who believe it [the Word of God] only come together … I believe we would then have the right to expect the Spirit of God to come upon us in mighty revival and re-awakening.”
Stott who shared the stage with Lloyd-Jones held the opposite view. The Anglican pastor believed that evangelicals should stay in their liberalizing denominations for the purpose of winning them back to truth.
When the Doctor’s address concluded, Stott rose to speak. But before turning to his official duties as chairman of the NAE, Stott broke professional protocol. He criticized the Doctor’s appeal, fearing that those pastors attending the NAE would, in Stott’s words, “go home and write their letter of resignation that very night.”
Stott offered the following critique of his friend:
I believe history is against what Dr. Lloyd-Jones has said…Scripture is against him, the remnant was within the church not outside it. I hope no one will act precipitately…We are all concerned with the same ultimate issues and with the glory of God.
With his words, Stott prevented the resignations he so feared, muted his friend’s influence in the British Evangelical movement, and shattered his close ties with Lloyd-Jones.
A few weeks later, Stott apologized to Lloyd-Jones for his lack of decorum. Though Stott claimed that he and the doctor maintained “a warm personal relationship,” in the years after 1966, the events of October 18 continued to nag at Stott. According to Lloyd-Jones’ wife, Bethan, Stott arrived at Lloyd-Jones’ hospital room two years later in tears. The Anglican pastor feared that his rebuke had contributed to Lloyd-Jones’ cancer diagnosis. Bethan quickly brushed off Stott’s fears as silly and guided Stott into the Doctor’s hospital room. Still, the events of that night and their subsequent fallout had in the words of one historian resulted in the marginalization of Lloyd-Jones’ voice within the evangelical movement. And they continued to occupy space in Stott’s mind.
From Illustration to Life
In 1978, Stott sensed that the window to restore his friendship with the Doctor was closing and once again sought out his old friend. In the words of Stott’s biographer, the Anglican pastor traveled to Lloyd-Jones’ home hoping to “build bridges and to repair a friendship.”
In so doing, he transformed Lloyd-Jones’ illustration into the Doctor’s reality. Would he forgive?
When Stott arrived at Lloyd-Jones’ house, Bethan in concert with Lloyd-Jones’ wishes, escorted Stott into the Doctor’s study.
There, Stott encountered not coldness and anger but kindness and forgiveness. Stott said of his friend’s reception of him, “[Lloyd-Jones] could not have been more affable and welcoming.” After talking about their shared passion for the book of Ephesians (both preached through the book and would publish volumes on it), the two men waded into the old wounds of 1966. As they did so, Lloyd-Jones extended love and reconciliation to Stott. Lloyd-Jones told his old friend, “If God spares me, and we could be together, I’d say like Simeon, ‘Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace.’” By God’s mercy, Lloyd-Jones proved himself to be the same man in his study at the end of his life as he was in the pulpit as he rose to popularity. As the Doctor said back in 1949: “This truth is given to me that I may live by it and that I may experience in my life in all the power and grace and glory.” And so by God’s grace, Lloyd-Jones lived what he preached in some of his most public of moments in some of his most intimate ones.
A Genuine Act
Though I have been able to pull out this thread of gospel faithfulness from Lloyd-Jones’ life, I doubt that the Welsh pastor was ever so self-aware. Lloyd-Jones preached thousands of sermons. Admittedly, he edited many of them for publication in his final years. But, he never turned his attention to his sermons on 1 John. His family would compile, edit, and publish those volumes after the Doctor’s death. I have no reason to think that Lloyd-Jones was especially aware of the contents of his 1 John sermons when he met with Stott for the last time. After all, the two friends talked about the book of Ephesians and not John’s epistle. Moreover, the accounts of Lloyd-Jones’ last visit with Stott originate from Stott and others and not with Lloyd-Jones. I believe, Lloyd-Jones saw his meeting with Stott as nothing more than a meeting between old friends.
Rather, I suspect Lloyd-Jones’ actions arose not from self-awareness but from his ever-deepening experience of God’s mercy and grace. As Lloyd-Jones told his friend and first biographer, Iain Murray, during the last weeks of his life:
When you come to where I am, there is only one thing that matters, that is your relationship to Him and your knowledge of him. Nothing else matters…Our best works are tainted. We are sinners saved by grace. We are debtors to mercy alone…God is very patient with us and very kind and He suffers our evil manners like He did with the children of Israel…The Love of God!
In other words, the man who had “For I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ and him crucified” written on his tombstone could not help but love others as he had been loved. In short, he was a man of the gospel.
Conclusion
May God grant us all such consistency. May we live out the gospel of forgiveness in private with the same fervency we speak of it in public. May all who pull the threads of our life friend such faithfulness. May the Lord grant us all such rich experiences of the love of God.