Whiter Than Snow

Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. – Psalm 51:7

What a beautiful sight it was, this morning, when we looked out, and saw the ground all covered with snow! The trees were all robed in silver; yet it is almost an insult to the snow to compare it to silver, for silver at its brightest is not worthy to be compared with the marvelous splendour that was to be seen wherever the trees appeared adorned with beautiful festoons above the earth which was robed in its pure white mantle. If we had taken a piece of what we call white paper, and laid it down upon the surface of newly-fallen snow, it would have seemed quite begrimed in comparison with the spotless snow. This morning’s scene at once called the text to my mind: “Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.” You, O black sinner, if you believe in Jesus, shall not only be washed in His precious blood until you become tolerably clean, but you shall be made white, yea, you shall be “whiter than snow.” When we have gazed upon the pure whiteness of the snow before it has become defiled, it has seemed as though there could be nothing whiter. I know that, when I have been among the Alps, and have for hours looked upon the dazzling whiteness of the snow, I have been almost blinded by it. If the snow were to lie long upon the ground, and if the whole earth were to be covered with it, we should soon all be blind. The eyes of man have suffered with his soul through sin, and just as our soul would be unable to bear a sight of the unveiled purity of God, our eyes cannot endure to look upon the wondrous purity of the snow. Yet the sinner, black through sin, when brought under the cleansing power of the blood of Jesus, becomes “whiter than snow.” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3278.cfm

A Great Atonement Has Saved So Many Great Sinners

For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous. – Romans 5:19

It must have been a great atonement which has safely landed such multitudes of sinners in heaven, and which has saved so many great sinners, and transformed them into such bright saints. It must be a great atonement which is yet to bring innumerable myriads into the unity of the faith, and into the glory of the church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven. It is so great an atonement, sinner, that if thou wilt trust to it, thou shalt be saved by it however many and great thy sins may have been. Art thou afraid that the blood of Christ is not powerful enough to cleanse thee? Dost thou fear that His atonement cannot bear the weight of such a sinner as thou art? I heard, the other day, of a foolish woman at Plymouth who, for a long while, would not go over the Saltash Bridge because she did not think it was safe. When, at length, after seeing the enormous traffic that passed safely over the bridge, she was induced to trust herself to it, she trembled greatly all the time, and was not easy in her mind until she was off it. Of course, everybody laughed at her for thinking that such a ponderous structure could not bear her little weight. There may be some sinner who is afraid that the great bridge which eternal mercy has constructed, at infinite cost, across the gulf which separates us from God, is not strong enough to bear his weight. If so, let me assure him that across that bridge of Christ’s atoning sacrifice millions of sinners, as vile and foul as he is, have safely passed, and the bridge has not even trembled beneath their weight, nor has any single part of it ever strained or displaced… It is well that you should have a vivid realization of the weight of your sins, but at the same time you should also realize that Jesus Christ, by virtue of His great atonement, is not only able to bear the weight of your sins, but He can also carry-indeed, He has already carried upon His shoulders the sins of all who shall believe in Him right to the end of time; and He has borne them away into the land of forgetfulness, where they shall not be remembered or recovered for ever. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3278.cfm

A Great Atonement At So Great A Price

Much more then, being now justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. – Romans 5:9

The power of the cleansing blood of Jesus must also lie in the intense sufferings which He endured in making atonement for His people. Never was there another case like that of our precious Saviour. In His merely physical sufferings there may have been some who have endured as much as He did, for the human body is only capable of a certain amount of pain and agony, and others beside our Lord have reached that limit; but there was an element in His sufferings that was never present in any other case. The fact of His dying in the room, and place, and stead of His people, the one great sacrifice for the whole of His redeemed, makes His death altogether unique, so that not even the noblest of the noble army of martyrs can share the glory with Him. His mental sufferings also constituted a very vital part of the atonement, the sufferings of His soul were the very soul of His sufferings. If you can comprehend the bitterness of His betrayal by one who had been His follower and friend, and of His desertion by all His disciples, His arraignment for sedition and blasphemy before creatures whom He had Himself made; if you can realize what it was for Him, who did no sin, to be made sin for us, and to have laid upon Him the iniquity of us all; if you can picture to yourself how He loathed sin and shrank from it, you can form some slight idea of what His pure nature must have suffered for our sakes. We do not shrink from sin as Christ did because we are accustomed to it, it was once the element in which we lived, and moved, had our being; but His holy nature shrank from evil as a sensitive plant recoils from the touch. But the worst of His sufferings must have been when His Father’s wrath was poured out upon Him as He bore what His people deserved to bear, but which now they will never have to bear. For His Father to have to hide His face from Him so that He cried in His agony, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” must have been a veritable hell to Him. This was the tremendous draught of wrath which our Saviour drank for us to its last dregs so that our cup might not have one drop of wrath in it for ever. It must have been a great atonement that was purchased at so great price. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3278.cfm

Infinite Value in the Atonement

…we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement. – Romans 5:11

The Power of Jesus to cleanse from sin must lie, first, in the greatness of His person. It is not conceivable that the sufferings of a mere man, however holy or great he might have been, could have made atonement for the sins of the whole multitude of the Lord’s chosen people. It was because Jesus Christ was one of the persons in the Divine Trinity, it was because the Son of Mary was none other than the Son of God, it was because He who lived, and laboured, and suffered, and died and was the great Creator, without whom was not anything made that was made, that His blood has such efficacy that it can wash the blackest sinner so clean that they are “whiter than snow.” The death of the best man who ever lived could not make an atonement even for his own sins, much less could it atone for the guilt of others; but when God Himself “took upon Him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men,” and “humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross,” no limit can be set to the value of the atonement that He made. We hold most firmly the doctrine of particular redemption, that Christ loved His Church, and gave Himself for it; but we do not hold the doctrine of the limited value of His precious blood. There can be no limit to Deity, there must be infinite value in the atonement which was offered by Him who is divine. The only limit of the atonement is in its design, and that design was that Christ should give eternal life to as many as the Father has given Him; but in itself the atonement is sufficient for the salvation of the whose world, and if the entire race of mankind could be brought to believe in Jesus, there is enough efficacy in His precious blood to cleanse everyone born of woman from every sin that all of them have ever committed.

The Lord knows exactly what your sin is, therefore do not try to use polite terms about it. Tell Him what it is, that He may know that you know what it is. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3278.cfm

Wash Me

“Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.”- Psalm 51:7

Look at your sins and meditate upon them until they even drive you to despair. “What!” says one, “until they drive me to despair?” Yes; I do not mean that despair which arises from unbelief, but that self-despair which is so near akin to confidence in Christ. The more God enables you to see your emptiness, the more eager will you be to avail yourself of Christ’s fulness. I have always found that, as my trust in self went up, my trust in Christ went down; and as my trust in self went down, my trust in Christ went up, so I urge you to take an honest view of your own blackness of heart and life, for that will cause you to pray with David, “Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.” Weigh yourselves in the scales of the sanctuary, for they never err in the slightest degree. You need not exaggerate a single item of your guilt, for just as you are you will find far too much sin within you if the Holy Spirit will enable you to see yourselves as you really are.

When the sinner cries, “Wash me,” there must be some fount of cleansing where he can be washed “whiter than snow.” So there is, but there is nothing but the crimson blood of Jesus that can wash out the crimson stain of sin. What is there about Jesus Christ that makes Him able to save all who come unto God by Him? This is a matter upon which Christians ought to meditate much and often. Try to understand, dear friends, the greatness of the atonement. Live much under the shadow of the cross. Learn to-

“View the flowing
Of the Saviour’s precious blood,
By divine assurance knowing
He has made your peace with God.”

~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3278.cfm

 

Bold Shall I stand in That Great Day

But God, who is rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us, Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;) And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus… – Ephesians 2:4-6

O marvellous death of Christ, how securely dost, Thou set the feet of God’s people on the rocks of eternal love; and how securely dost Thou keep them there! Come, dear brethren, let us suck a little honey out of this honeycomb. Was there ever anything so luscious and so sweet to the believer’s taste as this all-glorious truth that we are complete in Him; that in and through His death and merits we are accepted in the Beloved? Oh, was there ever anything more sublime than this thought, that He hath already raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus, far above all principalities and powers; just where He sits? Surely there is nothing more sublime than that, except it be that a master-thought stamps all these things with more than their own value, that master-thought that, though the mountains may depart and the hills be removed, the covenant of His love shall never depart from us. “For,” saith Jehovah, “I will never forget thee, O Zion;” “I have graven thee upon the palms of My hands; thy walls are continually before Me.” O Christian, that is a firm foundation, cemented with blood, on which thou mayest build for eternity! Ah, my soul! thou needest no other hope but this. Jesus, Thy mercy never dies; I will plead this truth when cast down with anguish, Thy mercy never dies. I will plead this when Satan hurls temptations at me, and when conscience casts the remembrance of my sin in my teeth; I will plead this ever, and I will plead it now,-

“Jesus, Thy blood and righteousness
My beauty are, my glorious dress.”

~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2656.cfm

“It is finished, sin is pardoned!”

When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, He said, It is finished: and He bowed His head, and gave up the ghost. – John 19:30

This much I know -ye may hear men stammer when they say it, but what I preach is the old Lutheran, Calvinistic, Augustinian, Pauline, Christian truth, there is not one sin in the Book of God against anyone that believeth. Our sins were numbered on the Scapegoat’s head, and there is not one sin, that ever a believer did commit, that hath any power to damn him, for Christ hath taken the damning power out of sin, by allowing it, to speak by a bold metaphor, to damn Himself, for sin did condemn Him; and, inasmuch as sin condemned Him, sin cannot condemn us. O believer, this is thy security, that all thy sin and guilt, all thy transgressions and thine iniquities, have been atoned for, and were atoned for before they were committed; so that thou mayest come with boldness, though red with all crimes, and black with every lust, and lay thine hand on that Scapegoat’s head, and when thou hast put thine hand there, and seen that Scapegoat driven into the wilderness, thou mayest clap thine hands for joy, and say, “It is finished, sin is pardoned.”

“Here’s pardon for transgressions past,
It matters not how black they’re cast;
And oh, my soul, with wonder view,
For sins to come, here’s pardon too!”

~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2656.cfm