It is clearly a vital duty of Christians to stand apart from false teachers who deny the fundamentals of the faith. Many scriptures make this plain. But what about so-called ‘secondary separation’, meaning separation from believers who continue to walk closely with heretics and wrongdoers? And what about preachers who curse, or promote extreme worldliness, yet who claim to be saved? Here is guidance through a minefield of problems today, with help on the use of love, charity and discretion in applying the doctrine of separation.
Extract
We remember the way in which Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones, the highly-regarded minister of Westminster Chapel, refused to work with the evangelist Billy Graham, and this is a significant example of secondary separation. In 1963 Dr Graham asked Dr Lloyd-Jones to chair the first World Congress on Evangelism (eventually held in Berlin in 1966; predecessor to Lausanne). Dr Lloyd-Jones told him that if he would stop having liberals and Roman Catholics on his platform and drop the invitation system he would support and chair the Congress.
Billy Graham would not change his views, and Dr Lloyd-Jones declined to endorse or commend or work with him. No doubt the meeting between them was courteously conducted (it lasted three hours) but the outcome was a firm application of secondary separation.
Dr Lloyd-Jones adopted the same attitude to Billy Graham’s London crusades. He took the view, and stated it publicly, that to have visible unity with those who are opposed to essential matters of salvation was sinful. (He also believed the invitation system was a source of mass delusion and harm to churches.)
Despite Billy Graham’s high standing with most British evangelicals, the enthusiastic support he received from the secular media, the fact that he was a household name, and despite the significant place in world evangelicalism that he was offering to Dr Lloyd-Jones, the latter stood by his biblical principle, and declined all the overtures. He would not commend or work with Dr Billy Graham. This is true loyalty to God’s Word, and protectiveness of one’s congregation.
