Journal: Reformation and Revival
Volume: RAR 09:1 (Winter 2000)
Article: Dr. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones: His Views Of Preaching
Author: Cecil Siriwardene

RAR 9:1 (Winter 2000) p. 93

Dr. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones: His Views Of Preaching

Cecil Siriwardene

In a church cemetery in the Welsh town of Newcastle Emlyn is a gravestone with this inscription:

In
Loving Memory of
D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones,
the beloved doctor
1899–1981
“For I determined not to know anything
among you save Jesus Christ and him crucified.”

These words of the apostle Paul to the church in Corinth summarize for us the life and ministry of a man whom many regarded as one of the foremost preachers of the twentieth century.

Martyn Lloyd-Jones entered medical school at age sixteen, and after graduation he joined the staff of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, also known as Bart’s, one of the premier teaching hospitals in the United Kingdom.

“The Doctor,” as he came to be known, was drawn to saving faith in Christ in the mid 1920s and not long after was called by God into Christian ministry. Dr. Lloyd-Jones gave up a successful medical career as well as his research work at Bart’s to go to a somewhat impoverished industrial town in South Wales in 1926 to become pastor of Bethlehem Forward Movement Church. He ministered there for

RAR 9:1 (Winter 2000) p. 94

eleven years, and some have testified that this congregation experienced a spiritual awakening during his ministry.1

In 1938 Dr. Lloyd-Jones accepted a call to Westminster Chapel, London, where he ministered until his retirement in 1968.

For half a century Martyn Lloyd-Jones exercised a powerful preaching ministry throughout the United Kingdom, Europe and in North America. Men and women who were converted under his ministry or who were greatly helped by his preaching went to many parts of the world to preach, plant churches, pastor congregations, and teach in schools and colleges or be salt and light in their homes and communities. His books, which are really his sermons in print form, continue to be of immense help to people, some of whom are found in the remotest corners of the world.

In a day when preaching continued to be relegated to a secondary place in the life of the church, Lloyd-Jones argued strongly for what he called “The Primacy of Preaching.”2 In his meetings with pastors, such as at the Westminster Fellowship of Ministers of which he was chairman, Lloyd-Jones never ceased to remind his colleagues that their primary task was, “the preaching of the gospel along with the private preparation for that work.”3

He argued that God had...