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1
Preach to Yourself
I sat down in a comfortable seat at a local coffee shop with a hot cup of āJoeā to do some reading. Seated across from me was a young woman deeply engrossed in a book. Sensing we might have something in common, I struck up a conversation.
āI notice youāre reading Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones.ā
āYes, Iām reading Spiritual Depression. It is one of my favorite books. Are you familiar with it?ā
āI finished it a few months ago. What chapter are you on?ā
āActually,ā she said, āIāve read it three times.ā
āWell, Iām a pastor,ā I confessed. āAnd Spiritual Depression has helped many in my congregation.ā
āBefore I read this book, I was in the habit of listening to my fears and doubts,ā she answered. āBut now I preach to myself. This concept has changed my life.ā
As she said this, I remembered āthe Doctorāsā exhortation at the end of the first chapter. āI say that we must talk to ourselves instead of allowing āourselvesā to talk to us! Do you realize what that means? I suggest the main trouble in this whole matter of spiritual depression in a sense is this, that we allow our self to talk to us instead of talking to our self.ā1
Lloyd-Jones was on to something. It is a key to robust spiritual experience. We can either listen to ourselvesāour fears, doubts, insecurities, hurts, and failuresāor we can preach to ourselves. Maturing believers cultivate the discipline of preaching to themselves. In fact, they turn this into an art form. They read Scripture, internalize it, and then continually preach its truths back to themselves. When fears of death and dying arise, they speak to themselves about the world to come. When guilt grips their heart, they remind themselves that they have been united with Christ and that Christās righteousness is theirs. They donāt listen to self. They preach to self!
What do I mean by preaching to self? First, it is more than Scripture memorization. Scripture memorization is an important discipline. However, you can memorize the Bible but never cultivate the discipline of preaching to yourself. Individual verses seldom sum up the big picture that we so desperately need.
Preaching to self also differs radically from positive thinking. Truth is often irrelevant to the positive thinker. Instead, he or she tries to create reality by thinking positively. I can become whatever I affirm. Reality is irrelevant. I am wonderful and talented. Whether I really am makes no difference. But if I say this enough, I will believe it and become it.
However, when a Christian preaches to himself, he presumes just the opposite. He does not manufacture truth with affirmations. He cannot create reality. Instead, his affirmations reflect the immutable Reality that is really there. It alone changes lives. In other words, Christians do not create truth. The Truth creates the Christian. It shapes and molds us. Someday we will give an accounting to the God who is the ultimate Reality.
The contention of this little book is that Lloyd-Jones was right. It also contends that there is one truth that matters more than all the others combined, and the Christian should preach it to himself on a regular basis. It is the gospel, the most fundamental Christian reality.
Jack Miller (1928ā1996) first popularized the idea of preaching the gospel to oneself. A Presbyterian church planter in Philadelphia, a seminary professor, and a prolific author, Miller was thoroughly gospel centered. He saw the centrality of the gospel to all of life. In Millerās view, the gospel was not just a subject for new believers. The gospel was crucial for the progressive sanctification of all believers at all stages of their spiritual journey.
In his book The Discipline of Grace, Jerry Bridges popularized Millerās idea. Bridges exhorts his readers to preach the gospel to themselves. For Bridges, this means a solid focus on what happened at the cross.
To preach the gospel to yourself, then, means that you continually face up to your own sinfulness and then flee to Jesus through faith in His shed blood and righteous life. It means that you appropriate, again by faith, the fact that Jesus fully satisfied the law of God, that He is your propitiation, and that Godās holy wrath is no longer directed toward you.2
The book you are holding is a tutorial on how to preach the gospel to yourself. I am shamelessly and unapologetically building on the ideas of men like Lloyd-Jones, Miller, and Bridges. But I am also speaking from personal experience. I have discovered the benefit of continually preaching the gospel to myself. It has melted the fog of depression, repulsed the demons of despair, and displaced feelings of unworthiness and failure with the love of God. When I have been discouraged, it has motivated me to keep plodding. It has humbled me before the wonder of Godās glorious grace. It has encouraged me to love God and others. It has prompted me to be patient with the failings of others. It has urged me to forgive seventy times seven times.
What do I mean by the gospel?
Definitions
I want to go back to a subject that I brought up in the preface. When we think of the gospel, we usually think of Christās death and resurrection, and that is appropriate. Christās death and resurrection are the heart and soul of the gospel. āThe message of the atoning death of Christ for sin,ā note Jerry Bridges and Bob Bevington, āis the heart of [the apostlesā] gospel and is forever to be the cornerstone of the Christian faith. . . . [It is] the central fact in all of the entire history of the world. It is the chief topic and essential truth from which they always start and to which they always return.ā3
Although I agree with Bridges and Bevington wholeheartedly, I want to go one step further. In this book, I want to take a broader view of the gospel. The English word gospel is a modernized version of the Middle English word godspell, meaning āgood tale.ā Going back further, godspell is a translation of the New Testament Greek word euangelion, which just means āgood news,ā usually as declared by an emperor to his subjects. The gospel is the declaration of what Godāour sovereign King and Emperorāhas done to rescue us from sin and its consequence, the wrath of God.
It is good news indeed! In fact, when oneās plight in sin is fully understood, it is the best news anyone could possibly hear.
Using the term more broadly, the gospel is good news about all that God has done in Christ to save sinners and redeem the cosmos from the effects of sin. It includes our election before the foundation of the world, Christās incarnation, his active obedience, his substitutionary death, his resurrection and ascension, Pentecost, and the final judgment. It also includes the hope of a new creation purged of sin and infused with the active presence of God.
Although the gospel commands us to respond with faith and repentance, it is not fundamentally about what we should do. The gospel is about something that God has done. āThe gospel is objective,ā notes Jeff Purswell. āIt tells us what God has done to save his people.ā4 Or, in the words of the New Bible Dictionary, the gospel is āthe good news that God in Jesus Christ has fulfilled his promises to Israel, and that a way of salvation has been opened to all.ā5
In other words, thinking of the gospel in this way is like seeing it through a wide-angle camera lens. It is bigger than Christās death and resurrection. It includes what God did for us in eternity past and what God still plans to do for us in eternity future.6
Why the gospel and not some other truth? There is no subject more important to preach to oneself. It is the story line of Scripture. It is the central theme of the Bible. The Old Testament predicts and looks forward to the gospel. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John record the central facts of the gospelāChristās life, death, and resurrection. Acts records the efforts of the early church to export the gospel. The Epistles explain and apply the gospel. The Bible is all about the gospel!
In addition, the gospel is the Bibleās unifying theme. Some donāt think the Bible has a unifying theme.7 Others find it in the many covenants throughout Scripture. Some find it in prophecy or the millennial hope. However, I am convinced that the Bible does have a unifying theme and that it is knowable. But if we arenāt careful, we can miss the forest because we are so engrossed in the trees. The gospel is so obviously the center of the Bibleās story that itās often assumed...
