“He laid down His life for us.” – 1 John 3:16

We, who know the gospel, see, in the fact of the death of Christ, a reason that no strength of logic can ever shake, and no power of unbelief can remove, why we should be saved. There may be men, with minds so distorted that they can conceive it possible that Christ should die for a man who afterwards is lost; I say, there may be such. I am sorry to say that there are still to be found some such persons, whose brains have been so addled, in their childhood, that they cannot see that what they hold is both a preposterous falsehood and a blasphemous libel. Christ dies for a man, and then God punishes that man again; Christ suffers in a sinner’s stead, and then God condemns that sinner after all! Why, my friends, I feel quite shocked in only mentioning such an awful error; and were it not so current as it is, I should certainly pass it over with the contempt that it deserves. The doctrine of Holy Scripture is this, that God is just, that Christ died in the stead of His people, and that, as God is just, He will never punish one solitary soul of Adam’s race for whom the Saviour did thus shed His blood. The Saviour did, indeed, in a certain sense, die for all; all men receive many a mercy through His blood, but that He was the Substitute and Surety for all men, is so inconsistent, both with reason and Scripture, that we are obliged to reject the doctrine with abhorrence. No, my soul, how shalt thou be punished if thy Lord endured thy punishment for thee? Did He die for thee? O my soul, if Jesus was not thy Substitute, and did not die in thy very stead, then He is no Saviour to thee! But if He was thy Substitute, if He suffered as thy Surety, in thy stead, then, my soul, “Who is he that condemneth?” Christ hath died, yea, rather, hath risen again, and sitteth at the right hand of God, and maketh intercession for us. There stands the master-argument: Christ “laid down His life for us,” and “if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

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

For even the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many. – Mark 10:45

Just think for a moment: He had a crown in heaven; but He laid that aside, that you and I might wear one for ever. He had a girdle of brightness-brighter than the stars-about His loins; but He took it off, and laid it by, that you and I might eternally wear a girdle of righteousness. He had listened to the holy songs of the cherubim and seraphim; but He left them all that we might for ever dwell where angels sing; and then He came to earth, and He had many things, even in His poverty, which might have tended to His comfort; He laid down, first one glory, and then another, at love’s demand; at last, it came to this, He had nothing left but one poor garment, woven from the top throughout, and that was clinging to His back with blood, and He laid down that also. Then there was nothing left, He had not kept back one single thing. “There,” He might have said, “take an inventory of all I have, to the last farthing; I have given it all up for My people’s ransom.” And there was nought left now but His own life. O love insatiable! couldst Thou not stay there? Though He had given up one hand to cancel sin, and the other hand to reconcile us unto God; and had given up one foot that we might have our sinful feet for ever transfixed, and nailed, and fastened, never to wander, and the other foot to be fastened to the tree that we might have our feet at liberty to run the heavenly race; and there was nothing left but His poor heart, and He gave His heart up too, and they set it abroach with the spear, and forthwith there came out thence blood and water.

Ah, my Lord! what have I ever given to Thee compared to what Thou hast given for me? … I will say, in the last hour, “My Master, I have done nothing for Thee, after all, in comparison with what Thou hast done for me; and yet, what can I do more? How can I show my love to Thee, for Thy love to me, so peerless, so matchless? ~ C.H. Spurgeon

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

Hereby perceive we the love of God, because He laid down His life for us. – 1 John 3:16

O heir of heaven, lift now thine eye, and behold the scenes of suffering through which thy Lord passed for thy sake! Come in the moonlight, and stand between those olives; see Him sweat great drops of blood. Go from that garden, and follow Him to Pilate’s bar. See your Master subjected to the grossest and filthiest insult; gaze upon the face of spotless beauty defiled with the spittle of soldiers; see His head pierced with thorns; mark His back, all rent, and torn, and scarred, and bruised, and bleeding beneath the terrible lash. And O Christian, see Him die! Go and stand where His mother stood, and hear Him say to thee, “Man, behold thy Saviour!” Come thou, and stand where John stood; hear Him cry, “I thirst,” and find thyself unable either to assuage His griefs or to comprehend their bitterness. Then, when thou hast wept there, lift thine hand, and cry, “Revenge!” Bring out the traitors; where are they? And when your sins are brought forth as the murderers of Christ, let no death be too painful for them; though it should involve the cutting off of right arms, or the quenching of right eyes, and putting out their light for ever; do it! For if these murderers murdered Christ, then let them die. Die terribly they may, but die they must. Oh! that God the Holy Ghost would teach you that first lesson, my brethren, the boundless wickedness of sin, for Christ had to lay down His life before your sin could be wiped away.~ C.H. Spurgeon

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

For He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. – 2 Corinthians 5:21

I thought surely I had seen the worst of sin, when I had laid it side by side, first with the character of God, and afterwards with His bounties. I cursed sin from my inmost heart and thought I had seen enough of it. But, ah! my brethren, I had not. That sense of gratitude passed away, and I found myself still prone to sin, and still loving it. But, oh, there came a thrice-happy, yet thrice-mournful hour! One day, in my wanderings, I heard a cry, a groan; me thought ’twas not a cry such as came from mortal lip, it had in it such unutterable depths of wondrous woe. I turned aside, expecting to see some great sight; and it was indeed a great sight that I saw. Lo, there, upon a tree, all bleeding, hung a man. I marked the misery that made His flesh all quiver on His bones; I beheld the dark clouds come rolling down from heaven, like the chariots of misery; I saw them clothe His brow with blackness; I saw even in the thick darkness, for mine eyes were opened, and I perceived that His heart was as full of the gloom and horror of grief as the sky was full of blackness. Then I seemed to look into His soul, and I saw there torrents of unutterable anguish, wells of torment of such an awful character that mortal lip dare not sip, lest it should be burned with scalding heat. I said, “Who is this mighty sufferer? Why doth He suffer thus? Hath He been the greatest of all sinners, the basest of all blasphemers?” But a voice came forth from the excellent glory, and it said, “This is My beloved Son; but He took the sinner’s sin upon Himself, and He must bear its penalty.” O God! I thought, I never saw sin till that hour, when I saw it tear Christ’s glories from His head, when it seemed for a moment even to withdraw the lovingkindness of God from Him, when I saw Him covered with His own blood, and plunged into the uttermost depths of oceans of grief. Then I said, “Now shall I know what Thou art, O sin, as never before I knew it!” Never, till I saw the Saviour on the tree, did I understand how base a traitor man’s guilt was to man’s God. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

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

“Hereby perceive we the love of God.” – 1John 3:16

It will be well for me, in commencing my discourse, to remind you that there is no understanding the death of Christ unless we understand the person of Christ. If I were to tell you that God died for us, although I might be telling you a truth, and you might possibly not misunderstand what I meant, yet I should be at the same time uttering an error. God cannot die; it is, of course, impossible, from His very nature, that He could even for a moment cease to exist. God is incapable of suffering. It is true that we sometimes use words to express emotions on the part of God; but, then, we speak after the manner of men. He is impassive; He cannot suffer; it is not possible for Him to endure aught; much less, then, is it possible for Him to suffer death…We must always understand, and constantly remember, that our Lord Jesus Christ was “very God of very God,” and that, as God, He had all the attributes of the Most High, and could not, therefore, be capable either of suffering or death. But then He was also man, “man of the substance of His mother,” man, just like ourselves, sin alone excepted. And the Lord Jesus died not as God; it was as man that He gave up the ghost; as man, He was nailed to the cross. As God, He was in heaven, even when His body was in the tomb; as God, He was swaying the sceptre of all worlds even when the mock sceptre of reed was in His hand, and the imperial robe of universal monarchy was on the eternal shoulders of His Godhead when the soldier’s old purple cloak was wrapped about His manhood. He did not cease to be God, He did not lose His Omnipotence, and His eternal dominion, when He became man; nor did He, as God, die or suffer; it was as man that He “laid down His life for us.”

Come, now, my soul, and worship this man, this God. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

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