In 1959, Martyn Lloyd-Jones (1899–1981) preached a series of messages on the topic of revival, including one called “Revival Sermon: Dead Orthodoxy.” In the sermon, Lloyd-Jones argues that “dead orthodoxy” is the greatest threat to revival, to the church at large, and to all individual Christians.

Such an observation merits careful inquiry. What is dead orthodoxy — and how might we discern its presence in our own souls and churches?

Dead Orthodoxy

To help us get at the substance of dead orthodoxy, consider some questions:

What happens when we love the creeds and confessions of the church, but they have failed to make us more like Jesus?
What happens when right doctrine makes us haughty, gruff, impatient, and hard?
What happens when we are experts in theology but perpetual delinquents when it comes to the prayer closet?
What happens when we love doctrines more than the God whom the doctrines are about?

The answer is dead orthodoxy. Dead orthodoxy is a form of godliness, but without the attending power (2 Timothy 3:5). It is a case not of zeal without knowledge, but of knowledge without proper zeal (Romans 10:2). Paul tells Timothy to “avoid such people” (2 Timothy 3:5) — that is how serious dead orthodoxy is.

In one sense, of course, the word orthodoxy presupposes right belief, and right belief assumes warmth and vitality, producing a genuine growth in Christlikeness and love for God and man. As God’s truth works in us, a transformation takes place. This leads to more and more life, not deadness.

And yet, the phrase dead orthodoxy recognizes that it is entirely possible to have correct doctrine without a regenerate heart or a saving trust in the person of Christ. Think of the demons in the Bible. They knew the truth about Jesus and assented to Jesus’s gospel being true. But they refused to trust him. They didn’t love him. The devils believe God is one (James 2:19) — and so do many hypocrites.

Additionally, it is entirely possible to be a genuine Christian but have an inconsistent outworking of that faith in one’s life. This inconsistency can be seen in all of us to a degree. Isn’t all sin inconsistent with faith and the love of God? But sometimes a Christian’s inconsistency becomes so deep and habitual that his faith, though orthodox, looks more dead than alive. He desperately needs reviving.

Four Signs of Dead Orthodoxy

The following four signs of dead orthodoxy are not meant to help us point fingers at others’ deadness in contrast to our own liveliness. To do so would be to fall into the error that some of these signs address.

“What can you do in the boneyard of dead orthodoxy? Call upon God to revive you, to bring you back to life.”

We must first point the finger at ourselves. Where have we exhibited tendencies to deadness — to coldness, to hardness, to formalism, to theological tribalism or elitism? In what areas do we need to seek Christ’s face afresh? Dead orthodoxy certainly describes some churches, denominations, and people, but the seeds of it undoubtedly find a home in our own heart as well. In the words of Nathan the prophet, “You are the man” (2 Samuel 12:7).

Let repentance from dead orthodoxy work tenderness and warmth in our own souls first.

1. Smug Contentment

I believe the truth, I know I believe the truth, and few are as smart as I am about the truth. This smug contentment leads to an attitude that is excessively polemical, where much of my time is spent criticizing theological opponents, especially on minutia and tertiary issues. I begin to nitpick anything or anyone not in line with my views. This smugness also produces tribalism, since only my camp is right, and so I refuse to work or fellowship with other Christians — or if I do, I look down upon them.

2. Dislike of Enthusiasm

This sign appears when the cold, proper, and intellectual is preferred to the fervent, excited, and exuberant. Dry academic lectures become preferable to preaching that is searching, close, or (as the Puritans described it) “painful.” Lloyd-Jones goes so far as to say that “dislike of enthusiasm is to quench the Spirit,” and that “this charge of enthusiasm is the one that has always been brought against people who have been most active in a period of revival” (Revival, 72–73).

Along with this dislike comes an inordinate fear of disorder. Those with this dislike can easily become rigid and inflexible, even in matters not limited by the Scriptures. Because of wild revivalists of the past, too much talk of revival or Spirit-led spontaneity is frowned upon as sheer emotionalism, animal excitement, or mass hysteria. Lloyd-Jones comments, “There are churches that are orthodox, but absolutely dead, because they are so afraid of false excitement, and the excesses of certain spiritual movements, that they quench and hinder the Spirit and deny the true” (78).

3. Pining for Social Acceptance

Someone overly concerned with social acceptance cannot stand to be considered a radical, an enthusiast, a fanatic, or a fundamentalist, and so he becomes overly proper. This concern often focuses on moralism and not rocking the social boat. It is dignified and prim, but it knows little about the cross as “folly to those who are perishing” (1 Corinthians 1:18). Such moved J.C. Ryle to comment,

There is a generation that loathes everything like zeal in religion. There are never wanting men of a cautious, cold-blooded, Erasmus-like temper, who pass through the world doing no good, because they are so dreadfully afraid of doing harm. I do not expect such men to admire Whitefield, or allow he did any good. I fear, if they had lived eighteen hundred years ago, they would have had no sympathy with St. Paul. (A Sketch of the Life and Labors of George Whitefield, 34)

This attitude may even treat evangelism as distasteful because it offends people and causes trouble. Shouldn’t we mind our own business? Shouldn’t we stay quiet about the gospel since it stirs up anger and hostility?

4. Denial of the Miraculous

Some may think, God can still work in history, but let’s not expect anything too extreme. God stopped doing that a long time ago. This attitude is symptomatic of our secular age and society. Christians in the West are in regular danger of acting like deists or mere rationalists. We don’t typically deal with problems of animism and voodoo — we deal with atheism, scientism, Darwinian evolution, and secular humanism. We deal with materialism and the ramifications of Enlightenment thought.

Such views so dominate our society that their influence can find a home in our hearts and in our churches. Syncretism is not just a blending of animistic and pagan religions with Christianity. Syncretism can also blend the Western religions of evolution, humanism, and scientism with the Christian faith. This blending leads to a distrust of the supernatural.

Cure for Dead Orthodoxy

If you see any of these tendencies in yourself, how should you respond? Ultimately, hope is only found outside of ourselves. Only Jesus can rescue us from such peril. We must keep turning back to him, who is the perfect example of right affection, right practice, and right belief fused together.

Perhaps your deadness is so deep that you fear you are not yet alive in Christ. Seek the Lord while he may be found. He can take out your stony heart and give you a heart of flesh, one alive and sensitive to the things of God. He gives sight to the blind. He is the friend of sinners. He came to seek and to save the lost.

Or maybe you have had seasons of sweet communion in the past, but now you feel dry and busy. Your faith has become nominal. Like the church in Sardis, you may have had a reputation of being alive, but now you find yourself dead (Revelation 3:1). Jesus tells this church to “wake up!” (Revelation 3:2). What can you do in the boneyard of dead orthodoxy? Call upon God to revive you, to bring you back to life.

Wherever you are, go to him today. Call on him now, without waiting. Jesus says, “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” (Luke 11:13).

That Sunday evening, between the hours of 7:00 and 9:15, is permanently etched into my memory banks. I was 17 and had just arrived in Aberdeen, “The Granite City” (as it has long been known because so many of its buildings and houses are constructed of gray granite).

I was there to begin my studies at the university. I had never seen it before and knew almost nothing about it. But my first duty was already on my mind: “When Sinclair goes to Aberdeen,” an acquaintance of my father had said to him, “tell him to go to hear Willie Still of Gilcomston South Church — he gives great Bible readings.” Following up on that suggestion has left a permanent mark on my life and, I trust, on my ministry.

First Service at the ‘Gilc’

I had never heard of Willie Still and had no idea where Gilcomston South Church might be — “Gilc,” as I later discovered people referred to it. And as for “Bible readings” — I had no real concept of what they were. But having attended morning worship at the college chapel, I walked into the town center to find out where “Gilc” was, came back to my residence for a meal, and returned at the stated hour of 7:00 for the evening service.

Around 7:25, after singing and two prayers, a seemingly elderly, balding figure in the distant pulpit began to read from the Old Testament. He took around half an hour to read through two chapters, interspersing the reading with a variety of fascinating comments (he did not know then, I suspect, that the Westminster Assembly’s Directory for Public Worship frowned on such interruptions to the reading of the sacred text!).

Then we sang a hymn. I stood standing at the end of the last verse, but realized everyone else was sitting down. Assuming this was a signal that instead of a benediction there would be a closing prayer, I bowed my head and closed my eyes. It took only a second or two, however, to realize that the words I was hearing were not the opening words of a prayer but the first words of a sermon. An hour and fifteen minutes later, he pronounced a vigorous “Amen! Let us sing hymn number . . .” — and then, at last, the benediction.

A “Bible Reading,” I realized after a few weeks, was not what Mr. Still had done earlier in the service. It was evangelical speak for systematic exposition, what is traditionally referred to as the lectio continua approach to biblical exposition. That approach is now so common that many have little idea how novel it seemed in the post-war English-speaking world.

I was shy and socially a little awkward (only a little?). It was another eighteen months before I spoke to him for the first time.

Meeting Mr. Still

Born in 1911, Mr. Still became minister of Gilcomston South Church in 1945. He remained there for over fifty years. He was my minister for six years and remained a mentor and friend until his death in 1997.

It would be difficult to calculate what I owe to Mr. Still. We were very differently wired. His preaching style was not one I could have or should have imitated — perhaps mercifully. Because of illness, he had received little or no formal education between his early teens and his mid-twenties. That lacuna left its mark on the way he thought — rarely, it seemed, in a straight logical line, although on many occasions he would follow a biblical-theological line through the whole Bible in order to bring depth to the passage from which he was preaching. I often thought that listening to him was like watching a deep-sea diver disappear into the water, eventually surfacing with a precious pearl in hand.

His conduct of worship was one of his spiritual gifts — “bathed in prayer,” as he often said. The church met for prayer on Saturday evenings, summoned by the weekly Lord’s Day announcement, “The elders will meet for prayer at 7:00 and the congregation at 7:30.” The meeting usually concluded just before ten o’clock in the evening — but in those hours it was often difficult to get a word in edgeways, such was the flow of prayer.

I have sometimes likened that gathering to a helicopter ride round the globe, dropping down in places I had never heard of to intercede for the advance of the kingdom and people of God there. To be in the services the following morning and evening was evidence enough of God drawing near to those who draw near to him. We were, as young students, often bowed down in “wonder, love, and praise” at the end of the services.

“Mr. Still delighted to bring out new treasures, and he never tired of putting again on display treasures that were old.”

It is not possible in brief compass to describe Mr. Still’s ministry in detail. His approach is well summarized in his little book The Work of the Pastor. I have heard numbers of men who never met or heard him comment on this book’s impact on their own ministries. Some of the recurring themes in his preaching are expressed in his Towards Spiritual Maturity, not least what he often referred to as “the three dimensions of the Cross” — Christ’s atoning work dealing with sins (plural), sin (its reign), and Satan (our ultimate enemy). As he liked occasionally to put it, Christ dealt with “the root, the fruit, and the Brute!”

Somehow — I think under the earlier influence of authors probably more pietistic than Reformed — he had grasped the Pauline emphasis on the death and resurrection of Christ as not only the foundation for our justification, but the ground plan and pattern for the whole of the Christian life (“Many deaths and resurrections for us,” as he would have put it). Significantly, his brief autobiographical book is entitled Dying to Live.

Poring Over, Pouring Out

Here there is space to reflect on only one particular lesson that I hope I learned from him — although I should emphasize that this was not because he spoke to me about it with any frequency (he “mentored” not in the modern vogue of “discipling,” but — at least in my own view — in a more biblical pattern of friendship). He modeled for us what it means to pour the word of God into people’s lives. This was the focus of his whole ministry — feeding the flock of God whether in his preaching, pastoral visiting, pastoral counseling, or pastoral writing to and for them.

This last dimension he developed in the congregation’s Monthly Record, which included an extensive pastoral letter, news of the congregation and the much larger “congregation” beyond who were upheld in prayer, and Daily Bible Reading Notes that he wrote himself. By the end of a ministry that extended through six decades, he had probably preached and written his way through the entire Bible three times.

I use the word pour deliberately here. It actually began with his own poring over God’s word. He loved it deeply and obviously. And the poring over of his own study and meditation (never one without the other) emerged in his pouring out what he had learned for himself. In that respect, he was a “scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven,” who “is like a master of a house, who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old” (Matthew 13:52). He delighted to bring out new treasures, and he never tired of putting again on display treasures that were old. But what struck me preeminently was the sense that the poring over and the pouring out were conveyed by what I can describe only as a pouring in of God’s word — into the minds and hearts of the congregation he served.

He certainly loved the word and studying it. I think that he did indeed love to preach. We are accustomed to seeing both of these characteristics in many preachers. But on their own, they do not constitute the same quality of pouring in. They lack a third essential ingredient for true ministry — namely, pouring into the people to whom one preaches “the affection of Christ Jesus” (Philippians 1:8) in the understanding that “the aim of our charge is love,” not merely knowledge (1 Timothy 1:5).

Preaching with Depth

Mr. Still had come to recognize long before I met him that what is requisite for such a ministry is sharing the Pauline experience of being among the people “in weakness and in fear and much trembling” (1 Corinthians 2:3) — a profound, sometimes almost debilitating consciousness of one’s own inadequacies. Paul later calls this experience being “weak in him” (2 Corinthians 13:4) — being weak not apart from him, but precisely because of our union with him. When up close and personal with Mr. Still, this deep costliness of the ministry of the Word was self-evident.

“Mr. Still’s preaching became the chariot on which the presence of the blessed Trinity was carried into our hearts.”

It was this element in ministry, it seems to me, that Paul was describing when he told the Thessalonians that “being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you had become very dear to us” (1 Thessalonians 2:8). And it was this element that took Mr. Still’s preaching beyond the level of surface exegesis and analysis of passages of Scripture to evoke the living realities of which they spoke. There was in his exposition of the word of God a manifestation of the truth and a manifestation to the conscience (cf. 2 Corinthians 4:2).

This gave a kind of emotional and affectional depth to his preaching. But more than that, it brought a sense of God himself, of his worshipfulness, into the preaching. The late Jim Packer used to say about Martyn Lloyd-Jones that he had never heard preaching that had “so much of God about it.” What I am describing here belonged to that same order of reality. Mr. Still certainly honored Calvin’s dictum that we give the same reverence to Scripture as we give to God because it is his word.

But (if one may put it this way without being misunderstood) while that was true, he never lost sight of the fact that God himself is not to be reduced to words to be analyzed and discussed in their interrelations, plotlines, and literary structures. He is the One whose throne is in heaven and whose footstool is the earth, the One whose greatness none can fathom, the One whom the heaven of heavens cannot contain — and yet is willing to look to him “who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word” (Isaiah 66:2).

Mr. Still longed for this reality himself and for the congregation to experience it in worship and under the ministry of the word. And thus his preaching became the chariot on which the presence of the blessed Trinity was carried into our hearts. Looking back now with gratitude, I nevertheless believe those days spoiled me. For when we experience this, we can never be satisfied with less.

Written on My Heart

One day when I was a graduate student, Mr. Still gave me something. In itself it was of no real consequence, but having known him for several years as pastor and friend, I said to him, lightheartedly and somewhat teasingly, “You have known me now for several years — but this is the first time you have given me something!” I passed the gift back to him, saying, “You will need to write your autograph on it.” He pointed to the object, brushed it away, and said, gently but clearly conscious I would not doubt the integrity of his words, “That is not where I want to write my autograph.” Then, pointing his finger at my heart, he said, “There is where I want to write it.”

That is what lies behind and is expressed in and through a ministry in which the word of God is poured into the hearts of his people. The ink in which Mr. Still’s ministry has been written into my heart is now dry; but please God, I hope what he wrote will remain clearly legible to the end of my life.

Audio Transcript

Two weeks back, two Mondays ago, we looked at how to glorify God in our business successes. That was APJ 1915. Now two weeks later, we are talking about business again more broadly. It’s a question from a listener named Travis. “Pastor John, hello to you. Can you tell me whether our work today is a blessing or a curse? Much of our work seems to be cursed, based on Genesis 3. But a lot of our work also seems to be a God-given blessing, according to Ecclesiastes. According to the Bible, is my nine-to-five job a blessing, or is it a curse?”

Let’s start with the first work mentioned in the Bible — namely, God’s work. Genesis 2:2–3:

On the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.

You can’t miss the point. God worked, God worked, God worked. Now, work was not a curse for God. God is not cursed; he’s not burdened; he’s not frustrated; he’s not coerced to do what he does not wish to do. He worked in creation because it was a sign of his greatness and his fullness that he should overflow in creating a world that declares his glory and a human image of himself that can enjoy and worship that glory. That’s no sign of weakness or burdensomeness or frustration; that’s glory. Work was glory for God.

Satisfying Work

From the beginning, work was not a curse. It was a God-like gift, a blessing. The essence of work, as God designed it before the fall into sin, was creativity: creative, productive doing, arranging, making. When God did his primal work, he created the world. Now, that’s the essence of work. Then he created us in his image to put us in a world that he had made, and he said,

Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. . . . [Let them] fill the earth and subdue it. (Genesis 1:26, 28)

Then in Genesis 2:15, it says, “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.” Literally, the word is serve. “Serve it,” almost like a serving in the work of the Lord — to serve it, to work it and keep it.

Now, I presume this working and keeping of the garden before the fall was a partial fulfillment of having dominion over the earth and subduing it. Now, what does that imply then? It does not mean that the garden was imperfect as God made it. It wasn’t imperfect. It didn’t need correction, as if God had made a mistake. “Oops! I didn’t fix the garden right; it needs help.” It means God made the garden for man, and part of its perfection was in providing for the man the raw material for being creative like God. Man would flourish in working the garden; the garden would flourish in being worked. It would be beautifully satisfying — not frustrating, not burdensome, not futile. That’s work before the fall: thrilling, satisfying, creative.

Cursed Work?

Now, what the fall did, what sin did when it came into the world (Genesis 3), was to make this glorious reality of satisfying work become futile, burdensome, frustrating. Genesis 3:17–19:

In pain [Adam] you shall eat of [the earth] all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you. . . . By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground.

“The futility and burdensomeness of work is part of the curse of creation, and it won’t always be this way.”

It’s not accurate to say that work is a curse. What’s accurate is to say that the futility and frustration and burdensomeness and painfulness of work is a curse. Paul said in Romans 8:20–21, “The creation was subjected to futility.” When sin came into the world, God subjected creation to futility, “not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself would be set free from its bondage to [futility].” The futility and burdensomeness of work, therefore, is part of the curse of creation, and it won’t always be this way. He said, “There’s a hope coming,” and God put the world under this curse temporarily to show the exceeding sinfulness of sin.

God’s Workmanship

But Christ has come to redeem the world from the curse, and that happens in stages, not all at once. This is true for work as well. It is really significant, when you think about it, that the gospel — the good news of Jesus’s salvation — does not stipulate that work is how you earn it. You can’t earn it; it’s free. Work is not assigned that impossible, hopeless, burdensome role in salvation. This is really good news.

Listen to the three things said about work in our salvation, according to Ephesians 2:8–10:

By grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, [1] not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his [2] workmanship, created in Christ Jesus [3] for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

“We are recreated in Christ for good work.”

This is glorious. First, work does not bear the weight of having to save us. Christ saves us; he does it by faith. Second, God steps in and does the work. He makes us new, and he does everything required to make us new creatures in Christ. We are his workmanship. Third, now that we are loved and forgiven and accepted and adopted, we are created for good works. We were created the first time — that is, brought into being as human people — for good work, way back in the beginning. That was our original intent as human beings, and we are recreated in Christ for good work.

Light Yokes for God’s Glory

This work in Christ is not burdensome. If we find it burdensome, if you find obedience to Jesus and work for Christ to be burdensome, then you’re not thinking clearly, or you’re not trusting Christ the way you should. Listen to Matthew 11:28–30. This is the paradox of the work that Christ calls us to do. On the one hand, we are like hardworking, yoked oxen — and on the other hand, our work is lighter than a feather. Here’s what he says: “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke” — oh, wait a minute, you just said rest. What’s with the yoke? A yoke is what you put on oxen to pull a plow, and it’s hard. “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

Yes, there is meaningful work to do as we follow Christ. That’s the meaning of yoke. We have a yoke to wear. We’re not thrown out to be doers of nothing. How boring would that be? But in that work, that yoke, there is a restfulness of spirit that is free from the curse. The key in all our work that turns it from curse to blessing, and the key that glorifies Christ in it, is described in 1 Peter 4:11: “[Let the one who] serves” — just say, “Let the one who works” — “[work] by the strength that God supplies — in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ.” The one who gives the strength gets the glory. We get the help, he gets the glory, and work is delivered from its burdensome cursedness.

Or here it is again in 1 Corinthians 15:10: “By the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them” — any of the other apostles — “though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.” That’s the glory of hard work in the Christian life, just like it was before the fall. I don’t doubt that Adam gloried in a long day’s work in the garden, making it perfectly suitable to his needs, flourishing in all his efforts. “Not I, but the grace of God with me” — that takes away the misery of burdensomeness and futility.

Whatever You Do

When Paul calls us to do lots of work as Christians, he’s not calling us to a burdened, frustrated, cursed life. He’s calling us to our glory and our joy. First Corinthians 15:58: “Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord” — I think that means doing lots of it — “knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.” It’s not futile. I think that applies to any work done in the name of Jesus, for the glory of Jesus, in reliance upon the power of Jesus — not just church work, all work.

In fact, Paul says in Colossians 3:23–24, “Whatever [that’s an important word] you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ.” So that elevates all of our work — not just church work, but all of our work — to the level of worship. If we do it in the name of the Lord, in reliance on the Lord, for the glory of the Lord, it’s not mere human work; it’s divine work. It honors Christ.

I’ll say it again. From the beginning, we were made for work — shaping, creating, subduing the world according to the wisdom and goodness and beauty of God. This was not — it is not — a curse; it is a blessing. And I think it will last happily forever.