Martyn LLoyd-Jones' Teacher

1       One of the important theological influences on DMLJ was Congregational theologian, Dr Peter T Forsyth.  While DMLJ did not accept all of Forsyth's theological formulations, he did accept his soteriology.  Hence, his repeated emphasis that Christ died for the whole world, for the human race, for mankind, for all.

  

      Let Forsyth teach us in his own words:

      “Individualism has done its work for Christianity for the time being, and we are now suffering from its after-effects.  We do not realise that we are each one of us saved in a racial salvation.  We are each one of us saved in the salvation of the race, in a collective redemption.  What Christ saved was the whole human race. ... So great is a soul, and so great is its sin, that each man is only saved by an act which at the same time saves the whole world.  If you reduce or postpone Christ’s effect upon the totality of the world, you are in the long run preparing the way for a poor estimate of the human soul.”  (The Work of Christ, Hodder and Stoughton, London, c1910, p.114).  

     The Christ of God is so great and eternal and the value of the soul so immense that anything short of a cosmic salvation would be inappropriate.  Forsyth's emphasis on the cosmic dimension of Christ's death demonstrates both the awfulness of man's sin ans guilt and the utter holiness of the God against Whom man sinned.  Forsyth got it right and do did DMLJ.

     Would that those who claim to respect and endorse DMLJ's preaching saw this and followed this truly evangelistic emphasis in their preaching.