Martyn Lloyd-Jones was a powerful Biblical expositor, preaching many years at Westminster Chapel in London (which had no affiliation with the nearby cathedral of the Church of England, Westminster Abbey).
One beloved book of his expresses his long study of the Sermon on the Mount, from the Gospel of Matthew (Chapters 5-7). Such study is only available in print book form such as from Amazon. (Where it has ca 150 reviews, averaging, well-deservedly, “5 Stars.”)
This innermost issue of self-choosing is demonstrated in both the life of Lot and of the people of Sodom (and those of the entire “plain of Jordan” which had been chosen by Lot). Below are direct quotations from Chapter 28, “Denying Self and Following Christ,” of the commentary on the Sermon on the Mount by Martyn Lloyd-Jones, with the associated page numbers in the print copy of the book sold by Amazon.
No man can practice what our Lord illustrates here [in the Sermon on the Mount] unless he has finished with himself, with his right to himself, his right to determine what he shall do, and especially must he finish with what we commonly call the ‘rights of the self.’ In other words we must not be concerned about ourselves at all. (p. 257)
All that must disappear, and that of course means that we must cease to be sensitive about self. This morbid sensitiveness, this whole condition in which self is ‘on edge’ and so delicately and sensitively poised and balanced that the slightest disturbance can upset its equilibrium, must be got rid of. (p. 257)
Another thing on the practical level which is of the very greatest importance is to realize the extent to which self controls your life. (p. 260)
Examine yourself and your life, your ordinary work, the things you do, the contacts you have to make with people. Reflect for a moment upon the extent to which self comes into all that. It is an amazing and terrible discovery to note the extent to which self-interest and self-concern are involved, even in the preaching of the gospel. It is a horrible discovery. (p. 260)
If you analyze the whole of your life, not only your actions and conduct, but your dresss, your appearance, everything, it will amaze you to discover the extent to which this unhealthy attitude towards self comes in. (p. 260)
But let us go one step further. I wonder whether we have ever realized the extent to which the misery and the unhappiness and the failure and the trouble in our lives is due to one thing only, namely self. Go back across last week, consider in your mind and recall to your conscience the moments or the periods of unhappiness and strain, your irritability, your bad temper, the things you have said and done of which you are now ashamed, the things that have really disturbed you and put you off your balance. Look at them one by one, and it will be surprising to discover how almost everyone of them will come back to this question of self, this self-sensitivity, this watching of self. There is no question about it. Self is the main cause of happiness in life. (p. 260)
But self always means defiance of God; it always means that I put myself on the throne instead of God, and therefore it is always something that separates me from Him. (p. 261)
All moments of unhappiness in life are ultimately due to this separation. A person who is in real communion with God and with the Lord jesus Christ is happy. It does not matter whether he is in a dungeon, or whether he has his feet fast in the stocks, or whether he is burning at the stake; he is still happy if he is in communion with God. Is not that the experience of the saints down the centuries? So the ultimate cause of any misery or lack of joy is separation from God, and the one cause of separation from Him is self. (p. 261)
And as I understand the teaching of the Scriptures, holiness eventually means this, deliverance from the self-centered life. Holiness, in other words, must not be thought primarily in terms of actions, but in terms of an attitude towards self. (p. 261)
[Regarding Jesus’s Incarnation] He humbled Himself and denied Himself. There would never have been the incarnation had it not been that the Son of God put Self, as it were, aside. (p. 262)
The cross of Christ is the supreme illustration, and the argument of the New Testament is this, that if we say we believe in our Lord Jesus Christ and believe that He has died for our sins, it means that our greatest desire should be to die to self. (p. 262)
So that we may say that the reason for His death on the cross is that you and I might be saved and separated from that life of self. (p. 262)