The Word for Life - A Family Portrait

Twenty-five years ago this March, Martyn Lloyd-Jones finished his earthly ministry and went home to be with the Lord at eighty years of age. His ministry spanned over half a century and more than thirty of those years were spent ministering to the congregation at Westminster Chapel in London. Without question, his was a ministry of a great influence to the shaping and preserving of conservative evangelicalism in England during the first half of the 20th century. It is not therefore surprising that much has been written on his life and ministry. Perhaps the definitive biography on his life is the two volume work by Iain Murray. Murray’s biography followed the tradition of that day which honored a man by setting forth a full record of his life and accomplishments in a given field. However, a larger work of this public nature was often accompanied by a second biography that introduced the more private and personal side of the individual. Often, these second biographies were written by a family member or intimate acquaintance of the subject. A Family Portrait is this kind of work written by Lloyd-Jones’ grandson, Christopher Catherwood.

My hope is that having read this biography, you will have a much better sense of the man: who he was, what made him what he was and what he was like in private away from the public gaze. He was a remarkable man by all accounts, a larger-than-life figure of the kind by which we are seldom blessed. To have known him as we did within his family was the rarest of privileges, and we shall not see his like again. If you get only a small sense of the bigness of the man—of the breadth of his vision, of his compassion, his wisdom, his sheer warmth and depth of affection, and above all his ability to give one a sense of the glory of God and the greatness of our salvation in Christ—then my writing this book and your reading it will not have been in vain (p. 17).

Catherwood’s work is both brief and readable. He introduces his readers to ten different spheres in which Lloyd-Jones lived and ministered and fleshes out the more intimate/private side of his grandfather in these spheres. For instance, in the section entitled “The Early Years” Catherwood recounts the time when Lloyd-Jones as an eleven year old boy left home to attend school in a town distant enough from home that he was only able to see his parents on weekends. Catherwood explained, “This gave him a lifelong antagonism to the strange English upper-class habit of sending their children, often at a tender age, away to boarding school.” He went on to explain that his grandfather believed that this had a very negative effect on British evangelicals given the number of evangelical leaders who were products of such a system. “The Doctor felt that it bred a very superficial type, often unable to cope with normal emotions, as the ethos of the ‘stiff upper lip’ demanded that all such emotion be crushed.” Catherwood’s treatment of his grandfather’s appointment as assistant to the Queen’s physician and his subsequent decision to abandon such a high honor for the sake of the gospel is extremely enlightening and helps explain much about Lloyd-Jones commitment to preaching. Interestingly, Lloyd-Jones never lost his interest in medicine and at times his knowledge in this area would open doors of ministry that would have otherwise remain shut. His medical background proved to be helpful in the writing of his book on depression entitled Spiritual Depression.

Lloyd-Jones had very definite ideas about the nature of ministry and he remained passionately committed to the centrality of the Word as the exclusive ground on which the work of the ministry must be carried out.

To start off with, he scrapped a lot of the social functions of the church, many of which had no doubt been established to win people into coming. Out went the sports club, the drama group and the temperance league. As he himself put it, “The business of preaching is not to entertain, but to lead people to salvation, to teach them to find God.” Only preaching based on Scripture would do this, and he began as he meant to continue.

Lloyd-Jones was passionately dedicated to his family. Catherwood provides a multitude of rare examples where Lloyd-Jones is seen interacting with his children and grandchildren. On one occasion, his daughter, Elizabeth, was asked by a college professor to critique Chaucer’s The Miller’s Tale. She promptly wrote a stern essay that was more a moral rebuke than a literary critique. She was less than happy with the results. Her father suggested that she offer a proper critique along the lines expected by her professor and then, after having examined it carefully as literature, she might add her observations as to the moral nature of both the story and the author at the end. It proved to be the right advice. Many of his biographers note his sternness in the pulpit and his impatience with foolish and tiresome people. However, with his family, there were no questions that were off bounds. His family was intimately involved in dinner-table discussions regarding whatever issue happened to be occupying the Doctor’s mind at the time. Hence, they had a unique perspective on matters that were later to be very public issues. His position on things like the Charismatic gifts of the spirit, the true nature of English Evangelicalism, the breaking of fellowship with his friends in ministry over the issue of remaining in apostate denominations, were well known to them. The section entitled “Unity and Schism” has some very interesting and little know facts that add a great deal to one’s understanding of the monumental stance for truth taken by Lloyd-Jones in a time when it would have been easy to compromise.

A Family Portrait is a delightful and informative portrait of an important facet of Lloyd-Jones’ life. It was not intended to displace the fuller biographies such as Murray’s but rather to complement them. In this, Catherwood has succeeded. My heart was warmed as I read this and I was reminded again of how thankful we can be for men like Lloyd-Jones upon whose shoulders we stand.

God's Bridge to Eternal Life

Testimonies