The Doctor

'Ah,' you may say, 'now you have said that tongues are all right.' I'm sure many are already thinking that . You wait a minute; I shall deal with the question of gifts when it comes at the right place. You do not start with that. That comes towards the end of the treatment. But that is how the devil gets us to bypass the Scriptures in the interests of our particular point of view, whichever of the two extremes it may chance to be.

Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Joy Unspeakable

Already you get the sense that this is no ordinary writer.

I'm currently reading Joy Unspeakable by Lloyd-Jones alongside number9dream, the remaining pages of which are quickly thinning out. But the focus today is on the former.

I was with Charcoal at Tecman on Saturday afternoon when I chanced upon this book. It was something that I'd been looking for for a long, long time - a reformed understanding of pneumatology. Now that we live in the Grace Era, the Book of Acts clearly testifies that work of the Holy Spirit is vitally important. Hence, it's ironic that we today know the least about the third person of our Triune God. It is true. And whatever (lack of) knowledge we do have is mostly derived from esoteric and dubious phenomena displayed by churches whose pastors have distanced the Bible from the pulpit.

That is why Joy Unspeakable is such a gem. In a sentence, I think it aims to correctively unite the conservative and the charismatic with conscientious biblical exposition from a Calvinistic perspective.

As should be apparent from the citation at the top, Lloyd-Jones has placed the Word of God at the heart of the issue, and of in fact any issue, if you read more of his works. I'm only finished with the first chapter of the book, but I've already for him weaved a string of adjectives. On one hand, he is authoritative, logical, compelling, witty and exegetically sound. On the other, he writes in such a way that is so pastoral, humble, loving, perceptive and clear. And I really cannot over-emphasise how simple but yet crystal clear his arguments have been thus far, and will be, I believe. It's incredible; I would kill to be able to write like that.

Perhaps this is one reason his contemporaries have affectionately called him 'The Doctor'. It is one thing to make spiritual diagnoses, but quite another to provide the cure. The perspicuity and Bible-centredness of Lloyd-Jones' preaching rightly lends him that affable nickname.

However, insofar as we're concerned with the glory of His grace in the world today, we might observe that Jesus performs the healing but doctors claim the fees. Nevertheless, I don't believe that this was the case with Lloyd-Jones. I think he knew that he had always been more of a patient himself than a physician.