Christian Life

A Matter of His Rich Grace

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

In whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace… – Ephesians 1:7

The forgiveness of sin is still a matter of grace, and of rich grace. “We have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace.” I admit that the forgiveness of sins, on God’s part, is a matter of justice, now that the redemption by blood has been completed. The man believes; the man confesses his sin; and it is written, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins.” The sacrifice is so great that it justly puts away the sin, and it is righteously forgiven…Beloved, it is only by grace that we are justified; yet that this grace is exercised in a way of justice causes the grace to be not less, but even manifestly more gracious. The death of Christ, the redemption by blood, instead of veiling the grace of God, only manifests it. Oh, if it be so, that God, the Divine Ruler, the Judge of all the earth, says to guilty man, “I will pardon you, but it is imperative that My law be carried out; and this cannot be done except by the death of My dear Son, who is one with Me, who is very God of very God, who Himself wills to stand in your stead, and vindicate My justice, by suffering the penalty due to you”-then I say that the grace of God is a thousand-fold more clearly shown than by the free forgiveness which “modern thought” pleads for! Pardon which has cost God more than it cost Him to make all worlds-which has cost Him more than to manage all the empires of His providence-which has cost Him His only-begotten Son and has cost that only-begotten Son a life of sorrow and a death of unutterable and immeasurable anguish-I say that this pardon is pre-eminently gracious. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2207.cfm

For Our Soul’s Benefit

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

If sin had been blotted out so readily, and nothing more said of it, what effect would that have had on us in the future? I think that everyone who has felt the burden of sin, and has stood at the foot of the cross, and heard the cries of the great Sacrifice, and read God’s wrath against sin written in crimson lines upon the blessed and perfect person of the innocent Savior-every such person feels that sin is an awful thing. You cannot trifle with transgression after a vision of Gethesmane. You cannot laugh at it, and talk about the littleness of its demerit, if you have once stood on Golgotha, and heard the cry, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” The death of the Son of God upon the cross is the grandest of all moral lessons, because it is a lesson that affects the very soul of the man and changes his whole idea of sin. The cross straightens him from the desperate twist which sin gave him at the first. The cure of the first Adam’s fall is the second Adam’s death-the second Adam’s grace, which comes to us through His great sacrifice. We love sin till we see that it killed our best Friend, and then we loathe it evermore. I say, again, that if the great Father did forgive you, and said, “There is nothing in it; go your way, it is all over;” you would have lacked that grandest source of sanctified life which now you find in the wounds of Him who has made sin detestable to you, and has made perfect obedience, even unto death, the subject of you soul’s admiration. Now you long to be unto the great Father, in your measure, what your great Redeemer was to Him when He magnified the law and made it honorable. This is no mean benefit. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2207.cfm

God’s Justice Paid for Our Pardon

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

In whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins… – Ephesians 1:7

“Redemption through His blood.” Observe, it is not redemption through His power, it is through His blood. It is not redemption through His love, it is through His blood. This is insisted upon emphatically, since in order for the forgiveness of sins it is redemption through His blood, as you have it over and over again in Scripture. “Without shedding of blood is no remission.” But they say-they say-that substitution is not just. They say, “Let God simply forgive the sin, and have done with it.” But where, then, were His justice? “Shall not the Judge of the earth do right?” He threatened sin with punishment. If He does not execute His threatening, what then? Can we be sure that He will fulfill His promise? If He break His word one way might He not break it another? If the Lord should not execute the penalty which He has threatened to sin, would it not look as if He made a mistake in threatening a penalty at all? Would it not seem as if He had been too severe at the first, and then had to catch Himself up, and revise His own judgment afterwards? And shall that be? Might it not be supposed that, after all, God made much ado about nothing, and that He was really jesting with men when He threatened them with fearful punishment on account of sin? Shall God say, “Yea,” and “Nay”? Shall He speak and unspeak? This is according to the folly of man. Sometimes it may even be wisdom in a fallible man to reverse his word and retract his declaration; but with God this cannot be. It is needful for the vindication of His own justice, His wisdom, and His holiness, that He shall not forego one of His threatenings, any more than one of His promises; and, since it is just that sin should be punished, and that, though the sinner should in wondrous mercy be permitted to go free, it is wise and just that Another should step in-God’s own Self should step in-and bear for the sinner what is due to the justice of the Most High. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2207.cfm

Perfect Pardon

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

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

When you know that sin is forgiven, you cannot be sad as before. The thought of perfect pardon, if it does but fill the spirit, will thrust out gloom, and remove apathy. It will make the lame man leap as a hart: he may still be lame, but he will leap as if he were not. And the tongue of the dumb, even though untrained to speech, shall be made to sing concerning free grace and dying love. When the thoughts are concentrated upon the enjoyment of complete forgiveness, full reception into the divine favor, and the blotting out of sin, then is the heart lifted into the suburbs of heaven. My dear hearers, do you know what I am talking about? Some of you do, blessed be the name of the Lord; but I am afraid that some of you do not; and you never can know the sweetness of mercy until you first have tasted the bitterness of sin. You will never know how grace can heal until you have felt how sin can wound. There is no clothing you till you are stripped; there is no making you alive till you are killed; there is no filling you till you are empty. The Lord filleth the hungry with good things, but the rich He sends empty away. God Himself will never comfort you till you are driven to self-despair; and if you have already come to that, it is a great privilege to me to be allowed to tell you that the fact of forgiveness of sin is not only a doctrine of the creed, but it is a promise of God’s Word. “I believe in the forgiveness of sins:” this is no mere formula, but a realized fact with me. Removal of the penalty, removal of God’s offense against us, the clearing away of all the turbid waters within the heart, and the creation of joy and peace through perfect reconciliation to God-this is a summary account of the forgiveness of sin. It is a blessing vast and rich. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2207.cfm

“Thy sins are forgiven thee.”

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

“Thy sins are forgiven thee.” – Luke 5:20

I do not think that there can be any grief outside of hell that is more terrible to bear than the wounds of conscience. We read that “David’s heart smote him”; and, believe me, the heart can smite as with an iron mace, and smite where the bruise is felt intensely. Give me into the power of a roaring lion, but never let me come under the power of an awakened guilty conscience. Ay, shut me up in a dark dungeon, among all manner of loathsome creatures-snakes and reptiles of all kinds-but, oh, give me not over to my own thoughts when I am consciously guilty before God! This, surely, is the worm that dieth not, and the fire that is not quenched. I do not speak now what I have merely heard of; though, if you will read Mr. Bunyan’s “Grace Abounding,” you will find a striking account of it there; but I speak of what I have felt in my own soul. No pains of body can rival, for a moment, the agonized feeling of the heart, when the hot irons of conviction burn their way through the soul. When God sets up the conscience and makes it a target for His arrows, they drink up the life blood of our spirit, till we cry out and wonder how such anguish can come to a creature so insignificant. Our soul seems too small a cup to contain such an ocean of misery-too narrow a field for so cruel a battle. It is not the Lord that is the author of the misery; but He is giving us up for a while, that we may be filled with our own ways and learn the bitterness of our own sin. When the Lord comes to us with a forgiving word these sorrows are gone like the mists of the morning when the sun arises. We grieve still to think that we have sinned; but that gnawing remorse, that vulture eating up the liver, is smitten with death and the man breathes hopefully again. Though the penitence remains, the torment is removed from me, when God has forgiven me. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2207.cfm

His Anger is Turned Away

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

In whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins… – Ephesians 1:7

I believe that the great joy of forgiveness, to the believer, is that God has taken away His anger from him. That sweet hymn, which we often sing, is a paraphrase of a passage in Isaiah-

“I will praise Thee every day,
Now Thine anger’s turned away;
Comfortable thoughts arise
From the bleeding Sacrifice.”

A person has grieved and wronged me. I feel hurt in my mind about it. When I forgive him, I no longer feel grieved or angry with him: I think of him as aforetime, and we are on good terms. If my forgiveness is genuine-and in God’s case it is emphatically so-then there is no resentment left. The offense is as though it had never been committed. I say to the person who did me wrong, “I take a sponge, and I wipe it all off the slate: give me your hand, let us stand as we stood before.” The pardon of sin by God is after such a fashion. He blots out the sin as the Oriental erases with his pencil the record made upon his waxen tablet, so that no trace of it remains. He smiles where else He must have frowned; He gives complacent love where else there must have been indignation and wrath. Do you not think that this is the sweetest way of looking at the forgiveness of sin? In the case of the poor penitent prodigal, it was the kiss of his father’s lip; it was his restoration to his father’s heart; it was the cheering words of his father’s love that constituted to him the sweetest fragrance of the rose of forgiveness. Yes, the Lord Jesus Christ has come, that we poor guilty ones may be restored to the favor of God, and walk consciously in the light of His countenance, because sin is removed. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2207.cfm

In Whom We Have Redemption

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

In whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace… – Ephesians 1:7

Read the chapter (Ephesians 1), and carefully note how the apostle goes to the back of everything and commences with those primeval blessings which were ours before time began. He dwells on the divine love of old, and the predestination which came out of it; and all that blessed purpose of making us holy and without blame before Him in love, which was comprehended in the covenant of grace. It does us good to get back to these antiquities-to these eternal things…”In whom we have redemption.” Whether others have it or not, we have “redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins.” We do not hope for it, but we have it. We do not merely think so, but we know that we have it. We are redeemed; we are free from bondage; we are forgiven and are no longer under condemnation. The apostle has mentioned it, if you notice, amongst the great things of God-His electing love, His adoption of us by Jesus Christ, His acceptance of us in the Beloved. Side by side with these colossal mercies He puts this one, that we have “the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace.” This is a blessing of no mean stature, for it marches with the giants of election and adoption…It would not be possible for God to forgive, and yet to punish. That would be a forgiveness quite unworthy of God. It would, indeed, be no forgiveness at all. We are certain that the everlasting punishment of sin declared in Scripture, will never happen to the man who is forgiven. When transgression is removed the soul stands clear at the bar of God, and there can be no further penalty. “I absolve thee,” says the great Judge; and that carries with it weight, so that a man that is forgiven is cleared of the punishment which he must otherwise have borne. “Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.” “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus.” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2207.cfm