Lloyd-Jones On Lust

Lloyd-Jones On Lust October 13, 2008

Once again the Doctor diagnoses the human condition with timeless pinpoint accuracy in this quote:

We are creatures of lust and desire and passion. Let me give you the best description ever given of humanity without Christ, humanity as it is by nature. In his epistle to Titus, Paul writes:

Put them in mind to be subject to principalities and powers, to obey magistrates, to be ready to every good work, to speak evil of no man, to be no brawlers, but gentle, showing all meekness unto all men. For we ourselves also were sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another.

— Titus 3:1–3

And is that not true of all of us by nature? Is that not true of our society? Behold those at a glittering party—how fond they all are of one another! But they have daggers in their hearts; they hate one another: “hateful, and hating one another.”

Dr. D. Martyn Lloyd-JonesThat is why the world is as it is—greed and avarice and envy and lust and passion and desire. It is in us all. Paul also describes this in the second half of Romans 1, and it is because of this that the world does not want Christ. “He spoils life,” people say. Christianity is seen as narrow, as contemptible, as something to be dealt with by sarcasm and ridicule and derision. It is a joke on your favorite television program. Christ is the spoiler of life, the one who introduces you to just a narrow, miserable, cramped little existence. Is that not the outlook?

There is only one explanation for such a view, and I say again that it has nothing to do with intellect; it is the state of the heart. It is the clever people who are leaders in vice at the present time. They have amazing ingenuity, but notice how they use it. They cater to the animal, and that which is even lower than the animal.”

David Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Glorious Christianity, 1st U.S. ed. (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2004), 129. Also available electronically from Logos Bible Software.

For more information on Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones see this summary post or the MLJ Recording Trust.


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