From the TeachingtheWord Bible Knowledgebase

Part two of a series. Read part one.

Martyn Lloyd-Jones asserts that to remove preaching from its proper place in the church is, spiritually speaking, "well nigh to a criminal act."

No Substitute

We live in a time when many people in the church - including many church leaders - think that preaching is unnecessary or irrelevant. Preaching, they say, should give way to a motivational message or perhaps a "conversation", to use the Emergents' term. Many Evangelicals still call the speaking that goes in their church services "preaching", but they have changed the meaning of the term and the content of the message so that it bears little resemblance to the Bible's definition of preaching.

In the first two chapters of Preaching and Preachers, Martyn Lloyd-Jones asserts something that is almost totally contrary to the postmodern Evangelical view. Preaching, he states - preaching as God defines it - is still the central focus of the life of the church and the service of worship. He further asserts that the growing ineffectiveness of the Christian church in the world is due to the abandonment of the primacy of preaching.

The principal reason for the decline of preaching, he says, is the product of postmodernism itself: the loss of belief in the authority of the Scriptures, due to the diminishment of belief in the concept of absolute Truth.

But Lloyd-Jones is adamant in stating that the only way to meet this decline is head-on, through the restoration of Biblical preaching. Only the Biblical model will work. Man-made, man-centered models will not, for the simple reason that God did not ordain them. He states that the primary task not only of the preacher, but also of the Church itself in all of its activities, must be the preaching of the Word of God. Everything else is subsidiary to this.

Essential Theology

He argues that the primacy of preaching is not a matter of mere practicality, but is essential theology. The whole message of the Bible asserts this and drives us to this conclusion. The moment we understand man's real need, and the moment we understand the nature of the salvation announced and proclaimed in the Scriptures, we are driven to the conclusion that the primary task of the church is to preach and proclaim this - to show man's need, and to show God's only remedy for it. This is the essence of theology.¹

I [have] laid down a proposition that preaching is the primary task of the Church and therefore of the minister of the Church, that everything else is subsidiary to this, and can be represented as the outworking or the carrying out of this in daily practice. What I am doing is to justify this proposition, and I am doing so, particularly, in view of the tendency today to depreciate preaching at the expense of various other forms of activity. Having laid down the proposition, I have tried to substantiate it by evidence from the New Testament and also from the history of the Church.

I now want to go a step further and to suggest that this evidence from the New Testament itself, supported and exemplified by the history of the Church, leads us to the conclusion that the ultimate justification for asserting the primacy of preaching is theological. In other words I argue that the whole message of the Bible asserts this and drives us to this conclusion. What do I mean by that? Essentially I mean that the moment you consider man's real need, and also the nature of the salvation announced and proclaimed in the Scriptures, you are driven to the conclusion that the primary task of the Church is to preach and to proclaim this, to show man's real need, and to show the only remedy, the only cure for it.

The Basis: Understanding Man's Real Need

Let me elaborate that a little. This is of the very essence of my argument. I am suggesting that it is because there are false views current with regard to these matters that people no longer see the importance of preaching. Take the question of the need, man's need. What is it? Well, negatively, it is not a mere sickness. There is a tendency to regard man's essential trouble as being a sickness. I do not mean physical sickness only. That comes in; but I mean a kind of mental and moral and spiritual sickness. It is not that; that is not need, not his real trouble: I would say the same about his misery and his unhappiness, and also about his being a victim of circumstances.

These are the things that are given prominence today. There are so many people trying to diagnose the human situation; and they come to the conclusion that man is sick, man is unhappy, man is the victim of circumstances. They believe therefore that his primary need is to have these things dealt with, that he must be delivered from them. But I suggest that that is too superficial a diagnosis of the condition of man. and that man's real trouble is that he is a rebel against God and consequently under the wrath of God.

Now this is the biblical statement concerning him, this is the biblical view of man as he is by nature. He is 'dead in trespasses and sins', that means, spiritually dead. He is dead to the life of God, to the spiritual realm and to all the beneficent influences of that realm upon him. We are also told that he is 'blind'. 'If our gospel be hid,' says Paul in 2 Corinthians 4: 3-4, 'it is hid to them that are lost: In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not'. Or as Paul puts it again in Ephesians 4:17ff., man's trouble is that 'his understanding is darkened, because he is alienated from the life of God through the sin that is in him'. Another very common biblical term to describe this condition of man is the term 'darkness'. We have it in John 3:19: 'This is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, but men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil'. And in the First Epistle of John you find the same idea worked out. Writing to Christians he says that 'the darkness is past and the true light now shineth.'

The Apostle Paul uses the same idea exactly in Ephesians 5. He says, 'Ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord.' These are the terms that express the biblical diagnosis of man's essential trouble. In other words we can sum it up in one word by saying that it is ignorance. All the terms such as 'blindness' and 'darkness' are indicative of ignorance. And according to this biblical view of man all these other things, such as unhappiness and misery, even physical illness, and all the other things which torment and trouble us so much are the results and the consequences of original sin and the Fall of Adam. They are not the main problem, they are consequences, or symptoms if you like, and manifestations of this primary, this ultimate disease.

The Nature of Salvation: Knowledge of Truth

That being the picture of man's need it is not surprising that when you turn to the biblical account of salvation you find that it is put in terms which correspond to this expression of the need. The Apostle describes salvation in these words: it means, 'coming to a knowledge of the truth' (I Timothy 2: 4)' It is the will of God that all men should be saved, and come to the knowledge of the truth. Salvation is a knowledge of the truth. In 2 Corinthians 5 :19 and 20 he says that the message which has been committed to the preacher, who is an 'ambassador for Christ' is to say to men 'be ye reconciled to God.' You find it again in the practice of the Apostle. We read of him preaching in Athens, in Acts 17, and saying, 'Whom ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you.' They were ignorant though they were philosophers, and he is the one who can teach them and give them light in this matter.

I am simply showing that the biblical teaching concerning salvation is that it is the result of bringing men to this 'knowledge' which they lack, it is dealing with this ignorance. Paul talks about 'preaching the whole counsel of God', and Peter had the same idea when he says that Christians are people who have been 'called out of darkness into God's marvelous light'. Now these are the biblical terms, and they all, it seems to me, indicate that preaching always comes first and is given priority. If this is the greatest need of man, if his ultimate need is something that arises out of this ignorance of his which, in turn, is the result of rebellion against God, well then, what he needs first and foremost is to be told about this, to be told the truth about himself, and to be told of the only way in which this can be dealt with. So I assert that it is the peculiar task of the Church, and of the preacher, to make all this known.

The Church's Peculiar Task

I would emphasize the word 'peculiar' - you can use the word exceptional' if you like, or 'special'. The preacher alone is the one who can do this. He is the only one who is in a position to deal with the greatest need of the world. Paul puts it in I Corinthians 4:17ff.: He says of himself that 'a dispensation of the Gospel has been committed unto me'. That is what he was called for - this dispensation of the Gospel, this message had been given to him. And you have the same thing expressed in a very glorious statement in the third chapter of the Epistle to the Ephesians, verses 8-10: 'Unto me,' he says, 'who am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ.'

This is his calling, this is his task. He has said before that 'all this in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men, as it is now revealed unto his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit'. This is the message - 'And to make all men see, what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be made known by the church the manifold wisdom of God.'

My whole contention is that it is the Church alone that can do this, and it is the preacher therefore who alone can make it known. He is set apart by the Church, as I am going to show, to serve this particular function, to perform this particular task. This is the thing that is given primacy and is emphasized, and it must surely of necessity be the case. The moment we realize man's true need and see the only answer, it becomes clear that only those who are in possession of this understanding can impart this message to those who lack it....

Palliating Symptoms Only: "Well Nigh a Criminal Act"

...So I would lay it down as a basic proposition that the primary task of the Church is not to educate man, is not to heal him physically or psychologically, it is not to make him happy. I will go further; it is not even to make him good. These are things that accompany salvation; and when the Church performs her true task she does coincidentally educate men and give them knowledge and information, she does bring them happiness, she does make them good and better than they were.

But my point is that those are not her primary objectives. Her primary purpose is not any of these; it is rather to put man into the right relationship with God, to reconcile man to God. This really does need to be emphasized at the present time, because this, it seems to me, is the essence of the modern fallacy. It has come into the Church and it is influencing the thinking of many in the Church - this notion that the business of the Church is to make people happy, or to integrate their lives, or to relieve their circumstances and improve their conditions. My whole case is that to do that is just to palliate the symptoms, to give temporary ease, and that it does not get beyond that.

I am not saying that it is a bad thing to palliate symptoms; it is not, and it is obviously right and good to do so. But I am constrained to say this, that though to palliate symptoms, or to relieve them, is not bad in and of itself, it can be bad, it can have a bad influence, and a bad effect, from the standpoint of the biblical understanding of man and his needs. It can become harmful in this way, that by palliating the symptoms you can conceal the real disease. Here is something that we have to bear in mind at the present time because, unless I am greatly mistaken, this is a vital part of our problem today.

Let me use a medical illustration. Take a man who is lying on a bed writhing in agony with abdominal pain. Now a doctor may come along who happens to be a very nice and a very sympathetic man. He does not like to see people suffering, he does not like to see people in pain; so he feels that the one thing to do is to relieve this man of his pain. He is able to do so. He can give him an injection of morphia or various other drugs which would give the man almost immediate relief. 'Well,' you say, 'surely there is nothing wrong in doing that; it is a kind action, it is a good action, the patient is made more comfortable, he is made happier and is no longer suffering.'

The answer to that is that it is well-nigh a criminal act on the part of this doctor. It is criminal because merely to remove a symptom without discovering the cause of the symptom is to do a disservice to the patient. A symptom after all is a manifestation of a disease, and symptoms are very valuable. It is through tracking the symptoms and following the lead that they give that you should arrive at the disease which has given rise to the symptoms. So if you just remove the symptoms before you have discovered the cause of the symptoms you, are actually doing your patient real harm because you are giving him this temporary ease which makes him think that all is well. But all is not well, it is only a temporary relief, and the disease is there, is still continuing. If this happened to have been an acute appendix, or something like that, the sooner it is taken out the better; and if you have merely given the patient ease and relief without dealing with it you are asking for...something even worse.

That, surely, gives us a picture of a great deal that is happening at the present time. This is one of the problems confronting the Christian Church today....

The Right View of the Latest "Vogues and Stunts"

...the moment you begin to turn from preaching to these other expedients you will find yourself undergoing a constant series of changes. One of the advantages of being old is that you have experience, so when something new comes up, and you see people getting very excited about it, you happen to be in the position of being able to remember a similar excitement perhaps forty years ago. And so one has seen fashions and vogues and stunts coming one after another in the Church. Each one creates great excitement and enthusiasm and is loudly advertised as the thing that is going to fill the churches, the thing that is going to solve the problem. They have said that about every single one of them. But in a few years they have forgotten all about it, and another stunt comes along, or another new idea; somebody has hit upon the one thing needful or he has a psychological understanding of modem man. Here is the thing, and everybody rushes after it; but soon it wanes and disappears and something else takes its place.

This is, surely, a very sad and regrettable state for the Christian Church to be in, that like the world she should exhibit these constant changes of fashion. In that state she lacks the stability and the solidity and the continuing message that has ever been the glory of the Christian Church....

These proposals that we should preach less, and do various other things more, are of course not new at all. People seem to think that all this is quite new, and that it is the hallmark of modernity to decry or to depreciate preaching, and to put your emphasis on these other things. The simple answer to that is that there is nothing new about it.

The blindness and darkness of man's heart and mind, he says, can only be exposed to light by the work of preaching. Understanding the central issues of theology - the nature of God, the nature of man, the nature of sin, the nature of salvation - involves above all the impartation of knowledge. That knowledge must be Biblical knowledge, and the vehicle for imparting this knowledge is expository preaching.

The church alone is qualified to proclaim these truths, to impart this knowledge, and the preacher in particular is the one whose office is Biblically designed to do it. Other human agencies, political and social, can spend their time dealing with the symptoms of man's sin problem. But only the church and the preacher can proclaim cause and the cure. If the preacher and the church spend all or most of their time only dealing with symptoms and little or no time proclaiming the cure, they are doing worse than second best. As far as eternity is concerned, as far as Christ's Great Commission is concerned, they are doing nothing at all. At its core, the abandonment of the primacy of preaching is an insult to God.

Next: The Necessity of Expository Preaching

References:

1. The quotations in this article are from Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Preaching and Preachers (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 1971), pages 26-35.

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