Is Your Church Family Really Loveless?

In his preface to Spiritual Depression, Geoffrey Thomas relays the brief account of a young woman who visited Dr. Lloyd-Jones with concern for the church.  The woman in question was involved in a long evangelistic campaign in London.  The campaign, sponsored by an American evangelist, was not supported by Lloyd-Jones.  Being attracted to the campaign and its methods, the young woman made two visits to Lloyd-Jones with two critiques.  She claimed (a) that the gospel was not preached at Westminster Chapel, and (b) the people of the church lacked love for one another.  Here’s how she remembers the second conversation, which took place in a dark period of her spiritual life:

Woman: “We don’t love one another in this church.”

Lloyd-Jones (tenderly): “Don’t say that.  It’s the devil that makes you say that.”

A couple questions come immediately to mind for me.

1.  How would one individual in a church be able to pronounce that the entire church is without love? 

How could any one person have data enough to conclude this?  And if the conclusion were accurate, we’d have to stop using the term “church” to describe that group of people.  For whatever we might call that body of people, we could not call it a “church” since love is a distinguishing mark of the church (John 13:34-35; 1 John 3:14-15).   Keep Reading...