salvation

When Love and Sorrow Met

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, promises, salvation 3 Comments

For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son… – Romans 5:10

Consider the circumstances which attended (Christ’s) death. It was no common death He died; it was a death of ignominy, for He was put to death by a legal slaughter; it was a death of unutterable pain, for He was crucified; and what more painful fate than to die nailed to a cross? It was a long protracted death, for He hung for hours, with only His hands and His feet pierced-parts which are far away from the seat of life, but in which are situated the most tender nerves, full of sensibility. He suffered a death which for its circumstances still remain unparalleled. It was no speedy blow which crushed the life out of the body, and ended it; but it was a lingering, long, and doleful death, attended with no comforts and no sympathy, but surrounded with scorn and contempt. Picture Him! They have hurled Him on His back; they have driven nails through His hands and His feet; they have lifted Him up. See! They have dashed the cross into its place. It is fixed. And now behold Him! Mark His eyes, all full of tears; behold His head, hanging on His breast. Ah! mark Him, He seems all silently to say, “I am poured out like water; all My bones are out of joint; I am brought into the dust of death.” Hear Him, when He groans, “I thirst.” Above all, listen to Him, whilst He cries, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” My words cannot picture Him; my thoughts fail to express it…Yet I beseech you regard the Royal Sufferer. See Him, with the eye of your faith, hanging on the bloody tree. Hear Him cry, before He dies, “It is finished!”

“See from His head, His hands, His feet,
Sorrow and love flow mingled down!
Did e’er such love and sorrow meet,
Or thorns compose so rich a crown?”

~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0104.cfm

It Was Love Amazing

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, salvation 5 Comments

For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. – Romans 5:6

It was much love when Christ became man for us, when He stripped Himself of the glories of His Godhead for awhile, to become an infant of a span long, slumbering in the manger of Bethlehem. It was no little condescension when He divested Himself of all His glories, hung His mantle on the sky, gave up His diadem and the pleasures of His throne, and stooped to become flesh. It was moreover, no small love when He lived a holy and a suffering life for us; it was love amazing, when God with feet of flesh did tread the earth, and teach His own creatures how to live, all the while bearing their scoffs and jests with cool unangered endurance. It was no little favour of Him that He should condescend to give us a perfect example by His spotless life; but the commendation of love lieth here-not that Christ lived for us, but that Christ died for us.

Do any of us know what is contained in that great word “die?” Can we measure it? Can we tell its depths of suffering or its heights of agony? “Died for us!”…All that death could mean Christ endured; He yielded up the ghost, He resigned His breath; He became a lifeless corpse, and His body was interred, even like the bodies of the rest that died… “Ah! it is a solemn and an awful thing to die.” But, my hearers, “Christ died for us.” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0104.cfm

 

 

The Love of Christ for Us

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

But God commendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”- Romans 5:8

It is the highest commendation of love, that it was Christ who died for us. When sinful man erred from his Maker, it was necessary that God should punish his sin. He had sworn by Himself, “The soul that sinneth it shall die;” and God-with reverence to His all-holy name be it spoken-could not swerve from what He had said. He had declared on Sinai that He would by no means clear the guilty; but inasmuch as He desired to pardon the offending, it was necessary that some one else should bear the sufferings which the guilty ought to have endured, that so by the vicarious substitution of another, God might be “just, and yet the justifier of the ungodly.”

Now, the question might have arisen, “Who is he that shall be the scapegoat for man’s offence? Who is he that shall bear his transgressions and take away his sins?”…”He hath commended His love” to you, my brethren, in that it was Christ, the Son of God, who died for us.~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0104.cfm

I Trust in Jesus, Sink or Swim

Sherry Attributes of God, Christian Life, salvation 3 Comments

Yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will joy in the God of my salvation. -Habakkuk 3:18

Salvation is of the LORD – Jonah 2:9

You must be sound in the faith if you have learned to spell this sentence- “Salvation is of the Lord;” and if you feel it in your soul you will not be proud; you can not be; you will cast every thing at His feet, confessing that you have done nothing, save what He has helped you to do and therefore the glory must be where the salvation is. If you believe this you will not be distrustful. You will say, “My salvation does not depend on my faith, but on the Lord; my keeping does not depend on myself, but on God who keepeth me; my being brought to heaven rests not now in my own hands, but in the hands of God;” you will, when doubts and fears prevail, fold your arms, look upward and say,

“And now my eye of faith is dim,
I trust in Jesus, sink or swim.”

If you can keep this in your mind you may always be joyful. He can have no cause for trouble who knows and feels that his salvation is of God…

“He that has helped me bears me through,
And makes me more than conqueror too.”

Salvation resteth not on this poor arm, else should I despair, but on the arm of yon Omnipotent-that arm on which the pillars of the heavens do lean. “Whom should I fear ? The Lord is my strength and my life; of whom shall I be afraid?” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0131.cfm

You Cannot Save Yourself

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, promises, salvation 8 Comments

He is also able to save to the uttermost those who come to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them. -Hebrews 7:25

The sinner in his natural estate reminds me of a man who has a strong and well-nigh impenetrable castle into which he has fled. There is the outer moat; there is a second moat; there are the high walls; and then afterward there is the dungeon and keep, into which the sinner will retire. Now, the first moat that goes round the sinner’s trusting place is his good works. “Ah!” he says, “I am as good as my neighbor; twenty shillings in the pound down, ready money, I have always paid; I am no sinner; ‘I tithe mint and cummin;’ a good respectable gentleman I am indeed.” Well, when God comes to work with him, to save him, He sends His army across the first moat; and as they go through it, they cry, “Salvation is of the Lord;” and the moat is dried up, for if it be of the Lord, how can it be of good works? But when that is done, he has a second intrenchment-ceremonies. “Well,” he says, “I will not trust in my good works, but I have been baptized, I have been confirmed; do not I take the sacrament? That shall be my trust.” “Over the moat! Over the moat!” And the soldiers go over again, shouting, “Salvation is of the Lord.” The second moat is dried up; it is all over with that. Now they come to the next strong wall; the sinner, looking over it, says, “I can repent, I can believe, whenever I like; I will save myself by repenting and believing.” Up come the soldiers of God, His great army of conviction, and they batter this wall to the ground, crying, “‘Salvation is of the Lord.’ Your faith and your repentance must all be given you, or else you will neither believe nor repent of sin.” And now the castle is taken; the man’s hopes are all cut off; he feels that it is not of self; the castle of self is overcome, and the great banner upon which is written “Salvation is of the Lord” is displayed upon the battlements. “Salvation is of the Lord;” though it is not of man, it is of God; “He is able to save, even to the uttermost,” though you can not save yourself. That is the effect this doctrine has upon the sinner; may it have that effect on you! ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0131.cfm

Bearing All and Caring for None

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

But He gives more grace. Therefore He says: “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” -James 4:6

A poor minister began to preach once, and all the world spoke ill of him; but God blessed him. By-and-bye they turned round and petted him. He was the man-a wonder! God left him! It has often been the same. It is for us to recollect, in all times of popularity, that “Crucify Him; crucify Him” follows fast upon the heels of “Hosanna,” and that the crowd to-day, if dealt faithfully with, may turn into the handful of to-morrow; for men love not plain speaking. We should learn to be despised, learn to be contemned, learn to be slandered, and then we shall learn to be made useful by God. Down on my knees I have often fallen, with the hot sweat rising from my brow, under some fresh slander poured upon me; in an agony of grief my heart has been well-nigh broken; till at last I learned the art of bearing all and caring for none. And how my grief runneth in another line. It is just the opposite. I fear lest God should forsake me, to prove that He is the author of salvation, that it is not in the preacher, that it is not in the crowd, that it is not in the attention I can attract, but in God, and in God alone. And this thing I hope I can say from my heart: if to be made as the mire of the streets again, if to be the laughingstock of fools and the song of the drunkard once more will make me more serviceable to my Master, and more useful to His cause, I will prefer it to all this multitude, or to all the applause that man could give.  ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0131.cfm

In Heaven

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

For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men. – Titus 2:11

…that having been justified by His grace we should become heirs according to the hope of eternal life. – Titus 3:7

Soon, soon, the saints of earth shall be saints in light; their hairs of snowy age shall be crowned with perpetual joy and everlasting youth; their eyes suffused with tears shall be made bright as stars, never to be clouded again by sorrow; their hearts that tremble now are to be made joyous and fast, and set for ever like pillars in the temple of God. Their follies, their burdens, their griefs, their woes, are soon to be over; sin is to be slain, corruption is to be removed, and a heaven of spotless purity and of unmingled peace is to be theirs for ever. But it must still be by grace. As was the foundation such must the top-stone be; that which laid on earth the first beginning must lay in heaven the top-most stone. As they were redeemed from their filthy conversation by grace, so they must be redeemed from death and the grave by grace too…

There may be Arminians here, but they will not be Arminians there; they may here say, “It is of the will of the flesh,” but in heaven they shall not think so. Here they may ascribe some little to the creature; but there they shall cast their crowns at the Redeemer’s feet, and acknowledge that He did it all. Here they may sometimes look a little at themselves, and boast somewhat of their own strength; but there, “Not unto us, not unto us,” shall be sung with deeper sincerity and with more profound emphasis than they have even sung it here below. In heaven, when grace shall have done its work, this truth shall stand out in blazing letters of gold, “Salvation is of the Lord.”~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0131.cfm