What will it take to drive a man to Christ?

Here are a few more words through pictures from the great Dr. Martin Lloyd Jones’ sermons on “Spiritual Depression”.

In order to know how to deal with spiritual depression, Lloyd Jones says that firstly that, unless there is “a conviction of sin, and if you do not realize that you are unworthy before God, and that you are utterly condemned and a complete failure before God, pay attention to nothing else until you have it, until you come to this realization, because you will never find joy, you will never get rid of your depression until you are right about that. Conviction of sin is an essential preliminary to a  true experience of salvation.” It must sound counterintuitive to say that in order to be joyful or truly happy, you need to feel condemned, convicted, and unworthy. But this is the truth. Jesus taught this in the Sermon on the Mount. Blessed are those who mourn, because knowing the truth about our sinful and helpless state is the only thing that will cause us to realize our need for Christ. Otherwise, we live as fools, trying self-salvation projects of all sorts, and depending on our own “righteousness”. Therefore, if this conviction of our guilt before God is not in place, we will never turn to Him, and as a result, we will never truly be able to deal with our spiritual depression. How many people believe they were saved because of an emotional experience, signing a card, or raising a hand and saying a prayer, but never felt a conviction of their sin? If a person has never truly understood the way of salvation, all their beliefs and efforts will be more or less useless. Once again, I can’t say it better than him, so here are a few excerpts from one of the chapters of his book.