While We Were Yet Sinners

To give knowledge of salvation unto His people by the remission of their sins… – Luke 1:77

Permit me to read the text to you-“To give knowledge of salvation unto His people by the remission of their sins,” from which it appears that God comes to visit us when we are in our sins. If the plan of salvation were that we were to get out of our sins, and then God would come to us, it might be full of mercy, but it would not be tender mercy. Let it never be forgotten that “When we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.” “God commendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” I feel always at home when I get upon this blessed topic of the visits of God to undeserving, ill-deserving, hell-deserving sinners. His saving visits spring from grace, pure grace, altogether unmixed with any merit or claim on our part. God comes to us as the morning, which does not wait for man, nor tarry for the sons of men. I cannot bear the spirit which I see spreading among us in reference to almsgiving. It should not be indiscriminate, but it should be bounteous. Many cry, “We shall give help only to the deserving.” If God were to adopt that rule, where would you and I be? It has even been muttered in an undertone that, with regard to hospitals, no doubt they are used by persons who ought to provide for themselves, and so help to support struggling medical men. It may be so; but I like not the hard and niggardly spirit which suggests such criticisms. Talk not so; this is fit chatter for barbarians. Those who know the tender mercy of God will recollect that, when we ourselves had no good about us whatsoever, his tender mercy visited us, even as the sun ariseth upon the just and upon the unjust. He giveth with gladness to those who have no deservings of any kind. He will not mar the magnificence of His goodness by asking our pitiful pence of merit as a payment for it; but He giveth freely, according to the riches of His grace. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1907.cfm

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