Peter Witkowski Church History, Discipleship

From Sermon to Life: The Powerful Story of Lloyd-Jones and Stott’s Reconciliaiton

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 said 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 that truth 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 would make clear, Lloyd-Jones 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 find such faithfulness.

Peter Witkowski Ecclesiology

Sometimes You Should Leave a Church

Christians have the freedom in Christ to leave churches that have rejected biblical orthodoxy. At first glance, such a statement seemingly contradicts the teaching of the apostle John, “They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us” (1 John 2:19). The apostle asserts that, those who forsake their church pews have ceased to fellowship with Jesus. In other words, they have left the physical manifestation of church because they were never truly part of the spiritual or universal church that consists of all believers across eternity.

2 Marks of a True Church

But for such a statement to be true, the local church in view must be a true church—a church composed of members who are part of that spiritual or universal church. Though John does not provide the readers of 1 John with a full blueprint of a healthy church, he does note two important marks that define all local expression of the spiritual or universal church.

First, John argues that the majority of a true church’s members will be those who fellowship with the Father and the Son, having trusted in Jesus’s death, burial, and resurrection for the salvation. John tells his readers, “I am writing to you, little children, because your sins are forgiven for his name’s sake” (1 John 2:12). The natural outworking and demonstration of such faith-driven fellowship is obedience to the Savior. To quote John again, “And by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments” (1 John 2:3).

Second, John argues that a true church consists of those who affirm the integrity and truth of the apostolic message. In other words, a true church is composed of those who believe that the Scriptures are the inerrant, inspired, and authoritative word of God. John encourages such trust in his writings (and the Bible as a whole), declaring that his epistles and the Gospel of John contain “that which we have seen and heard…so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed, our fellowship is with the Father and with the Son, Jesus Christ” (1 John 1:3). He believed his words to be the inspired words of God—free of error— in part because Jesus had promised that Holy Spirit would help John remember all that Jesus taught and said (John 14:26). Thus, John expected those who fellowshipped with the Father and the Son to share John’s assessment of the New Testament canon. To quote John, “You have been anointed by the Holy One, and you all have knowledge…you know it [the truth], and you know that no lie is of the truth.” For a church to be a true church, it must be composed of those who accept the Scriptures as the word of God and of those who embrace the fellowship of the Son that comes through the Scriptures.

Anti-Christ Should Leave

Those who forsake these local manifestations of the universal or spiritual church should feel the full weight of John’s condemnation in 1 John 2:19. Their leaving does evidence a lack of saving faith. For example, Joseph Smith and Charles Taze Russell left the true church and created the Mormon and Jehovah’s Witness cults because they rejected the biblical teaching on the divinity of Jesus. These cult leaders replaced the gospel of grace with gospels of works. Similarly, when Muhammad founded Islam, he too left the true church because his belief that Jesus was nothing more than a human prophet placed him at odds with the clear teaching of Scripture and its offer of salvation through grace. These and countless others went out from their local expressions of the spiritual or universal church because they had exchanged the righteousness of the cross for that which could be won through special underwear, prayers toward Mecca, or the avoidance of caffeine.

Others walk out of the true church to worship the god of self. They reject the biblical teaching of sin and declare themselves to be generally good. Salvation no longer consists in denying oneself and following Jesus but in exploring oneself through introspective actions that range from meditation to picking up litter to exploring sexual expressions that violate the commands of Jesus. Such men and women leave their local expressions of the true church because they were never part of the spiritual or universal church.

When Antichrists Stay

While most Antichrists will leave the church, some will stay and seek to convert their local church to their errors and heresies. The apostle Peter warns of this phenomenon in his second letter, declaring that false teachers would “secretly bring in destructive heresies” into the local churches and that “many would follow their sensuality” (2 Peter 2:1–2).

Few enter the church proclaiming themselves to be false teachers. Only slowly do they demonstrate their lack of faith, teaching against the integrity of Scripture and denying elements of the faith. For example, they may proclaim their love for the Bible and then explain why they take issue with the Bible’s sexual ethic, viewing it as culturally bound and oppressive. If the church’s elders and leaders refuse to correct the new teacher, she will not graciously fade into the background. She will double down on her teaching and in time call the church to affirm the homosexual marriage of her cousin as good and proper. Having abandoned the authority of Scripture, the congregation and its leaders will have little reason to object and will eventually acquiesce to the Sunday school teacher’s request. After all, no local church wants to be culturally irrelevant or unkind.

What is true of one sector of the church will quickly become true of the whole body. If its leadership board requests the pastor to jettison the church’s doctrine of substitutionary atonement because they see it as “divine child abuse,” he will once again defer to their proposal. After all, he has no Scriptural authority upon which to challenge such claims, and no one wants to support child abuse, divine or otherwise.

Those who do speak out against the doctrinal shift will often be labeled as unloving and antiquated. With each passing Sunday, their resistance will fade more into the background of the church’s consciences. The church’s inclinations toward goodness, truth, and love will slowly atrophy and then die. The gospel of the Antichrist will supplant the gospel of Christ. As J. Gresham Machen noted, “What the liberal theologian has retained after abandoning to the enemy one Christian doctrine after another is not Christianity at all, but a religion which is so entirely different from Christianity as to belong in a distinct category.” The spiritual or universal members of the local church will be supplanted with earthly members who have never fellowshipped with either the Father os the Son.

When To Leave

When believers find themselves in a Christless church, they should leave. As the refomer Martin Luther notes in such cases, “Not he who flees the darkness, but he who remains in it, is the Antichrist.”

Prior to leaving, Christians should confront the error in their church as best they can. They should schedule a meeting with their pastors, reach out to the Sunday school teacher, or talk to their church’s deacons. But if their conversations prove fruitless and fail to effect change, then the Christian must leave. As the Puritan John Owen notes, “Where the fundamentals of religious worship are corrupted or overthrown, it is absolutely unlawful to join unto or abide in any church.”

To leave such a church does not go against the teachings of the apostle John and the broader teaching of Scripture. The believer is not forsaking truth for error but error for truth. To quote Martyn Lloyd-Jones, “To leave a church which has become apostate is not schism. That’s one’s Christian duty and nothing else.” In other words, if a local church ceases to commune with Christ and his spiritual or universal church, Christians should cease to commune with that local church. In such circumstances, they should not be vilified but praised. They have traded that which is false for that which is true.

Peter Witkowski Discipleship, Ecclesiology

The Case for Strategic Church Membership Reduction  

In addition to valuing membership retention, evangelical churches should also value membership reduction. They should expect that those who abandon the gospel to stop attending their Sunday morning services. The apostle John tells his audience in 1 John 2:19 that some church members “went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they have been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us.” In other words, churches can become healthy through subtraction.  

Not All Leaving is Bad

This verse does not imply that everyone who leaves their local church has left turned their back on the apostolic gospel. Membership transfers between congregations are good and proper.

Local churches should encourage their members to to transfer to a new church when the said church is closer to the member’s home or to the member’s convictions over secondary doctrines. For example, if a member of a Baptist church find himself embracing infant baptism, the Baptist church he attends now should happily grant his request to become a Presbyterian. He has not left the faith.

Moreover, some members will leave their church because their church’s leaders rebuff the members’ call for biblical reform and repentance. In such cases, the members leaving prove more spiritual than the local church left behind. In other words, Christians can and often do leave a local church without turning their back on Jesus.

Don’t Keep the Heretics

Rather, John’s letter addresses those who abandon their local church because they have abandoned the essential doctrines of the Christian faith. The apostle writes in 1 John 2:22: “Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son.” The antichrist is not the one who prefers expository preaching over topical preaching or old hymns as opposed to more modern worship, or red carpets as opposed to green. The antichrist is the one who undermines the gospel through their denial of Jesus’ personhood and his resulting work on the cross.

Antichrists are those who deny either the divinity or the humanity of Jesus and thereby deny the doctrine of justification through faith alone. If Jesus was a created being and not God, he could not satisfy God’s wrath for our sins. He could perhaps exchange his life for another life, but Jesus could not atone for the sin of all his people. If he was not fully God, he also could not raise himself from the dead much less us. We would have to save ourselves through good works or some other scheme.

Similarly, if Jesus was not fully man but rather some half-man and half-god hybrid or just a spirit, he could not be the perfect substitute for humanity. When an orange replaces an apple, you do not get a better apple. You get an orange. If Jesus was not fully a man, he could not fully die and atone for our sins. Once again, we would have to find some other means to pay for our sins. Only a Messiah who was both fully God and fully man could be the propitiation, the perfect sacrifice for sin of God’s elect. Defective Christology, as John Stott notes, “is not just defective; it is diabolical.” They who corrupt the doctrine of Christ are the liars…the antichrist…the messengers of Satan.  

As such, they should feel unwelcomed in God’s house.  When a church member embraces the Arian heresy of Mormonism and declares that Jesus is the product of the Father’s one night stand with the not-so-virgin Mary, she should feel disconnected from her ladies’ book club at church. The man who begins to argue on Tik Tok that Jesus was specially indwelt by the Father until his accidental death on the cross and was not fully God should feel out of place when singing “Are you washed in the blood?” And the Sunday school teacher who teachers that Jesus never had a human body should squirm in his seat when his pastor unpacks Matthew’s Christmas narrative. Those who promote theological lies should feel uncomfortable in the halls of truth and flee them for the refuge of other heretical movements. To quote John, they “went out from us, but they were not of us.”  

When They Stay  

At times, false teachers will do not leave and will try to burrow under the church’s skin. They will start a sending emails, posting videos, or start up Bible studies in an effort to win the church to their heretical ideas.  

When they do so, the local congregation will have to use the tool of church discipline to force them out. If left unchecked, false teachers will destroy the spiritual health of their local church. Paul warns 1 Corinthians 5:6-7: “Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump.”

The church’s elders should lead the discipline prosses. They should show the confused member the error of his ways and call him to repentance. Hopefully, the elders’ loving correction will guide the person back to spiritual health and truth. But if the false teacher continues unabated, the elders must inform the church of the situation in accordance with Matthew 18. If the person still refuses to repent, then the congregation must vote the person out of membership. For the church to survive, it must be willing to remove its heretical members from the role.

The True Cost

Still, the removal hurts. Just as surgery often leaves a scar on our body, removing those who once visited us in the hospital, sang hymns with us, and prayed with us because they have rejected Jesus will prove hard. We should grieve over their lost friendship and their error. But if we allow them to stay in fellowship, they will bring even greater sorrow and harm to our souls and the souls of our church family. As Martin Luther notes, “it is better to rescue some from the jaws of the devil than for all to perish.” For the church to remain healthy and vibrant we must allow and encourage our heretical members to leave.  

May the Lord give us the grace always needed to prefer truth over friendship and faithfulness of expediency. May we be willing to glorify God through reducing our membership.