Daily Devotional

August 04

A First Book of Daily Readings

by D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (selected by Frank Cumbers)
Sourced from the OPC website

Living on the bare Word of God

Faith means taking the bare Word of God and acting upon it because it is the Word of God. It means believing what God says simply and solely because He has said it. Those heroes of the faith in Hebrews 11 believed the Word of God simply because God had spoken. They had no other reasons for believing it. Why, for example, did Abraham take Isaac and go with him up that mountain? Why was he on the point of sacrificing his son? Simply because God had told him to do so.

But living by faith means even more than that. It means basing the whole of our life upon faith in God. The secret of all those Old Testament characters was that they lived ‘as seeing him who is invisible’. These men staked all on God’s Word.


They were prepared to suffer for it, and if necessary endure the loss of all things. The same prospect faced many of the early Christians.... ‘If you do not say Caesar is Lord’, said the authorities, ‘you will be thrown to the lions in the arena!’ Still they refused to say it. On what grounds? On the grounds of the bare Word of God!... They risked all. They died by faith and in faith.

This is our position as Christians today. The choice is being forced upon us more and more. Is there anyone still foolish enough to bank on this world and what it has to offer? What is the controlling principle in our lives? Is it calculation? Is it worldly wisdom...? Or is it the Word of God, warning us that this life and this world are only transient, and that both are merely a preparation for the world to come? It does not tell us to turn our backs entirely upon the world, but it does insist that we have the right view of the world.... We must ask ourselves as in the presence of God, the simple questions: Is my life based upon the faith principle? Am I submitting myself to the fact that what I read in the Bible is the word of God and is true? And am I willing to stake everything, my life included, upon this fact?

From Fear to Faith, pp. 52–3

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“Text reproduced from ‘A First Book of Daily Readings’ by Martyn Lloyd-Jones, published by Epworth Press 1970 & 1977 © Trustees for Methodist Church Purposes. Used with permission.”