Character of Jesus

In The Travail of His Soul the New World Was Born

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, Sovereignty of God Leave a comment

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new. – 2 Corinthians 5:17

He says, “Behold I make all things new.” Behold Him! He is a man dressed in the common garments of the poor! He hath no form nor comeliness, and when you shall see Him there is no beauty in Him that you should desire Him. He has come to make the world new. He has no soldiery, no book of laws, no new philosophy. He had come to make the world new, and to do this He has brought with Him-what? Why, Himself. He spends a life of weariness and sorrow amongst those who despise Him, and if you want to know first and foremost how He makes all things new, you must see Him sweating great drops of blood in the garden-that is the blood of the new world which He is pouring forth! You must see Him bound, scourged, spat upon, led to the accursed tree. While God’s wrath for sin is yet unspent, the world cannot be new; but when that wrath on account of sin is all poured upon the head of the great Substitute, then the world stands in a new relation to God, and it can be a new world. See the Saviour then, in groans and pangs which cannot be described, bearing the curse of God, for He made Him to be sin for us, though He knew no sin. The curse fell on Him, as it is written, “Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree.” It pleased the Father to bruise Him; He hath put Him to grief; He hath made His soul to be an offering for sin.” That dolorous pain, then, of the Master was the world’s new- making. It was then and there that the world was born again. No mother’s pangs, when she brought forth a man-child, were such as those of Christ when He brought forth the new creation. It was there in the travail of His soul-did you ever catch that idea, the travail of His soul?-it was there that the new world was born! “Behold I make all things new” is a mysterious voice from the broken heart of a dying Saviour. From the empty tomb, as He rises, I hear it come in silvery notes, “Behold I make all things new.” You must trace the birth of the new creation up to the grave of our Lord Jesus Christ, to the place where the cross stood, and where His body lay.~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3467.cfm

Our New Nature

Sherry Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, salvation, Sovereignty of God, The Father, The Holy Spirit 5 Comments

For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything, but a new creation. – Galatians 6:15

I love Thee, O my Saviour, because on the cross Thou didst bear shame, and spitting, and manifold disgrace for me. New principles stir the new nature which God has given. And this new nature is conscious of new emotions. It loves what once it hated; it hates what once it loved. It finds blight where once it sought for bliss, and finds bliss where once it found nothing but bitterness. It leaps at the sound which was once dull to its ears-the name of a precious Christ. It rejoices in hopes which once seemed idle as dreams. It is filled with a divine enthusiasm which it once rejected as fanatical. It is conscious now of living in a new element, breathing a fresh air, partaking of new food, drinking out of new wells not digged by men nor filled from the earth. The man is new-new in principles, and new in emotions…He was an heir to wrath; he is now a child of God. He was a bond-slave; he is now a freeman…He rejoices in Christ Jesus, and feasts to the full. He was the citizen of earth once; he is now a citizen of heaven. He once found his all beneath the clouds; but now his all is beyond the stars. He has new relationships. Christ is his brother; God is his Father; the angels are his friends; and the despised people of God are his best and nearest kinsfolk. And hence the man has new aspirations. He now pants to glorify God. What cared he about the glory of God once? He now pants to see God; once he would have paid the fare, if it had cost his life, that he might escape from the presence of the Lord. Now he hungers and thirsts after the living God; yea, if his soul had wings, and he could break the fetters of this mortality, he would mount at once to dwell where Jesus is.

Dear friends, are you new men? If you are, you understand what it is; if you are not, I know I cannot explain it to you. Oh! to be born again is a great mystery; blessed is the soul that comprehends it! But he that knows it not will never learn it by the lip; he can only know it by the Spirit of God causing him also to be made a new creature in Christ Jesus. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3467.cfm

New Creatures in Christ Jesus

Sherry Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, salvation, Sovereignty of God, The Holy Spirit 7 Comments

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new. – 2 Corinthians 5:17

Christ has made for us a new covenant. The old covenant was, “Do this and live.” That covenant was a sentence of death upon us all. We could not do, therefore we could not live, and so we died…The covenant of grace reveals God’s kindness towards us, and our part thereof has been fulfilled for us by our surety, Christ Jesus. Thus it runs, “Their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more for ever; a new heart also will I give them, and a right spirit will I put within them.” The old world is still under the old covenant of works, and its children perish, for they cannot carry out the conditions of the covenant, they cannot keep God’s law, they break it constantly, and they die. But the children of grace are under the new covenant of grace, and through the precious blood, which is the penalty of the old broken covenant, and through the spotless righteousness of Christ, which is the fulfilment and magnifying of the old covenant, the Christian stands secure, and rejoices that he is saved. Christ has thus made His people dwell under a new covenant, instead of under the old one.

In addition to the new covenant, Christ has been pleased to make us new men. His saints are “new creatures in Christ Jesus.” They have a new nature. God has breathed into them a new life. The Holy Spirit, though the old nature is still there, has been pleased to put within them a new nature. There is now a contending force within them-the old carnal nature inclining to evil, and the new God-given nature panting after perfection. They are new men, “begotten again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” This new nature is moved by new principles. The old nature needed to be awed with threatenings, or bribed with rewards; the new nature feels the impulse of love. Gratitude is its mainspring: “We love Him because He first loved us.” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3467.cfm

A Glorious Purpose

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, prophecy, Sovereignty of God 2 Comments

“Behold, I make all things new.” And He said unto me, “Write: for these words are true and faithful.”- Revelation 21:5

It is the purpose and intention of the Lord Jesus to make this world entirely new. You recollect how it was made at first, pure and perfect. It sang with its sister-spheres the song of joy and reverence. It was a fair world, full of everything that was lovely, beautiful, happy, holy. And if we might be permitted to dream for a moment of what it would have been if it had continued as God created it, one might fancy what a blessed world it would be at this moment. Had it possessed a teeming population like its present one, and if, one by one, those godly ones had been caught away, like Elijah, without knowing death, to be succeeded by pious descendants-oh! what a blessed world it would have been! …But there came a serpent, and his craft spoiled it all. He whispered into the ears of a mother Eve; she fell, and we fell with her, and what a world this now is! …Devils could not be worse than men when their passions are let loose. Dogs would scarce tear each other as men do. Men of intellect sit down, and put their fingers to their foreheads, racking their brains to find out new ways of using gunpowder, and shot, and shell, so as to be able to blow twenty thousand souls into eternity as easily as twenty might be massacred by present appliances…. It is a dreadful world. But Jesus Christ, who knew that we should never make this world much better, let us do what we would with it, designed from the very first to make a new world of it. Truly, truly, this seems to me to be a glorious purpose. To make a world is something wonderful, but to make a world new is something more wonderful still.

Jesus Christ, coming in the form of a man, revealing Himself as the Son of God, determines to make all things new; and be assured, brethren and sisters, He will do it. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3467.cfm

A New Start

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, confession of sin, prayer, promises, repentance, salvation, Sovereignty of God 3 Comments

“He that sat upon the throne said, Behold I make all things new.”- Revelation 21:5

 If our calendar suggests some dismal memories in the past, our calculation forestalls some happier prospects in the future. And it will sometimes happen that we leave so much anxiety, adversity, and chastisement behind us, that it is a relief to hope that the tide has turned, and that a course of comfort, prosperity, and mercy lies before us. One weeps over the past and the lost. I suppose the best of men must do so at times. I am sure those of us who are not the best, feel often constrained to pour out some such a lamentation as this:

“Much of our time has run to waste;
Our sins, how great the sum!
Lord, give us pardon for the past,
And strength for days to come.”

I do not know but it is sometimes as well, when one has been plunged in sorrow, or feels ashamed of his past life-after having regretted that which is bygone and repented of it, and sorrowed over it-to feel as if he breathed another atmosphere, and had started on a fresh career. Having thrown away the old sword, he is now about to see what he can do with the new: having put off an old garment, he is desirous to walk more worthily of his vocation with fresh ones that are provided for him. Perhaps the thought of freshness, the fact of new time having dawned on our path, may be a little help to those of us who are dull and heavy, and we may be stirred up to action, or, if not to action, it may awaken earnest hope that the infusion of a new start into our lives, new vigour instead of the old lethargy, new love instead of the old lukewarmness, new zeal instead of the old deathlikeness; new, pertinacious, persevering industry for Christ, instead of the old idleness, may result. God grant that it may be so! ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3467.cfm

Not One Is Missing

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, prophecy, Sovereignty of God Leave a comment

For we are members of His body, of His flesh and of His bones. – Ephesians 5:30

Christ lives a perfect life. Perhaps you do not see how this is a link between His living and your living, but it is, because we are a part of Christ. According to the Word of Scripture, every believer is a member of Christ’s body. Now, a man who lives perfectly has not lost his finger, or his arm, or his hand. A man may be alive with many of his limbs taken away, but you can scarcely call him a perfect-living man. But I cannot imagine a maimed Christ. I have never been able to conceive in my soul, of Christ lacking any of His members. Such a thing was never seen on earth. The barbarous cruelty of the Jews could not effect that, and, by the Providence of God, Pilate’s officers were not permitted to cause such a thing. “Not a bone of Him shall be broken,” was the ancient prophecy. They brake the legs of the first and second thief, but when they came to the matchless Lord they saw He was already dead, so they brake not His legs. Even in His earthly body, which was the type of His spiritual body, He must suffer no maiming injury. Therefore, my brethren, because Christ lives as a perfect Christ, everyone that is one with Him must live also…Because He lives in perfect happiness, I conceive that all who are dear to Him will be round about Him. It shall not be said that He lost one of them, nor shall one of the family be missing, but:

“All the chosen seed
Shall meet around the throne,
To bless the conduct of His grace,
And make His wonders known.”

~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3401.cfm

 

Debt Free, Praise Jesus!

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, salvation, Sovereignty of God 3 Comments

Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin. – Romans 4:8

You understand that so long as Jesus was here He lay under the charge of our sins. Whilst He was in the world, His Father had made to meet upon Him the iniquity of us all. But when He died, His death discharged all the liabilities of His elect. The handwriting of ordinances that was against us was then taken away. When He went to Calvary as our Surety, the sins of all His people were His debts: He had taken them upon Himself. But when He rose from the dead in the garden He had no debts of ours: He had no longer any substitutional engagement or liability. All the debts which He had taken upon Himself as our Redeemer He had fully and completely discharged. No officer can arrest a man for debt who has none, and Christ now lives, therefore, as a justified person. And,. brethren, no officer of justice can arrest any of the people for whom Christ paid their debts. How, then, shall death have any dominion over those whose debts are all discharged? How shall they be laid in prison for whom Christ was laid in prison? How shall they suffer death, which is the penalty of sin, for whom Christ has already suffered all the penalties which justice could have demanded? Because He lives the life of one who has discharged the debts of His people, they must, in justice, live.

Jesus Christ represents all the people who are in Him, and as long as He lives, they live. He is their Covenant Head. As long as Adam stands, his race shall stand; when Adam falls, the human race falls. While, therefore, Christ lives, the Christly ones, who are in Him, live through His representation. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3401.cfm