salvation

Oh, That Blessed, Blessed Day!

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

Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust. -2 Peter 1:4

Think, dear brethren and sisters in Christ, how the Lord dealt with us in the days of our unregeneracy. He called us again and again, but we would not go to Him; and the more lovingly He called us, the more resolutely we hardened our hearts, and refused to accept His gracious invitation. With some of us, this refusal lasted for years; and we wonder now that the Lord waited for us so long. If a rich man invites a pauper to a feast, and the poor man is indifferent to the invitation, or positively refuses to accept it, he gets no second invitation, for man does not press his charity upon the needy; but when we even scoffed at our Lord’s call, and made all manner of excuses for not coming to the gospel banquet, He would not take our “No” for an answer, but called, and called, again and again, until last we could hold out no longer, and had to yield to the sweet compulsion of His grace. Do you not remember, beloved, how you received pardon, and justification, and adoption, and the indwelling of the Spirit, and how many “exceeding great and precious promises” were brought to you, like various courses at a royal festival served upon golden dishes adorned with priceless gems? Oh, that blessed, blessed day in which you first came and sat among the guests at the great King’s table! As you look back upon it, your heart glows in grateful remembrance of Christ’s mercy to you, and you cannot help saying, “Behold how He loved us!”~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3228.cfm

Behold How He Loved Us!

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

And He saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no intercessor: therefore His arm brought salvation unto Him; and His righteousness, it sustained Him. -Isaiah 59:16

When did Christ’s love begin to work for us? It was long before we were born, long before the world was created; far, far back, in eternity, our Saviour gave the first proof of His love to us by espousing our cause. By His divine foresight, He looked upon human nature as a palace that had been plundered, and broken down, and in its ruins He perceived the owl, the bittern, the dragon, and all manner of unclean things. Who was there to undertake the great work of restoring that ruined palace? No one but the Word, who was with God, and who was God. “He saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no intercessor: therefore His own arm brought salvation unto Him; and His righteousness, it sustained Him.” Ere the angels began to sing, or the sun, and moon, and stars threw their first beams athwart primeval darkness, Christ espoused the cause of His people, and resolved not only to restore to them all the blessings that He foresaw that they would lose, but also add to them richer favours that could ever have been theirs except through Him.

Jesus Christ, “that great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant,” undertook to redeem and guard the whole flock entrusted to His care, so that when, at the last great muster, they should pass under the hand of Him that telleth them, not one of them should be missing, and the blessed Shepherd-Son should be able to say to His Father, “Those that Thou gavest me I have kept, and not one of them is lost.” It was in the everlasting covenant that our Lord Jesus Christ became our Representative and Surety and engaged on our behalf to fulfill all His Father’s will; and as we think of this great mystery of mercy, surely all of us who are truly His must exclaim with grateful adoration, “Behold how He loved us!”~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3228.cfm

Jesus’ Love for Us; Our Love for Him

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

Then said the Jews, Behold how He loved him! -John 11:36

It was at the grave of Lazarus that Jesus wept, and His grief was so manifest to the onlookers that they said, “Behold how He loved him!” Most of us here, I trust, are not mere onlookers, but we have a share in the special love of Jesus. We see evidences of that love, not in His tears, but in the precious blood that He so freely shed for us; so we ought to marvel even more than those Jews did at the love of Jesus, and to see further into His heart than they did, and to know more of Him than they could in the brief interval in which they had become acquainted with Him. When we think of His love to us, we may well cry, “Behold how He has loved us!”

In these days, we are too apt to repress our emotions…If we were in a right state of mind and heart, we should often say to one another, “How wondrous has the love of Jesus been to us!” Our conversation with one another, as brethren and sisters in Christ, would often be upon this blessed subject. We waste far too much of our time upon trifles, it would be well if the love of Jesus so engrossed our thoughts that it engrossed our conversation too… If we were as we should be, one would frequently say to another, “How great is Christ’s love to me, my brother! Dost thou also say that it is great to thee?”

Beloved, remember that, when our love has reached its climax, it can only be like a solitary dewdrop trembling on a leaf compared with the copious showers of love that pour continually from the heart of our dear Lord and Master…May the Holy Spirit fill our souls to the brim with love to Jesus, for His dear name’s sake! Amen.~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3228.cfm

The Gift of God

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, salvation, Sovereignty of God 10 Comments

For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God -Ephesians 2:8

We say, “nothing is freer than a gift”. Salvation is so purely, so absolutely a gift of God, that nothing can be more free. God gives it because He chooses to give it, according to that grand text which has made many a man bite his lip in wrath, “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.” You are all guilty and condemned, and the great King pardons whom He wills from among you. This is His royal prerogative. He saves in infinite sovereignty of grace.

When a man pays another his wage, he does what is right; and no one dreams of belauding him for it. But we praise God for salvation because it is not the payment of debt, but the gift of grace. No man enters eternal life on earth, or in heaven, as his due: it is the gift of God. Salvation is the gift of God: that is to say completely so, in opposition to the notion of growth. Salvation is not a natural production from within: it is brought from a foreign zone, and planted within the heart by heavenly hands. Salvation is in its entirety a gift from God. If thou wilt have it, there it is, complete. Wilt thou have it as a perfect gift? “No; I will produce it in my own workshop.” Thou canst not forge a work so rare and costly, upon which even Jesus spent His life’s blood. Here is a garment without seam, woven from the top throughout. It will cover thee and make thee glorious. Wilt thou have it? “No; I will sit at the loom, and I will weave a raiment of my own!” Proud fool that thou art! Thou spinnest cobwebs. Thou weavest a dream. Oh! that thou wouldst freely take what Christ upon the cross declared to be finished. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3479.cfm

The Cause of Our Turning to Christ

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

And you hath He quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins – Ephesians 2:1

A man ought to believe in Jesus: it is his duty to receive Him whom God has set forth to be a propitiation for sins. But man will not believe in Jesus; he prefers anything to faith in his Redeemer. Unless the Spirit of God convinces the judgment, and constrains the will, man has no heart to believe in Jesus unto eternal life. I ask any saved man to look back upon his own conversion, and explain how it came about. You turned to Christ, and believed in His name: these were your own acts and deeds. But what caused you thus to turn? What sacred force was that which turned you from sin to righteousness? Do you attribute this singular renewal to the existence of a something better in you than has been yet discovered in your unconverted neighbour? No, you confess that you might have been what he now is if it had not been that there was a potent something which touched the spring of your will, enlightened your understanding, and guided you to the foot of the cross. Gratefully we confess the fact; it must be so. Salvation by grace, through faith, is not of ourselves, and none of us would dream of taking any honour to ourselves from our conversion, or from any gracious effect which has flowed from the first divine cause.

If my Lord Jesus gives you salvation at this moment, you have it, and you have it forever. He will never take it back again; and if He does not take it from you, who can? If He saves you now through faith, you are saved-so saved that you shall never perish, neither shall any pluck you out of His hand. May it be so with every one of us! Amen. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3479.cfm

Grace Kills and Makes Alive

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

But God, who is rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;) and hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus: -Ephesians 2:4-6

No unregenerate person has lived so well that God is bound to give him further grace, and to bestow on him eternal life; else it were no longer of grace, but of debt. Salvation is given to us, not earned by us. Our first life is always a wandering away from God, and our new life of return to God is always a work of undeserved mercy, wrought upon those who greatly need, but never deserve it.

Salvation comes from above; it is never evolved from within. Can eternal life be evolved from the bare ribs of death? Some dare to tell us that faith in Christ, and the new birth, are only the development of good things that lay hidden in us by nature; but in this, like their father, they speak of their own. Sirs, if an heir of wrath is left to be developed, he will become more and more fit for the place prepared for the devil and his angels! You may take the unregenerate man, and educate him to the highest; but he remains, and must forever remain, dead in sin, unless a higher power shall come in and save him from himself. Grace brings into the heart an entirely foreign element. It does not improve and perpetuate; it kills and makes alive.

We are bound to view salvation as being as surely a divine act as creation, or providence, or resurrection. At every point of the process of salvation this word is appropriate-“not of yourselves.” From the first desire after it to the full reception of it by faith, it is evermore of the Lord alone, and not of ourselves. The man believes, but that belief is only one result among many of the implantation of divine life within the man’s soul by God Himself. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3479.cfm

By Faith, Not Feelings

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

But we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead – 2 Corinthians 1:9

You cannot lay hold upon salvation by grace through your feelings. The hand of faith is constructed for the grasping of a present salvation by grace. But feeling is not adapted for that end. If you go about to say, “I must feel that I am saved. I must feel so much sorrow and so much joy or else I will not admit that I am saved,” you will find that this method will not answer. As well might you hope to see with your ear, or taste with your eye, or hear with your nose, as to believe by feeling: it is the wrong organ. After you have believed, you can enjoy salvation by feeling its heavenly influences; but to dream of getting a grasp of it by your own feelings is as foolish as to attempt to bear away the sunlight in the palm of your hand, or the breath of heaven between the lashes of your eyes. There is an essential absurdity in the whole affair.

Moreover, the evidence yielded by feeling is singularly fickle. When your feelings are peaceful and delightful, they are soon broken in upon, and become restless and melancholy…Faith receives the statement of God concerning His way of gracious pardon, and thus it brings salvation to the man believing; but feeling, warming under passionate appeals, yielding itself deliriously to a hope which it dares not examine, whirling round and round in a sort of dervish dance of excitement which has become necessary for its own sustaining, is all on a stir, like the troubled sea which cannot rest… The salvation, and the faith, and the whole gracious work together, are not of ourselves. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3479.cfm