Christian Life

Even Now…Today!..Justified

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

He that believeth on Him is not condemned – John 3:18

You are aware that in our courts of law, a verdict of “not guilty,” amounts to an acquittal, and the prisoner is immediately discharged. So is it in the language of the gospel; a sentence of “not condemned,” implies the justification of the sinner. It means that the believer in Christ receives now a present justification. Faith does not produce its fruits by-and-by, but now. So far as justification is the result of faith, it is given to the soul in the moment when it closes with Christ, and accepts Him as its all in all. Are they who stand before the throne of God justified to-night?-so are we, as truly and as clearly justified as they who walk in white and sing His praises above. The thief upon the cross was justified the moment that he turned the eye of faith to Jesus, who was just then, hanging by his side: and Paul, the aged, after years of service, was not more justified than was the thief with no service at all. We are today accepted in the Beloved, today absolved from sin, today innocent in the sight of God. Oh, ravishing, soul-transporting thought! There are some clusters of this vine which we shall not be able to gather till we go to heaven; but this is one of the first ripe clusters and may be plucked and eaten here. This is not as the corn of the land, which we can never eat till we cross the Jordan; but this is part of the manna in the wilderness, and part too of our daily raiment, with which God supplies us in our journeying to and fro. We are now-even now pardoned; even now are our sins put away; even now we stand in the sight of God as though we had never been guilty; innocent as father Adam when he stood in integrity, ere he had eaten of the fruit of the forbidden tree; pure as though we had never received the taint of depravity in our veins. “There is, therefore, now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus.” There is not a sin in the Book of God, even now, against one of His people. There is nothing laid to their charge. There is neither speck, nor spot, nor wrinkle, nor any such thing remaining upon any one believer in the matter of justification in the sight of the Judge of all the earth.~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0362.cfm

 

Pure in God’s Sight

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

He will turn again, He will have compassion upon us; He will subdue our iniquities; and Thou wilt cast all their sins into the depths of the sea. – Micah 7:19

As soon as a man believeth in Christ Jesus, his sins are gone from him, and gone away for ever. They are blotted out now. What if a man owe a hundred pounds, yet if he has got a receipt for it, he is free; it is blotted out; there is an erasure made in the book, and the debt is gone. Though the man commit sin, yet the debt having been paid before even the debt was acquired, he is no more a debtor to the law of God. Doth not Scripture say, that God has cast His people’s sins into the depths of the sea? Now, if they are in the depths of the sea, they cannot be on His people too. Blessed be His name, in the day when He casts our sins into the depth of the sea, He views us as pure in His sight, and we stand accepted in the Beloved. Then He says, “As far as the east is from the west, so far hath He removed our transgressions from us.” They cannot be removed and be here still. Then if thou believest in Christ, thou art no more in the sight of God a sinner; thou art accepted as though thou wert perfect, as though thou hadst kept the law for Christ has kept it, and His righteousness is thine. You have broken it, but your sin is His, and He has been punished for it. Mistake not yourselves any longer; you are no more what you were; when you believe, you stand in Christ’s stead, even as Christ of old stood in your stead. The transformation is complete, the exchange is positive and eternal. They who believe in Jesus are as much accepted of God the Father as even His Eternal Son is accepted; and they that believe not, let them do what they will, they shall but go about to work out their own righteousness; but they abide under the law, and still shall they be under the curse. Now, ye that believe in Jesus, walk up and down the earth in the glory of this great truth. You are sinners in yourselves, but you are washed in the blood of Christ.~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0361.cfm

Refuse Not the Invitation, Sinner

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

He that believeth on Him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. – John 3:18

What is a man’s warrant then for believing in Christ. Here it is. Christ tells him to do it, that is his warrant. Christ’s word is the warrant of the sinner for believing in Christ-not what he feels nor what he is, nor what he is not, but that Christ has told him to do it. The Gospel runs thus: “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. He that believeth not shall be damned.” Faith in Christ then is a commanded duty as well as a blessed privilege, and what a mercy it is that it is a duty because there never can be any question but that a man has a right to do his duty…Now it is a command of God given to every creature that he should believe on Jesus Christ whom God hath sent. This is your warrant, sinner, and a blessed warrant it is, for it is one which hell cannot gainsay, and which heaven cannot withdraw…Now I need not say I am not fit to come for I am commanded to come, and I am threatened if I do not come, and I will even go.” That awful sentence-“He that believeth not shall be damned,” was added not out of anger, but because the Lord knew our silly madness, and that we should refuse our own mercies unless He thundered at us to make us come to the feast, “Compel them to come in”; this was the Word of the Master of old, and that text is part of the carrying out of that exhortation, “Compel them to come in.” Sinner, you cannot be lost by trusting Christ, but you will be lost if you do not trust Him, ay, and lost for not trusting Him. I put it boldly now-sinner, not only may you come, but oh! I pray you, do not defy the wrath of God by refusing to come. The gate of mercy stands wide open; why will you not come? Why will you not? Why so proud? Why will you still refuse His voice and perish in your sins? ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0361.cfm

Just “Sinners”

Sherry Christian Life 5 Comments

This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners – 1 Timothy 1:15

Mr. Roger, Mr. Sheppard, Mr. Flavel, and several excellent divines, in the Puritanic age, and especially Richard Baxter, used to give descriptions of what a man must feel before he may dare to come to Christ. Now, I say in the language of good Mr. Fenner, another of those divines, who said he was “but a babe in grace when compared with them”- I dare to say it, that all this is not Scriptural. Sinners do feel these things before they come, but they do not come on the ground of having felt it; they come on the ground of being sinners, and on no other ground whatever. The gate of Mercy is opened, and over the door it is written, “This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.” Between that word “save” and the next word “sinners,” there is no adjective. It does not say, “penitent sinners,” “awakened sinners,” “sensible sinners,” “grieving sinners,” or “alarmed sinners.” No, it only says, “sinners,” and I know this, that when I come, I come to Christ to-day (for I feel it is as much a necessity of my life to come to the cross of Christ to-day as it was to come ten years ago), and when I come to Him I dare not come as a conscious sinner or an awakened sinner, but I have to come still as a sinner with nothing in my hands. I saw an aged man this week in the vestry of a chapel in Yorkshire. I had been saying something to this effect. The old man had been a Christian for years, and he said, “I never saw it put exactly so, but still I know that is just the way I come. I say, ‘Lord,

‘Nothing in my hands I bring,
Simply to Thy cross I cling;
Naked, look to Thee for dress;
Helpless, come to Thee for grace;
Black’-
(“Black enough,” said the old man)
‘I to the fountain fly,
Wash me, Saviour, or I die.'”

~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0361.cfm

The Most Daring Feat in All the World

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

Wherefore He is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by Him… – Hebrews 7:25

Faith is not to infer from something good within me that I shall be saved, but to say in the teeth, and despite of the fact, that I am guilty in the sight of God and deserve His wrath, yet I do, nevertheless, believe that the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth me from all sin; and though my present consciousness condemns me, yet my faith overpowers my consciousness, and I do believe that “He is able to save to the uttermost them that come unto God by Him.” To come to Christ as a saint is very easy work; to trust to a doctor to cure you when you believe you are getting better, is very easy; but to trust your physician when you feel as if the sentence of death were in your body, to bear up when the disease is rising into the very skin, and when the ulcer is gathering its venom-to believe even then in the efficacy of the medicine-that is faith. And so, when sin gets the mastery of thee, when thou feelest that the law condemns thee, then, even then, as a sinner, to trust Christ, this is the most daring feat in all the world; and the faith which shook down the walls of Jericho, the faith which raised the dead, the faith which stopped the mouths of lions, was not greater than that of a poor sinner, when in the teeth of all his sins he dares to trust the blood and righteousness of Jesus Christ. Do this, soul, then thou are saved, whosoever thou mayest be. The object of faith, then, is Christ as the substitute for sinners. God in Christ, but not God apart from Christ, nor any work of the Spirit, but the work of Jesus only must be viewed by you as the foundation of your hope.! C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0361.cfm

Trust in Your Substitute

Sherry Christian Life Leave a comment

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

God is just, He must punish sin; God is merciful, He wills to pardon those who believe in Jesus. How is this to be done? How can He be just and exact the penalty,-merciful, and accept the sinner? He doeth it thus: He taketh the sins of His people and actually lifteth them up from off His people onto Christ, so that they stand as innocent as though they had never sinned, and Christ is looked upon by God as though He had been all the sinners in the world rolled into one…Then God came forth with His fiery sword to meet the sinner and to punish him. He met Christ. Christ was not a sinner Himself; but the sins of His people were all imputed to Him. Justice, therefore, met Christ as though He had been the sinner-punished Christ for His people’s sins-punished Him as far as its rights could go,-exacted from Him the last atom of the penalty, and left not a dreg in the cup. And now, he who can see Christ as being his substitute, and puts his trust in Him, is thereby delivered from the curse of the law. Soul, when thou seest Christ obeying the law-thy faith is to say, “He obeys that for His people.” When thou seest Him dying, thou art to count the purple drops, and say, “Thus He took my sins away.” When thou seest Him rising from the dead, thou art to say-“He rises as the head and representative of all His elect”; and when thou seest Him sitting at the right hand of God, thou art to view Him there as the pledge that all for whom He died shall most surely sit at the Father’s right hand. Learn to look on Christ as being in God’s sight as though He were the sinner. “In Him was no sin.” He was “the just,” but He suffered for the unjust. He was the righteous, but He stood in the place of the unrighteous; and all that the unrighteous ought to have endured, Christ has endured once for all, and put away their sins forever by the sacrifice of Himself…View Christ, by your faith, as being in His life, and death, and sufferings, and resurrection, the substitute for all whom His Father gave Him,-the vicarious sacrifice for the sins of all those who will trust Him with their souls. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0361.cfm

The Sinner’s Business

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

For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. – John 3:16

Christians have to trust the Spirit after conversion, but the sinner’s business, if he would be saved, is not with trusting the Spirit nor with looking to the Spirit, but looking to Christ Jesus, and to Him alone…When thou hast thus believed, believe in Him as man. Believe the wondrous story of his incarnation; rely upon the testimony of the evangelists, who declare that the Infinite was robed in the infant, that the Eternal was concealed within the mortal; that He who was King of heaven became a servant of servants and the Son of man…Then, specially, if thou wouldst be saved, let thy faith behold Christ in His perfect righteousness. See Him keeping the law without blemish, obeying His Father without error; preserving His integrity without flaw. All this thou are to consider as being done on thy behalf. Thou couldst not keep the law; He kept it for thee. Thou couldst not obey God perfectly-lo! His obedience standeth in the stead of thy obedience-by it, thou art saved…Believe on Him, then, who on yonder tree with nailed hands and feet pours out His life for sinners. There is the object of thy faith for justification; not in thyself, nor in anything which the Holy Spirit has done in thee, or anything He has promised to do for thee; but thou art to look to Christ and to Christ alone. Then let thy faith behold Christ as rising from the dead. See Him-He has borne the curse, and now He receives the justification. He dies to pay the debt; He rises that He may nail the handwriting of that discharged debt to the cross. See Him ascending up on high, and behold Him this day pleading before the Father’s throne. He is there pleading for His people, offering up today His authoritative petition for all that come to God by Him. And He, as God, as man, as living, as dying, as rising, and as reigning above,-He, and He alone, is to be the object of thy faith for the pardon of sin.~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0361.cfm