Rebecca Davis

AFA Journal staff writer

May 2015 – One of the most influential preachers of the 20th century is brought back to life in Logic on Fire: The Life and Legacy of Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones. The feature-length documentary is the second major work from Media Gratiae, a division of American Family Studios that creates film, print, and electronic media for the glory of Christ and the edification of His body.

Released on DVD April 14, the film was shot in historic locations across Wales, England, Scotland and the United States. It features interviews from family members of Lloyd-Jones as well as a host of today’s evangelical leaders. Logic on Fire examines Lloyd-Jones’s home life and his spiritual influences. It emphasizes not only the need for clarity in preaching, tenderness in pastoring, and carefulness in worship, but also a humble dependence upon God to make the work of the ministry effective.  

Director Matthew Robinson recently sat down with members of the AFA Journal staff to discuss the upcoming film and the man often referred to as simply “the Doctor.”

AFA Journal: Why did you choose to make a documentary about a London preacher who died nearly 35 years ago as the follow-up to your first project, Behold Your God?
Matthew Robinson: The name behind the film explains it best. Media Gratiae is a simple phrase that literally translates “the means of grace.” We want our projects to be laser focused on the means of grace. Christ has accomplished redemption for His people, but there are certain means and channels God has ordained for that grace to come to people. The obvious ones are the preaching, teaching, and intake of the Word of God. So, we want to do studies that focus on the Word of God as it is preached and understood. There are also prayer, singing, and fellowship of the saints.

In addition, Paul says we are meant to hold before our eyes those who walk in this apostolic pattern. We are to identify, mimic, and follow such men. Therefore, we believe that Christian biography can be loosely defined as a means of grace. So that is the reason for producing a film about Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones as a resource for discipleship.

AFAJ: How does it compare to Behold Your God?
MR: Behold Your God is a 12-week multimedia Bible study for small groups, families, and individuals. Logic on Fire is a 104-minute film that is to be watched nonstop. Then we want viewers to interact with it, be challenged by it, and try to take the message to heart. A lot of the same themes that we focus on in Behold Your God run through this film. Actually, one of the sessions in Behold Your God uses the life and ministry of Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones to illustrate what it looks like to avoid the lies of pragmatism in Christian service.      

AFAJ: What is so important about Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones and his ministry?
MR: Here is a man whose life and ministry together were very helpful patterns for where we are today, for the church at large in our generation and in the generations to come. What Lloyd-Jones saw in Scripture is that the preached Word of God is the primary means of grace. He saw in the pattern of Paul, and in the pattern of Christ, that there was an emphasis on gospel proclamation and that is what the Spirit of God honors.

AFAJ: We should value but not idolize this man or his ways, correct?
MR: Correct. Men are not impressive, but God is so impressive. The very best of men are a nostril full of air. In the film, we press past Lloyd-Jones, the man, and point people to Christ. I am in awe of the God that Lloyd-Jones knew. When this God has gripped a man, you know that man is worth following because he is convinced that he is nothing and can do nothing in his own power. He will cast himself on Christ and plead with Him to do something. That is why Lloyd-Jones is a good pattern – because he was convinced of that.

AFAJ: How specifically can an individual Christian or local church or the broader church benefit from the ministry of Lloyd-Jones?
MR: The cultural situation at the time that Lloyd-Jones pastored was very similar to our own in America today. There was an emphasis in churches on entertainment, sports, and the kinds of things that we do to pull people in and win them to our church. The prevailing attitude was that the church should be focused on the social applications of the gospel. Lloyd-Jones saw that as a loss of confidence in the Bible and the Holy Spirit. He saw that such was neither the gospel proclamation nor the pattern of the Scriptures. Instead, he preached Christ and Christ crucified, and God blessed it. But to do so was just as counter-cultural then as it was when Paul did it in the first century, as it would be now.

AFAJ: What does the title Logic on Fire mean?
MR: It is a phrase that was coined by Lloyd-Jones in a series of addresses that he gave at Westminster Seminary about preaching. He defined preaching as being “logic on fire” and always sought a union between the two in his ministry. The logic – the reasonable faith in the Scriptures – begins to catch fire because what is true is just so wonderful. It is not logic in the classical sense, or fire in the emotional sense. The pattern of Paul that Lloyd-Jones followed was to reason out the Scriptures, to present what is true, and for that to begin to catch fire.  

Matthew Robinson
In 2006 I visited a new church in New Albany, Mississippi. The preacher had lived in Wales; the service was unlike anything I had ever been a part of. Every aspect of this corporate gathering pointed us again and again to the person and work of Jesus Christ. But I was bored. This preacher kept going on and on about Jesus, and I already knew about Him. It didn’t dawn on me at the time that something is deadly wrong when a professing Christian is uninterested in Christ. But eventually in God’s great mercy, this began to bother me. The more I heard Jesus Christ described as the One who is, above all, precious to those who believe, I became increasingly suspicious that I might not know this Jesus at all. After a long and often stormy season sitting under the preaching of Dr. John Snyder, whose ministry is indirectly influenced by Martyn Lloyd-Jones, the Lord opened my heart to believe the gospel.

Sometime around my first year as a Christian, I began to read the sermons of Lloyd-Jones. I often found myself so engulfed in and entranced by his exposition of the sanctified logic in Paul’s argument that I’d be moved to weeping, to wonder, and to worship as I read. This began what I intend to be a lifelong process of reading and listening to Martyn Lloyd-Jones and encouraging others to do the same.
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Logic on Fire: The Life and Legacy of Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones contains 3 DVDs plus a 126-page hardbound book of previously unpublished sermons, memorabilia, and photographs that were discovered while making the film. Order Logic on Fire at afastore.net or 877-927-4917.

Learn more at:
▶ logiconfire.org
▶ facebook.com/LogicOnFireFilm