The peculiar task of the Church

Of late I have been thinking much about the Church's mission. That reflection has recalled these words of Martyn Lloyd-Jones on the primary task of the Church:

So I would lay it down as a basic proposition that the primary task of the Church is not to educate men, is not to heal him physically or psychologically, it is not to make him happy. I will go further; it is not even to make him good. These are things that accompany salvation; and when the Church performs her true task she does incidentally educate men and give them knowledge and information, she does bring them happiness, she does make them good and better than they were. But my point is that those are not her primary objectives. Her primary purpose is not any of these: it is rather to put man into the right relationship with God, to reconcile God to man . . . .

The business of the Church, and the business of preaching - and she alone can do this - is to isolate the radical problems and to deal with them in a radical manner. This is specialist work, it is the peculiar to task of the Church. . . .

When you depart from the primary task of the Church and do something else, though your motive may be pure and excellent, [failure] is the result. . . I argue that in many ways it is the departure of the Church from preaching that is responsible in a large measure of the state of modern society. The Church has been trying to preach morality and ethics without the Gospel as a basis; it has been preaching morality without godliness; and it simply does not work. . . .

But my objection to the substitution of a socio-political interest for the preaching of the Gospel can be stated more positively. This concern about the social and political conditions, and about the happiness of the individual and so on, has always been dealt with most effectively when you have had reformation and revival and true preaching in the Christian Church. I would go further to and suggest that it is the Christian Church that has made the greatest contribution throughout the centuries to the solution of these very problems . . . My argument is that when the Church performs her primary task, these other things invariably result from it . . . And so you will find that the greatest periods and epochs in the history of countries have aways been those that followed in the wake of great religious reformations and revivals.

. . . I would go so far as to say that never has there been a greater opportunity for preaching than there is today, because we are living in an age of disillusionment. (Martyn Lloyd-Jones Preaching & Preachers pp30-41)

I need again and again to be called back to center, to the central task of the Church - of reconciling people to God - in order that He may do His work in us all those good things that we desire to see.

As I read the history of awakening and revival, I cannot deny his claim that the greatest social and political change follow times of awakening and revival. That social and political change is not prompted by preaching about social and political change, but by proclaiming the cross. In times of revival, I think it is fair to say that people amend their ways, public and private, because of the fear and love of God - and so society is transformed.