Living by Faith
“I believe that Lloyd-Jones was to twentieth century Britain what Charles Spurgeon was to the nineteenth century.”
― R.C. Sproul, Logic on Fire: The Life and Legacy of Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones
Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (1899-1981), a Welsh pastor and medical doctor, was influential in the Reformed wing of the British Evangelical movement in the 20th century.
In his collection of sermons on Romans 6, Lloyd-Jones describes what it means to live by faith.
Likewise reckon yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 6:11
we are to reckon as being true of ourselves what the apostle has previously been telling us is true of the Lord Jesus Christ.
In referring to this most important and vital verse last time I indicated that it is the first exhortation, actually, in this Epistle. We must therefore pay great attention to it, and make certain that we are indeed doing what the apostle asks us to do. As we do so I must remind you that there are certain general principles which must govern our interpretation. These we derive from what he has been saying in the previous ten verses. The first guiding principle is that we are to reckon as being true of ourselves what the apostle has previously been telling us is true of the Lord Jesus Christ. The very words “likewise” and “also” make this abundantly clear.
It is an exhortation to remember what is already true of us.
The second principle is that this is not an experimental statement, not a question of experience. This is so because, as I have just been saying, we are to “reckon” something as being true of ourselves which is already true of Christ. Therefore we must not begin to think in terms of consciousness of sin within us, and how we are going to get rid of it, for there never was any sin in Christ at all, and He never had any consciousness of sin. So this is a non-experimental statement. We are told to realize, and to hold before ourselves and in our consciousness constantly, something that is already true of our position or status. It is not an exhortation to us to do anything with regard to sin, but to realize what has already been done for us with respect to our relationship to sin. It is an exhortation to remember what is already true of us; it urges us to realize what has already happened to us as Christians, those of us who are joined to the Lord Jesus Christ. And what is true of us is that we are already in an entirely new position and standing with respect to sin.
We must just take the bare Word of God, believe it, submit to it, and act upon it.
This is something which we believe solely because the Word of God teaches it. You do not “experience” your position, you are told about it and you believe it. That is what justification by faith alone means. We have this Word of God which tells us that this is God’s way of salvation; and we have nothing but the Word of God. As we have seen, we have all got to do what Abraham did, as the apostle has already reminded us in chapter 4. We must just take the bare Word of God, believe it, submit to it, and act upon it.