Christian Life

Faith in Christ is the Witness of Divine Life

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

He that hath the Son hath life… – 1 John 5:12

Having the Son is not only the source of life, but the result of life. When the great doors were opened of the Black Hole in Calcutta, and the pure air went streaming in, there were many lungs which did not receive that air, for the simple reason that the most of those who had been so barbarously confined were dead, and to them the fresh oxygen had come too late; but there were a few which gladly and at once received the breath of heaven, and such as were still alive walked forth from amidst the corpses into the open air. Now, when a man receives Jesus into his soul as life from the dead, his faith is the sure indicator of a spiritual and mysterious life within him, in the power of which he is able to receive the Lord. Jesus is freely preached to you, His grace is free as the air, but the dead do not breathe that air-those who breathe it are, beyond all doubt, alive. Christ is presented to you in the preaching of the gospel as freely as the water from the drinking fountain at the corner of the street; but the dead man drinketh not, his lips care not for the flowing crystal; he who drinks is evidently alive. The reception of Jesus Christ is the sure result of a heavenly life palpitating within the soul Thus you see the evidence is good, from several points of the compass; looking at the soul’s business from several ways, faith still becomes with equal clearness a witness that the man who has it possesses the divine life within him.  “I do not know,” says one, “when I was converted.” My dear friend, have you the Son of God? Do you trust in Jesus Christ? That is quite enough. If thou canst from the heart say, “I trust Jesus Christ,” though thou hast no spiritual biography worth recording, thou hast life. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0755.cfm

The Consequences

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, salvation, Sovereignty of God, The Holy Spirit Leave a comment

And this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. – 1 John 5:11

The consequences of receiving Christ are good evidences of heavenly life; for when a man receives the Son of God, he obtains a measure of peace and joy; and peace with God and joy in the Holy Ghost are not to be found in the sepulchres of dead souls. When Ezekiel saw the dry bones in the valley, I do not find that any of them were singing for joy of heart, or silently musing in unutterable thankfulness. There was a sort of peace in the valley, the horrible repose of death, the grim silence of the grave; but living, sparkling peace, flowing like a river, those dry bones could not know. Job says of the hypocrite, “Will he delight himself in the Almighty?” Joy in God is too wonderful a work of God for mere professors to forge a passable counterfeit of it. Artificial flowers may be very like the real beauties of the garden, but they lack the joyous perfume and honeyed stores of life, and the bees soon find out the difference: the honey juice and the delicate aroma are not to be matched. The like might be said of all the results of faith, which are far too numerous for me to speak of them in detail, such as purging the conscience from dead works, enlightenment by the Spirit, godly fear, the spirit of adoption, brotherly love, separation from the world, the consecration of life, holy gratitude which mounts like flame to heaven, and sacred affection which ascends like altar-smoke-none of these can be found in the charnel-house of fallen humanity; they can only be discovered in the house of life, where God worketh according to His good pleasure. He that hath the Son, it is clear, has life, because the act by which he lays hold upon the Son of God, the concomitants of that act, and the consequences of that act, all infallibly betoken the possession of life eternal. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0755.cfm

Evidences of Eternal Life

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

He that hath the Son hath life… – 1 John 5:12

Faith in Jesus is good evidence of life, because of the things, which accompany it. Now, no man ever did come to Jesus Christ and receive Him until he had felt his need of a Saviour: no sickness, no physician: no wound, no surgeon. No soul asks for pardon or obtains it till he has felt that sin is an evil for which pardon is necessary; that is to say, repentance always comes with faith. There must be a loathing of sin and a dread of its consequences, or there is no faith. Now, as repentance is an evident sign of life, faith in Jesus must involve spiritual life. What if I say that repentance is like the cry of the new-born babe, which indicates that the child is alive? That cry of “God be merciful to me a sinner!” is as sure a sign of life as the song of cherubim before the throne. There could have been no laying hold of Christ without true repentance of sin, which repentance becomes in its turn a clear proof of the possession of the inner life which springs from incorruptible seed, and therefore liveth and abideth for ever.

No soul believes in Jesus Christ without exercising its faith and its desires in prayer; but prayer is the breath of the soul, and where there is breath there must be life. Can the dead pray unto God? Shall a dead soul cry out for mercy? …He that hath an interest in the Lord Jesus, since his faith is attended by repentance and prayer, and many other holy graces, has a multitude of sure and certain evidences of eternal life within the soul. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0755.cfm

A Living Act

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

And this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He that hath the Son hath life… – 1 John 5:11,12

Whoever in this world possesses Christ by faith is most certainly alive unto God by a life eternal. I shall remark that having the Son is good evidence of eternal life, from the fact that faith by which a man receives Christ is in itself a living act. Faith is the hand of the soul, but a dead man cannot stretch out his icy limbs to take of that which is presented to him. If I, as a guilty, needy sinner, with my empty hand receive the fullness of Christ, I have performed a living act; the hand may quiver with weakness, but life is there. Faith is the eye of the soul, by which the sin-bitten sinner looks to Christ, lifted up as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness; but from forth the stony eyes of death no glance of faith can dart. There may be all the organization by which it should look, but if life be absent the eye cannot see. If, therefore, my eye of faith has looked alone to Jesus, and I depend upon Him, I must be a living soul, that act has proved me to be alive unto God. Looking to Jesus is a very simple act, indeed, it is a childlike act, but still, it is a living one: no sight gleams from the eyeballs of death. Faith, again, is the mouth of the soul; by faith we feed upon Christ. Jesus Christ is digested and inwardly assimilated, so that our soul lives upon Him; but a dead man cannot eat. Whoever heard of carcasses gathering to a banquet? There may be the mouth, the teeth, and the palate, and so forth, the organization may be perfect, but the dead man neither tastes the sweet nor relishes the delicious. If then, I have received Christ Jesus as the bread, which came down from heaven, as the spiritual drink from the rock, I have performed an action which is in itself clear evidence that I belong to the living in Zion. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0755.cfm

Life Spiritual, Life Eternal

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, salvation, Sovereignty of God, The Father, The Holy Spirit Leave a comment

He that hath the Son hath life… – 1 John 5:12

Our text testifies that “He that hath the Son hath life.” Of course, by “life” here is meant not mere existence, or natural life; for we all have that whether we have the Son of God or no-in the image of the first Adam we are all created living souls, and continue in life until the Lord recalls the breath from our nostrils-but the life here intended is spiritual life, the life received at the new birth, by which we perceive and enter into the heavenly kingdom, come under new and spiritual laws, are moved by new motives, and exist in a new world. The life here meant is the life of God in the soul, which is given us when we are newly created in the image of the second Adam, who was made a quickening spirit; a celestial form of life inwardly perceptible to the person who possesses it, and outwardly discernible to spiritual observers by its holy effects and heavenly fruits. This spiritual life is the sure mark of deliverance from the penal death which the sentence of the law pronounced. Man under the law is condemned, sentence of death is recorded against him; but man under grace is free from the law, and is not adjudged to death, but lives by virtue of a legal justification, which absolves him from guilt, and consequently liberates him from death. These two kinds of life, the life which is given by the judge to the offender when he is pardoned, and the life which is imparted from the divine Father, the heir of heaven is begotten again unto a lively hope-these two lives blend together and ensure for us the life eternal, such as they possess who stand upon the “sea of glass,” and tune their tongues to the music of celestial hosts. Eternal life is spiritual life made perfect. If we live by virtue of our pardon and justification, and if, moreover, we live because we are quickened by the Holy Spirit, we shall also live in the glory of the eternal Father, being made in the likeness of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the true God and eternal life. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0755.cfm

The Work of Christ for the Sinner

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, salvation, The Holy Spirit 1 Comment

And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have eternal life. – John 3:14,15

Our Lord began, in the third chapter of John’s gospel, by telling Nicodemus that he must be born again, and explaining to him the mysterious character of the new birth. Whereupon Nicodemus was filled with wonder, and unbelievingly exclaimed, “How can these things be?” He does not seem to have made the smallest advance towards faith by hearing of the new birth, and therefore on the selfsame occasion our Lord turned aside from the doctrine of regeneration, the inner work, to speak to him of the doctrine of faith, or the work of Christ, which is the object of saving faith. Thus it comes to pass that the very same chapter which has in it that searching passage, “Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God,” contains also these encouraging words, “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.” …If we can with all boldness and distinctness declare the inward work which the Holy Ghost accomplishes in the soul by working in us to will and to do of God’s good pleasure, and at the same time can tell the sinner most plainly that the object of his faith is not the work within, but the work which Jesus Christ accomplished upon the cross for him, we shall have dealt faithfully with divine truth, and wisely with our hearer’s soul. The faith which brings salvation, looks away from everything that is inward to that which was accomplished and completed by our once slain but now ascended Lord; and yet no man has this faith except as it is wrought in him by the quickening Spirit. If we can preach both these truths in harmonious proportion, it seems to me that we shall have hit upon that form of Christian teaching which, while it is consistent with truth, is also healthful to the soul. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0755.cfm

The Holy Spirit Lightens

Sherry Attributes of God, Christian Life, prayer, promises, The Holy Spirit 1 Comment

But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you. – John 14:26

There is one blessed person of the divine Unity who makes it His especial office to teach us. If you go to God for wisdom, you only go for that which it is His nature and His office to give. The Holy Ghost is given to this end: “He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.” When you go to God, you may say to Him these words, “O Father, you have been pleased to reveal to us the Holy Spirit, who is to lighten our darkness, and to remove our ignorance. Oh, let that Spirit of Thine dwell in me; I am willing to be taught by Thy Spirit, through Thy Word, or through Thy ministers, but I come first to Thee because I know that Thy Word and Thy ministers, apart from Thyself, cannot teach me anything. O Lord, teach Thou me.” I do not mean by any word of mine to make you think little of Scripture-God forbid! -nor little of those who may speak to you with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven, but I did mean to make you look even at that Book, and at God’s ministers, as being subservient to the Holy Ghost Himself. Go to Him; ask Him: for there in the Book is the letter that killeth; He, He alone can make you to know the living essence and the quickening power of that Word. Without the Holy Ghost, my dear hearer, you must still be as blind with the light as you would have been without it. You will be as foolish after having been taught the gospel in the theory of it, as you were before you knew it. Let the Holy Spirit, however, teach you, and you shall know all things that are necessary for this life and godliness. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0735.cfm