Visits or Visitations? Lloyd-Jones Pops Around Again.

In this blog I want to do two things. First, summarise the main points from my previous (excessively lengthy) blog for anyone who didn’t feel like wading through it all. Secondly, try and set things up to come back and develop the topic a bit more at a later date.

The main point buried beneath all the detail was this: you cannot understand Martyn Lloyd-Jones’s (MLJ) teaching on the Holy Spirit’s work inside revival, in isolation from his understanding of the Spirit’s work outside of revival. That is, when you look at what MLJ taught about Pentecost, and the general call and effectual call of the gospel, as well as the work of regeneration and conversion (and, union with Christ, we could also add) it is clear that he recognised the Spirit to be continuously present and active in the church. But he also saw that the Spirit works with different degrees of power, according to His sovereign plans and purposes, at different times and places, and in different people.

The simple existence of the church, as a spiritual body brought into being by the unique, one-off event of Pentecost is a powerful manifestation of the Spirit’s presence and power. If the gospel is preached and heard – before anyone responds to it – this is also the Spirit’s work. If anyone believes it reflects a further work of the Spirit which He only performs in and towards those who will become Christians. Whilst MLJ saw the Spirit’s work of regeneration as an immediate influence on the soul, he repeatedly emphasised the Spirit’s use of the word in calling and converting. This is far from unique among Reformed theologians and pastors.

Even in relation to the immediacy of regeneration, I suggested that whilst MLJ might separate the work of the Spirit from the word chronologically, he does not do so theologically. He rejected the strong word-Spirit separation typical of the Quakers and Anabaptists. The ‘case studies’ in which he allows a stronger separation are those in which a person’s ability to receive the word, by way of intellectual understanding, is providentially impaired: salvation is of the Lord and neither the lack of mental development in an infant, nor the lack of written Scriptures in ancient days, can stop Him saving whoever He wants to. All of this is vital to MLJ because of his understanding of humanity in sin: there is nothing in us that can move us to trust or obey or worship; only a divine miracle will do. You cannot separate what MLJ says, and how he says it, from why he says it: he was primarily concerned that people should understand the nature of our predicament before God, not that we should have unusual spiritual experiences.

This is the extraordinary-ordinariness of the Holy Spirit’s ministry which is going on in churches all the time whenever the gospel is preached. Because the Spirit is always doing this work in the church, it is wrong to conceive of Him as a visitor who comes and goes. Indeed, I believe it is sinful to do so and detrimental to people who are already Christians as well as those who are not yet Christians. Who are we worshipping – who receives our spiritual sacrifice – on the weeks when God does not visit? What’s the point of a prayer meeting if the Holy Spirit isn’t there to help me pray, to give me access through the blood of Jesus,  or to wing my praise and petition to the throne of grace? Why should I listen to this man preach if he is uncertain whether God will be with him in the task? Why should I waste my time even going to such a vaguely ‘agnostic’ gathering? The whole idea of a ‘visiting’ God, in that sense, nurtures unbelief. Indeed it must do, because it denies so many of the New Testament promises. In fact, it undermines the very preaching of the gospel for how can a man pray for the often absent Spirit to come on an occasional visit in one part of the service and then, a few minutes later, preach that the Cross of Christ is God's means of reconciling sinners and bringing them into His presence as saints?

All of this said, when MLJ spoke of the Spirit doing this same Christ-exalting, gospel-preaching, sinner-saving work with even greater degrees of power – a Christian historical phenomenon  frequently referred to as ‘revival ‘ - he did use the term ‘divine visitation’. God-willing, I intend to return to that theme at a later – but it would be fruitless to do so without first establishing this context. If we want to understand what MLJ meant by the word ‘visitation’ we need to hear him speaking from within a prior commitment to a Reformed doctrine of the Holy Spirit. And that means dispelling any anabaptistic or loose notions of the Spirit ‘coming and going’ from the church or operating independently of the word He inspired. Put it another way, pastoral theological questions around why Christians feel that God at times draws near or withdraws, do not compromise the principle of biblical and systematic theology, that the Spirit will never leave the blood-bought Church of Christ. A ‘visitation’ is not the same as a ‘visit’.