D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, who I have never heard anyone describe as a Marxist, gospel-compromising, SJW, preached a sermon on John 4:13-14 titled, “Spiritual Dullness and Evasive Tactics,” in which he brought up the issue of racism. Early in the sermon on Jesus’s encounter with the woman at the well Lloyd-Jones explains, “We have dealt with some general prejudices that hindered this woman. She turned to our Lord in amazement when he asked her for a drink of water. She said, ‘How is it that thou, being a Jew, askest drink of me, which am a woman of Samaria?'”

There was a recent advertisement on Twitter for a Christian event in Mobile, AL titled, “Shrinking the Divide: A Gathering for Racial Reconciliation” featuring John Perkins and Russell D. Moore. There were some immediate negative responses from numerous professing Christians on Twitter. In summary, the comments basically asserted that Jesus has already conquered the divide on the cross and that this kind of conference wrongly implies there is something lacking in what Christ has done. According to the critics, talking about division is what really divides. These kinds of responses have become all too common along with pejorative name-calling against anyone who speaks out against racial injustice as SJW’s (Social Justice Warriors) and cultural Marxists.

Such comments are often followed with the idea that talking about race or racial injustice at all is a waste of time and distracts us from the gospel. After all, it is frequently said, the gospel is the only answer to racism. Racism, they suggest, automatically disappears when the gospel takes prominence. It is a bizarre sentiment coming from conservative evangelicals. If racism disappears when someone is genuinely converted to Christ then do they believe that slaveholders Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, and R.L. Dabney were unconverted men who didn’t really believe the biblical gospel? If not, such rhetoric is empty.

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, who I have never heard anyone describe as a Marxist, gospel-compromising, SJW, preached a sermon on John 4:13-14 titled, “Spiritual Dullness and Evasive Tactics,” in which he brought up the issue of racism. Early in the sermon on Jesus’s encounter with the woman at the well Lloyd-Jones explains,

“We have dealt with some general prejudices that hindered this woman. She turned to our Lord in amazement when he asked her for a drink of water. She said, “How is it that thou, being a Jew, askest drink of me, which am a woman of Samaria?” We face national prejudices, class prejudices, race prejudices, gender prejudices, and so on. There is almost no end to them. What harm they have done in the life of the individual Christian, and what harm they have done in the life of the church throughout the centuries–the things we cling to so tenaciously simply because we have been born like that!”

Lloyd-Jones then proceded to address the prejudices that the church battles both societally and personally. He explained that falling into this type of sin is a mark of spiritual dullness and gospel evasiveness. Regarding the woman Jesus meets at the well, Lloyd-Jones says, “She shows us that you can be intelligent, you can be quick and alert, you can be subtle at disputation, and yet the whole time be spiritually dull.” He goes on to clarify, “You see, this is not a question of learning; spiritual understanding has nothing to do with natural ability, nothing at all.” Of the “hindrances and obstacles” this woman used to evade the fullness of Jesus gospel message Lloyd-Jones declares, “As they were true in the case of this woman, so they are, in principle, still true of all of us.”

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