# “Logic on fire!” by D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

- Link: https://tollelege.net/2026/08/24/logic-on-fire-by-d-martyn-lloyd-jones/
- Published: 2026-08-24T06:45:00-05:00
- Author: tollelege

“You must have light and heat, sermon plus preaching. Light without heat never affects
anybody; heat without light is of no permanent value. It may have a passing temporary
effect but it does not really help your people and build them up and really deal
with them.

What is preaching? Logic on fire! Eloquent reason! Are these contradictions? Of 
course they are not. Reason concerning this Truth ought to be mightily eloquent,
as you see it in the case of the Apostle Paul and others. It is theology on fire.

And a theology which does not take fire, I maintain, is a defective theology; or
at least the man’s understanding of it is defective. Preaching is theology coming
through a man who is on fire. A true understanding and experience of the Truth must
lead to this.

I say again that a man who can speak about these things dispassionately has no right
whatsoever to be in a pulpit; and should never be allowed to enter one. What is 
the chief end of preaching? I like to think it is this. It is to give men and women
a sense of God and His presence.

As I have said already, during this last year I have been ill, and so have had the
opportunity, and the privilege, of listening to others, instead of preaching myself.
As I have listened in physical weakness this is the thing I have looked for and 
longed for and desired.

I can forgive a man for a bad sermon, I can forgive the preacher almost anything
if he gives me a sense of God, if he gives me something for my soul, if he gives
me the sense that, though he is inadequate himself, he is handling something which
is very great and very glorious, if he gives me some dim glimpse of the majesty 
and the glory of God, the love of Christ my Saviour, and the magnificence of the
Gospel.

If he does that I am his debtor, and I am profoundly grateful to him. Preaching 
is the most amazing, and the most thrilling activity that one can ever be engaged
in, because of all that it holds out for all of us in the present, and because of
the glorious endless possibilities in an eternal future.”

-David Martyn Lloyd-Jones, _**[Preaching and Preachers](https://amzn.to/4gPyFy0)**_(
Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2011), 110-111.

[⌊Preaching and Preachers by D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones⌉⌊Preaching and Preachers by D.
Martyn Lloyd-Jones⌉[

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