D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (selected by Frank Cumbers)
Grant me now my supplication: None of self, and all of Thee!
... I have noticed at times a tendency even to fail to appreciate what is regarded by the Bible as the greatest virtue of all, namely, humility. I have heard people on a committee discuss a certain candidate and say, "Yes, very good; but he is rather lacking in personality," when my opinion of that particular candidate was that he was humble. There is a tendency ... to justify a man's making use of himself and his own personality and trying to put it forward, or as the horrible phrase has it, "to put it across." The advertisements that are being increasingly used in connection with Christian work proclaim this tendency very loudly. You read the old records of the activities of God's greatest workers, the great evangelists and others, and you observe how self-effacing they were. But today, we are experiencing something that is almost a complete reversal of this....
What does it mean? "We preach not ourselves," says Paul, "but Christ Jesus the Lord." When he went to Corinth, he tells us, he went "in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling." He did not step on to the platform with confidence and assurance and ease, and give the impression of a great personality. Rather, the people said of him, "His appearance is weak and his speech contemptible." How far we tend to wander from the truth and the pattern of the Scriptures. Alas! How the Church is allowing the world and its methods to influence and control her outlook and life. To be "poor in spirit" is not as popular even in the Church as it once was and always should be. Christian people must re-think these matters. Let us not take things on their face value; let us above all avoid being captivated by this worldly psychology; and let us realize from the outset that we are in the realm of a kingdom which is unlike everything that belongs to this "present evil world."
Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, i, pp. 46-7
Comments on D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, A First Book of Daily Readings
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