May 4 Daily Devotional

Did they test a gospel by its results? Very well; he is ready to meet them. Nay, more; he is ready to challenge them. What had all their learning and culture and their multitude of religions really produced? If they were interested in results—well, let them produce them.... What is the point and the value of all the philosophies if they cannot deal with the problems of life?

He, Paul himself, had once boasted of the Jewish Law and of his success in keeping it. But he came to see that all of which he had boasted was merely something external; when he came to see the real inner spiritual meaning of the law, he discovered that he was an utter failure. He works out that theme in chapter 7 of [Romans]. All man's efforts to solve the problems of life fail, whether they be along purely intellectual lines or consist in moral effort and striving or in painful trudging along the mystic way.

But the gospel which he, Paul, now preached, works! It had worked in his own life. It had changed and transformed everything. It had brought peace and rest to his soul and given victory in his life. And it had done the same to countless thousands of others. How did it do so? ... The gospel alone faces and exposes, and really deals with, the fundamental problem of man and his needs.... It alone diagnoses accurately; it alone has the remedy.

The Plight of Man and the Power of God, pp. 84-5

Comments on D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, A First Book of Daily Readings

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