When the admirer fawned over his sacrifice he cut the fellow short. If the gospel were nothing more than a cozy bromide telling people that before God everyone is really OK after all, then Lloyd-Jones would have been a fool to give up cardiology. It was his experience and therefore his conviction, however, that the gospel alone has within it the effectiveness of him who first created the world ex nihilo , from nothing. They have entered the ministry in order to facilitate. I don't know what image comes to mind when you hear the word, but the image that always swims up before me is that of grease.
Ministers are greasers who lubricate the machinery of a group.
No apostle ever settled for this. The gospel isn't the lubricant of group dynamics. The gospel is the operative power of God himself. Only this power can triumph over the spiritual indifference, inertia or hostility that it finds everywhere. Paul insists that the gospel is God's power to save just because in it, in the gospel, the righteousness of God is rendered operative.