Piper on Lloyd-Jones, part 6: Cessationism Quenches the Spirit

“Therefore, we may say emphatically that Lloyd-Jones was not a Warfieldian cessationist.

I think it is quite without scriptural warrant to say that all these gifts ended with the apostles or the Apostolic Era. I believe there have been undoubted miracles since then. (The Fight of Faith, 786; Joy Unspeakable, 246)

And when he speaks of the need for revival and for the baptism with the Holy Spirit and for a mighty attestation for the word of God today, it is crystal clear in Lloyd-Jones, he meant the same sort of thing as was meant in Acts 14:3, signs and wonders attesting to the Word of God. “It is perfectly clear…” – (Everything is perfectly clear to Martyn Lloyd-Jones) –

It is perfectly clear that in New Testament times, the gospel was authenticated in this way by signs, wonders and miracles of various characters and descriptions … Was it only meant to be true of the early church? … The Scriptures never anywhere say that these things were only temporary—never! – (you can hear him saying it, can’t you?) – There is no such statement anywhere. (The Sovereign Spirit, 31-32)

He deals with cessationist arguments, and says some mighty powerful things, that I can’t imagine Iain Murray would leave out of his biography, which he did. “To hold such a view as Warfield held is simply to quench the Spirit“ (SS, 46).  Because Iain Murray was publishing it [Warfield] at the time.  Pushing it.  These views, according to their dear father, Dr. Jones, is the quenching of the Holy Spirit!  and he didn’t want to lose his friends any more than he already was losing them, probably, and so he didn’t want them published until he was gone.“

~From “A Passion for Christ Exalting Power“

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Piper on Lloyd-Jones, part 2: “You MUST read Lloyd-Jones”

Revival Is a Baptism of the Holy Spirit

From the beginning of his life Martyn Lloyd-Jones was, in a sense,  a cry for depth.  If I were to sum up, I almost titled this “A Cry for Depth.” If I ever do anything with it I might title it that.  A cry for depth in two areas—1) in Biblical doctrine and 2) in  vital spiritual experience, so Light/heat. Logic/fire. Word/Spirit. Again and again he would be fighting on two fronts: he would be fighting against dead, formal, institutional intellectualism on the one side, and he would be fighting  against superficial, glib, entertainment-oriented, man-centered emotionalism on the other side. He looked out over the world and thought it was in an absolutely desperate condition and he saw the church as very weak and impotent. He said one wing of the church was straining out the gnats of intellectualism and the other was swallowing the camels of evangelical compromise and careless charismatic teaching (The Sovereign Spirit, 55-7). and for Lloyd-Jones the only hope was historic, God-centered revival.  which is really what I want to talk about this morning.

So my aim is this: to talk about the meaning of revival as Lloyd-Jones’ understood it—the sort of power he was seeking,  what he thought it would look like when it came, and how he thought we should seek it.  And then I’m going to be really risky at the end and ask if he practiced what he preached.

More than any other man in this century, I think, Lloyd-Jones has helped  recover the historic meaning of revival.

A revival is a miracle … something that can only be explained as the direct … intervention of God … Men can produce evangelistic campaigns, but they cannot and never have produced a revival (Revival 111-2).

And Lloyd-Jones felt it to be a tremendous tragedy that the historic sense of revival as a sovereign outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon the church, had been virtually lost by the time he preached about revival  in 1959 on the 100th anniversary of the Welsh Revival. He said in those lectures, “During the last seventy, to eighty years, this whole notion of a visitation, a baptism of God’s Spirit upon the Church, has gone” (The Fight of Faith, 385).  And then he gives this explanation and with this he begins to part ways with almost the entirety of mainline evangelicalism.

The main theological reason that he said there was a prevailing indifference to historic revival and crying out for it is because people had begun to equate what happened on the Day of Pentecost with regeneration. Now let me read the key quote where he describes this view:

Yes, [Acts 2] was the baptism of the Holy Spirit. But we all get that now, (it’s not him talking, he’s quoting the view) and it is unconscious, we are not aware of it, it happens to us the moment we believe and we are regenerated. It is just that act of God which incorporates us into the Body of Christ. That is the baptism of the Spirit. So it is no use your praying to God for some other baptism of the Spirit, or asking God to pour out His Spirit upon the church … It is not surprising that, as that kind of preaching has gained currency, people have stopped praying for revival” (FF, 386).

Revival is when the Spirit comes down, he says, is poured out. And he’s crystal clear that it’s not the same, the baptism with the Holy Spirit is not the same as regeneration.  Here’s the quote, key quote:

I am asserting that you can be a believer, that you can have the Holy Spirit dwelling in you, and still not be baptized with the Holy Spirit … The baptism of the Holy Spirit is something that is done by the Lord Jesus Christ not by the Holy Spirit … Our being baptized into the body of Christ is the work of the Spirit [that’s the point of 1 Cor. 12:13], as regeneration is his work, but this is something entirely different; this is Christ’s baptizing us with the Holy Spirit. And I am suggesting that this is something which is therefore obviously distinct from and separate from becoming a Christian, being regenerate, having the Holy Spirit dwelling within you (Joy Unspeakable, 21-3).

And so he laments that by identifying the baptism with the Holy Spirit with regeneration we have made the baptism of the Holy Spirit wholly non-experimental – as the Puritan’s would say — that is unconscious.  You don’t know when it happens,  you only can see perhaps some  later-on moral results from it. That is not, he says, the way it  happened in the books of Acts or the way it was experienced in the early church. (JU, 52). So he spoke with strong words about such a view.  This is very powerful now, knowing where he’s coming from and who his friends were:

Those people who say that [baptism with the Holy Spirit] happens to everybody at regeneration seem to me not only to be denying the New Testament but definitely to be definitely quenching the Spirit” (JU, 141).

Now just ponder that statement.   Therefore he would say, by implication, virtually the whole evangelical church is quenching the Holy Spirit.  That would be Martyn Lloyd-Jones’s opinion.  Dana told me last night that Warren Wiersbe was told by Martyn Lloyd-Jones that he asked these sermons not to be published before he died.  Well, there’s some real clear reasons for that, I think.  He founded the Banner of Truth publishing house.  It is emphatically cessationist.  Now I don’t know how he felt about that, but in 1972 after he had retired, they published B.B. Warfield.  He’s going to emphatically disagree with this book, in a moment.  And Walter Chantry, The Sign of the Apostles.  His biographer does not do him justice, in my judgment, in the chapter on Cross Winds.  He does not own up to what Lloyd-Jones is saying.  You won’t get the straight picture.  You must read Lloyd-Jones.

“A new form of dispensationalism”

Martyn Lloyd-Jones and the gifts of the Spirit

From Chosen By God, a collection of essays reflecting on Martyn Lloyd-Jones and his legacy, edited by Christopher Catherwood.  Chapter 13: The Pastor’s Pastor, by Hywel Jones, 220, 221-2, 223-4.

What were these emphases?  First and foremost was the importance of spiritual life…

When this element of spiritual life which was the result of the working of the Holy Spirit was under consideration, the Doctor could become a critic of orthodoxy, even Reformed orthodoxy.  He did so not only because of the heady effect which the (re)discovery of Reformed theology was having, but also because some exponents of that theology were overlooking or excluding the immediate works of the Spirit in addition to regeneration, viz. the baptism of the Spirit, the bestowal of spiritual gifts, and revival.  He pointed out repeatedly that Charles Hodge omitted any reference to revival in his three-volumed Systematic Theology and that B.B. Warfield regarded the gifts referred to in 1 Corinthians 12-14 as having ceased with the age of the apostles.  This the Doctor described as ‘a new form of dispensationalism.’ For him, Jonathan Edwards was right when he distinguished between excesses and the spiritual, though the latter would have varying, even striking, physical phenomena.  He declared: ‘We must learn to draw the line between the essential and the indifferent on the one hand and on the other between the indifferent and the wrong.’

The Doctor was interested in anything which appeared to display signs of spiritual vitality, wanting all the information about it and urging us to have the same interest.  In the [Westminster] Fellowship he would bring details of incidents which he had heard about and members would raise matters related to house church groups and the charismatic movement in their areas.  We discussed tongues, prophecy, miracles, healing, music and dancing and the use of the body in worship.  In all these the Doctor was most careful.  He would not dismiss all such phenomena as psychological or demonic as some would have preferred.  But he did not hesitate to say that those elements could be present.  On the other hand, he would not and did not endorse the charismatic moment.  He urged careful observation and evaluation in the light of what the Bible taught of the spiritual effects on an experience of God – awe and reverence, a sense of personal sin and unworthiness, love to the Saviour and the brethren, concern for the perishing and a spirit of prayer.  His most emphatic charge directed against us was ‘Why do we not have the problems associated with spiritual life?’ The answer was obvious.

He did not urge us to adopt the practices of the charismatics.  Rather he called on us to seek the Lord without setting limits to what He might do or what we would allow Him to do, asking Him to turn to us and visit us in gracious revival.  Meanwhile, we were not to follow any human methods for obtaining the Spirit because none were laid down in Scripture.  God gives the Spirit in the name of Jesus Christ to those who ask Him…

He was apprehensive about the effect which the various gifts practiced by charismatics would have upon preaching and preachers.  While urging the restoration of meetings like the society meeting of the 18th century, he contended for the retention of public worship in the nonconformist pattern, led from the front by the minister in a raised pulpit who integrated the service.  He did not regard this as either grieving or quenching the Spirit.  He gave himself to the preaching of the Word, ‘the highest and the greatest and the most glorious calling to which anyone can ever be called’, and God exalted preaching through him…

While not denying that prediction may still occur, he regarded the prophecy referred to in 1 Corinthians 14 as the kind of thing which can happen in preaching when new thoughts and unprepared words are given from above.  He urged us always o be open to that dimension in preaching and never to adhere to our prepared sermons so rigidly as to refuse to follow such leading.