salvation

God is a Just God

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, salvation 4 Comments

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. -1John 1:9

When the soul is seriously impressed with the conviction of its guilt, when terror and alarm get hold upon it concerning the inevitable consequences of its sin, the soul is afraid of God. It dreads at that time every attribute of divinity. But most of all the sinner is afraid of God’s justice. “Ah,” saith he to himself, “God is a just God; and if so, how can He pardon my sins? for my iniquities cry aloud for punishment, and my transgressions demand that His right hand should smite me low. How can I be saved? Were God unjust, He might forgive: but, alas! He is not so, He is severely just. ‘He layeth justice to the line, and righteousness to the plummet.’ He is the judge of all the earth, and He must do right. How then can I escape from His righteous wrath which must be stirred up against me?”…It is true that God is just…let hell’s bottomless lake declare what is the awful vengeance of God against the sins of man. Let the sighs, and groans, and moans, and shrieks of spirits condemned of God, rise in your ears, and bear witness that He is a God who will not spare the guilty, who will not wink at iniquity, transgression, and sin, but who will have vengeance upon every rebel, and will give justice its full satisfaction for every offence.

Wonder ye heavens! be astonished O earth! that very justice which stood in the sinner’s way and prevented his being pardoned, has been by the gospel of Christ appeased; by the rich atonement offered upon Calvary, justice is satisfied, has sheathed its sword, and has now not a word to say against the pardon of the penitent. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0255.cfm

Turn Unto Me and Live

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

Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. -Matthew 11:28

Come, poor sinner, come and put thy trust in my Master! Thou canst not think Him hard-hearted. If He were, why did He die? Dost thou think Him unkind? Then why did He bleed? Thou art inclined to think so hardly of Him! Thou art making great cuts at His heart when thou thinkest Him to be untender and ungenerous. “As I live, saith the Lord, I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth, but rather that he would turn unto Me and live.” This is the voice of the God whom you look upon as so sternly just!..You working men, you labouring men, Christ bids you come to Him “all ye that labour.” And you who are unhappy, you who know you have done wrong, and cannot sleep at night because of it; you who are troubled about sin, and would fain go and hide your heads, and get- “Anywhere, anywhere out of the world,”-your Father says to you one and all, “Run not from Me, but come to Me, My child!” Jesus, who died, says, “Flee not from Me, but come to Me, for I will accept you; I will receive you; I cast out none that come unto Me. “Sinner, Jesus never did reject a coming soul yet, and He never will. Oh! try Him! Try Him! Now come, with thy sins about thee just as thou art, to the bleeding, dying Saviour, and He will say to thee, “I have blotted out thy sins; go and sin no more; I have forgiven thee.” May God grant thee grace to put thy trust in Him “who gave Himself for us”! ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3513.cfm

This Unfathomed Sea

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

Who gave Himself for us…Titus 2:14

Mark, brethren, what a richness there is here! It is not that He gave His righteousness, though that has become our dress. It is not even that He gave His blood, though that is the fount in which we wash. It is that He gave Himself-His Godhead and manhood both combined. All that that word “Christ” means He came to us and for us. He gave Himself. Oh! that we could dive and plunge into this unfathomed sea Himself! Omnipotence, Omniscience, Infinity-Himself. He gave Himself-purity, love, kindness, meekness, gentleness-that wonderful compound of all perfections, to make up one perfection-Himself. You do not come to Christ’s house and say, “He gives me this house, His church, to dwell in.” You do not come to His table and merely say, “He gives me this table to feast at,” but you go farther, and you take Him by faith into your arms, and you say, “Who loved me, and gave Himself for me.” Oh! that you could get hold of that sweet word-Himself! It is the love of a husband to his wife, who not only gives her all that she can wish, daily food and raiment, and all the comforts that can nourish and cherish her, and make her life glad, but who gives himself to her. So does Jesus. The body and soul of Jesus, the deity of Jesus, and all that that means, He has been pleased to give to and for His people.

“So strange, so boundless was the love,
Which pitied dying man;
The Father sent His equal Son
To give them life again.”

‘Twas all of love and of grace! ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3513.cfm

Love Beyond an Angel’s Dream

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

What is man that You are mindful of him, or the son of man that You take care of him? – Hebrews 2:6

Ah! friends, we might have been blotted out of existence, and I do not know that there would have been any lack in God’s universe if the whole race of man had disappeared. That universe is too wide and great to miss such chirping grasshoppers as we are. When one star is blotted out it may make a little difference to our midnight sky, but to an eye that sees immensity it can make no change. Know ye not that this little solar system, which we think so vast, and those distant fixed stars, and yon mighty masses of nebulae, if such they be, and yonder streaming comet, with its stupendous walk of grandeur-all these are only like a little corner in the field of God’s great works? He taketh them all up as nothing, and considereth them mighty as they be, and beyond all human conception great-to be but the small dust of the balance which does not turn the scale; and if they were all gone to-morrow there would be no more loss than as if a few grains of dust were thrown to the summer’s wind.

But God Himself must stoop, rather than we should die. Oh! what magnificence of love! And the more so because there was no need for it. In the course of nature God would have been as holy and as heavenly without us as He is with us, and the pomp of yonder skies would have been as illustrious had we been dashed into the flames of hell as it will be now. God hath gained nought, except the manifestation of a love beyond an angel’s dream; a grace, the heights, and depths, and lengths, and breadths of which surpass all knowledge of all creatures. God only knows the love of God which is manifested in Jesus Christ. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3513.cfm

Unpurchaseable

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

Remember the words of Scripture,

Scarcely for a righteous man will one die; peradventure, for a good, a generous man, one might even dare to die; but God commendeth his love towards us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for the ungodly. -Romans 5:7-8

He gave Himself. We cannot purchase the love of God. This highest expression of divine love, the gift of His own Son, was, in the nature of things, unpurchaseable. What could we have offered that God should come into this world, and be found in fashion as a man, and should die? Why, the works of all the angels in heaven put together could not have deserved one pang from Christ. If for ever the angels had continued their ceaseless songs, and if all men had remained faithful, and could have heaped up their pile of merit to add to that of the angels, and if all the creatures that ever were, or ever shall be, could each bring in their golden hemp of merit-yet could they ever deserve His cross? Could they deserve that the Son of God should hang bleeding and dying there? Impossible! It must be a gift, for it was utterly unpurchaseable; though all worlds were coined and minted, yet could they not have purchased a tear from the Redeemer; they were not worth it. It must be grace; it cannot be merit; He gave Himself.

And the gift is so thoroughly a gift that no prep of any kind was brought to bear upon the Saviour. There was no necessity that He should die, except the necessity of His loving us. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3513.cfm

He Gave Himself for Us

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

…the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ; Who gave Himself for us… -Titus 2:13-14

Who is this that is spoken of? and the text gives the answer. It is “the great God and our Saviour, Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for us.” We had offended God; the dignity of divine justice demanded that offenses against so good and just a law as that which God had promulgated should not be allowed to go unpunished. But the attribute of justice is not the only one in the heart of God. God is love, and is, therefore, full Of mercy. Yet, nevertheless, He never permits one quality of His Godhead to triumph over another. He could not be too merciful, and so become unjust; He would not permit mercy to put justice to an eclipse. The difficulty was solved thus: God Himself stooped from His loftiness and veiled His glory in a garb of our inferior clay. The Word-that same Word without whom was not anything made that was made-became flesh, and dwelt amongst us; and His apostles, His friends, and His enemies, beheld Him-the seed of the woman, but yet the Son of God, very God of very God, in all the majesty of deity, and yet man of the substance of His mother in all the weakness of our humanity, sin being the only thing which separated us from Him, He being without sin, and we being full of it. It is, then, God, who “gave Himself for us”; it is, then, man, who gave Himself for us. It is Jesus Christ, co-equal and co-eternal with the Father, who thought it not robbery to be equal with God; who made Himself of no reputation, and took upon Himself the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of sinful flesh, and, being found in fashion as a man, humbled Himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. It is Christ Jesus, the man, the God, “who gave Himself for us.” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3513.cfm

The Soul is Precious

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

For you know that it was not with perishable things like silver or gold that you have been ransomed from the worthless way of life handed down to you by your ancestors -1Peter 1:18

You may tell how serious it is to lose the soul, from its intrinsic value. The soul is a thing worth ten thousand worlds; in fact, a thing which worlds on worlds heaped together, like sand upon the sea shore, could not buy. It is more precious than if the ocean had each drop of itself turned into a golden globe, for all that wealth could not buy a soul. Consider! The soul is made in the image of its Maker; “God made man,” it is said, “in His own image.” The soul is an everlasting thing like God; God has gifted it with immortality; and hence it is precious. To lose it, then, how fearful! Consider how precious a soul must be, when both God and the devil are after it. You never heard that the devil was after a kingdom, did you? No, he is not so foolish; he knows it would not be worth his winning; he is never after that; but he is always after souls. You never heard that God was seeking after a crown, did you! No, He thinketh little of dominions; but He is after souls every day; His Holy Spirit is seeking His children; and Christ came to save souls. Do you think that which hell craves for, and that which God seeks for, is not precious?

The soul is precious again, we know, by the price Christ paid for it. “Not with silver and gold,” but with His own flesh and blood did He redeem it. Ah! it must be precious, if He gave His heart’s core to purchase it. What must it be to lose your soul?..Oh! sirs, because the soul is capable of heaven, its loss is a dreadful and terrific thing. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0092.cfm