I’ve recently started meeting up with a small group of men in my church early on Sunday mornings to help them fight against sin as well as give encouragement in their war against lust. We’ve begun reading through and meditating on D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones’ Exposition of Romans Chapter 6: The New Man, published by the Banner of Truth. If Murray is the high-minded Ivory Tower theologian working out the minute and much needed details of federal headship and union with Christ, then Lloyd-Jones is, as one member in my church put it, the blue-collar version the rest of us can understand.

At the end of this week’s outstanding podcast on the Historical Adam and Crucifying the Old Man, the question was asked about which books should be considered essential reading when it comes to the doctrines of our union with Christ, Federal headship, and Imputation. Each book suggested I too would affirm as non-negotiable in wrestling with these issues.^[1] I still remember cutting my teeth on John Murray’s “The Imputation of Adam’s Sin” in my seminary soteriology class and having, what seemed like, a thousand light bulbs go off in my head on how the whole Bible fit together.

But I want to offer one more book to this list of essential readings on why these doctrines matter and specifically a book which helps apply these glorious doctrines to the everyday man.

I’ve recently started meeting up with a small group of men in my church early on Sunday mornings to help them fight against sin as well as give encouragement in their war against lust. We’ve begun reading through and meditating on D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones’ Exposition of Romans Chapter 6: The New Man, published by the Banner of Truth. If Murray is the high-minded Ivory Tower theologian working out the minute and much needed details of federal headship and union with Christ, then Lloyd-Jones is, as one member in my church put it, the blue-collar version the rest of us can understand.

Lloyd-Jones in his preaching through Romans chapter 6, has wonderfully taken these glorious, and admittedly tough to understand doctrines, and he has presented them in such a way that the average man can get it. But more importantly, I think, he’s applied these doctrines to why they matter for us in our everyday walk with Christ.

In one sense, Lloyd-Jones is taking the argument of Paul in Romans six and slowly, verse by verse, unpacking it; taking out the doctrine of federal headship and the Christian’s union with Christ, and applying it, turning it over and over, allowing us to see every facet and aspect of this truth. And then, not content to stop there, he makes sure we know what this means for us today; for our sanctification and walk with Christ.

“Indeed, I do not hesitate to say that to understand the meaning of [Romans 6] is the key to understanding the Apostle’s whole doctrine of salvation – in its full sense.”^[2]

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