salvation

Jesus Died Out of Pure Pity for the Sinner

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, promises, salvation, Sovereignty of God 4 Comments

But God commendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being now justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. – Romans 5:8,9

Jesus must have died out of the most gratuitous benevolence to the undeserving, because the character of those for whom He died could not have attracted Him, but must have been repulsive to His holy soul. The impious, the godless-can Christ love these for their character? No, He loved them notwithstanding their offences, loved them as creatures fallen and miserable, loved them according to the multitude of His loving-kindnesses and tender mercies, from pity, and not from admiration. Viewing them as ungodly, yet He loved them. This is extraordinary love! I do not wonder that some persons are loved by others, for they wear a potent charm in their countenances, their ways are winsome, and their characters charm you into affection; “but God commendeth His love towards us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.” He looked at us, and there was not a solitary beauty spot upon us: we were covered with “wounds, and bruises, and putrefying sores,” distortions, defilements, and pollutions; and yet, for all that, Jesus loved us. He loved us because He would love us; because His heart was full of pity, and He could not let us perish.

Christ died for those who were wicked, thoroughly wicked….The fact that Christ died for the ungodly renders self-righteousness a folly. Why need a man pretend that he is good if “Christ died for the ungodly?” …Believe in Him and you shall be saved from that ungodliness. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1191.cfm

Oh, Miracle of Love!

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, promises, salvation, Sovereignty of God, The Father Leave a comment

But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound: that as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord. – Romans 5:20,21

It is clear that those of you who are ungodly-and if you are unconverted you are that-are in great danger. Jesus would not interpose his life and bear the bloody sweat and crown of thorns, and nails, and spear, and scorn unmitigated, and death itself, if there were not solemn need and imminent peril. There is danger, solemn danger, for you. You are under the wrath of God already, and you will soon die, and then, as surely as you live, you will be lost, and lost forever; as certain as the righteous will enter into everlasting life, you will be driven into everlasting punishment.

Only Christ can deliver the ungodly, and He only through His death. If a less price than that of the life of the Son of God could have redeemed men, He would have been spared…If, then, “God spared not His Son, but freely delivered Him up for us all,” there must have been a dread necessity for it. It must have stood thus: die He, or the sinner must, or justice must; and since justice could not, and the Father desired that the sinner should not, then Christ must; and so He did. Oh, miracle of love! I tell you, sinners, you cannot help yourselves, nor can all the priests of Rome or Oxford help you, let them perform their antics as they may; Jesus alone can save, and that only by His death. There on the bloody tree hangs all man’s hope; if you enter heaven it must be by force of the incarnate God’s bleeding out His life for you. You are in such peril that only the pierced hand can lift you out of it. Look to Him, at once, I pray you, ere the proud waters go over your soul. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1191.cfm

Mercy Seeks the Guilty; Grace Saves the Sinner

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

For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost. – Luke 19:10

To-day I see the Good Shepherd in all the energy of His mighty love, going forth into the dreadful wilderness. For whom is He gone forth? For the ninety and nine who feed at home? No, but into the desert His love sends Him, over hill and dale, to seek the one lost sheep which has gone astray. Behold, I see Him arousing His church, like a good housewife, to cleanse her house. With the besom of the law she sweeps, and with the candle of the word she searches, and what for? For those bright new coined pieces fresh from the mint, which glitter safely in her purse? Assuredly not, but for that lost piece which has rolled away into the dust, and lies hidden in the dark corner. And lo! grandest of all visions! I see the Eternal Father, Himself, in the infinity of His love, going forth in haste to meet a returning child. And whom does He go to meet? The elder brother returning from the field, bringing his sheaves with him? An Esau, who has brought him savoury meat such as his soul loveth? A Joseph whose godly life has made him lord over all Egypt? Nay, the Father leaves His home to meet a returning prodigal, who has companied with harlots, and grovelled among swine, who comes back to him in disgraceful rags, and disgusting filthiness! It is on a sinner’s neck that the Father weeps; it is on a guilty cheek that he sets his kisses; it is for an unworthy one that the fatted calf is killed, and the best robe is worn, and the house is made merry with music and with dancing. Yes, tell it, and let it ring round earth and heaven, Christ died for the ungodly. Mercy seeks the guilty, grace has to do with the impious, the irreligious and the wicked. The physician has not come to heal the healthy, but to heal the sick. O ye guilty ones, believe in Him and live. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1191.cfm

Gifts from the Cross

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

But not as the offence, so also is the free gift. For if through the offence of one many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many. – Romans 5:15

All the benefits resulting from the Redeemer’s passion, and from all the works that followed upon it, are for those who by nature are ungodly. His gospel is that sinners believing in Him are saved. His sacrifice has put away sin from all who trust Him, and, therefore, it was offered for those who had sin upon them before. “He rose again for our justification,” but certainly not for the justification of those who can be justified by their own works. He ascended on high, and we are told that He “received gifts for men, yea, for the rebellious also.” He lives to intercede, and Isaiah tells us that “He made intercession for the transgressors.” The aim of His death, resurrection, ascension, and eternal life, is towards the sinful sons of men. His death has brought pardon, but it cannot be pardon for those who have no sin for pardon is only for the guilty. He is exalted on high “to give repentance,” but surely not to give repentance to those who have never sinned, and have nothing to repent of. Repentance and remission both imply previous guilt in those who receive them: unless, then, these gifts of the exalted Saviour are mere shams and superfluities, they must be meant for the really guilty. From His side there flowed out water as well as blood-the water is intended to cleanse polluted nature, then certainly not the nature of the sinless, but the nature of the impure; and so both blood and water flowed for sinners who need the double purification. To-day the Holy Spirit regenerates men as the result of the Redeemer’s death; and who can be regenerated but those who need a new heart and a right spirit? To regenerate the already pure and innocent were ridiculous; regeneration is a work which creates life where there was formerly death, gives a heart of flesh to those whose hearts were originally stone, and implants the love of holiness where sin once had sole dominion. Conversion is also another gift, which comes through His death, but does He turn those whose faces are already in the right direction? It cannot be. He converts the sinner from the error of his ways, He turns the disobedient into the right way, He leads back the stray sheep to the fold. Adoption is another gift which comes to us by the cross. Does the Lord adopt those who are already His sons by nature? If children already, what room is there for adoption? No; but the grand act of divine love is that which takes those who are “children of wrath even as others,” and by sovereign grace puts them among the children, and makes them “heirs of God, joint heirs with Jesus Christ.” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1191.cfm

His Life is Our Example, but Not His Death

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

No man taketh it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of My Father. – John 10:18

Some have said that Jesus died as our example; but that is not altogether true. Christ’s death is not absolutely an example for men, it was a march into a region of which He said, “Ye cannot follow Me now.” His life was our example, but not His death in all respects, for we are by no means bound to surrender ourselves voluntarily to our enemies as He did, but when persecuted in one city we are bidden to flee to another. To be willing to die for the truth is a most Christly thing, and in that Jesus is our example; but into the winepress which He trod it is not ours to enter, the voluntary element which was peculiar to His death renders it inimitable. He said, “I lay down My life of Myself; no man taketh it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself.” One word of His would have delivered Him from His foes; He had but to say “Begone!” and the Roman guards must have fled like chaff before the wind. He died because He willed to do so; of His own accord He yielded up His spirit to the Father. It must have been as an atonement for the guilty; it could not have been as an example, for no man is bound voluntarily to die. Both the dictates of nature, and the command of the law, require us to preserve our lives. “Thou shalt not kill” means “Thou shalt not voluntarily give up thine own life any more than take the life of another.” Jesus stood in a special position, and therefore He died; but His example would have been complete enough without His death, had it not been for the peculiar office which He had undertaken. We may fairly conclude that Christ died for men who needed such a death; and, as the good did not need it for an example-and in fact it is not an example to them- He must have died for the ungodly. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1191.cfm

Christ Died for the Impious

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

“Christ died for the ungodly” – Romans 5:6

“Christ died for the ungodly“; not for the righteous, not for the reverent and devout, but for the ungodly…”Christ died for the impious,” for those who have no reverence for God. Christ died for the godless, who, having cast off God, cast off with Him all love for that which is right…Christ did not die because men were good, or would be good, but died for them as ungodly or, in other words, “He came to seek and to save that which was lost.” Observe, then, that when the Son of God determined to die for men, He viewed them as ungodly, and far from God by wicked works…looking on them all, He whose judgment is infallible returned this verdict, “They are all gone out of the way; they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.” Putting them down at that estimate, and nothing better, Christ died for them…Full well He knew that, left to itself, the world would grow worse and worse, and that by its very wisdom it would darken its own eyes. It was not because a golden age would come by natural progress, but just because such a thing was impossible, unless He died to procure it, that Jesus died for a race which, apart from Him, could only develop into deeper damnation. Jesus viewed us as we really were, not as our pride fancies us to be; He saw us to be without God, enemies of our own Creator, dead in trespasses and sins, corrupt, and set on mischief, and even in our occasional cry for good, searching for it with blinded judgment and prejudiced heart, so that we put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. He saw that in us was no good thing, but every possible evil, so that we were lost,-utterly, helplessly, hopelessly lost apart from Him: yet viewing us as in that graceless and Godless plight and condition, He died for us.

The gospel does not come to us as a premium for virtue, but it presents us with forgiveness for sin. It is not a reward for health, but a medicine for sickness. Therefore, to meet all cases, it puts us down at our worst, and, like the good Samaritan with the wounded traveller, it comes to us where we are. “Christ died for the impious” is a great net which takes in even the leviathan sinner; and of all the creeping sinners innumerable which swarm the sea of sin, there is not one kind which this great net does not encompass. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1191.cfm

The Most Deadly Death

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

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

The text says Christ died. He did a great deal besides dying, but the crowning act of His career of love for the ungodly, and that which rendered all the rest available to them, was His death for them. He actually gave up the ghost, not in fiction, but in fact. He laid down His life for us, breathing out His soul, even as other men do when they expire. That it might be indisputably clear that He was really dead, His heart was pierced with the soldier’s spear, and forthwith came there out blood and water. The Roman governor would not have allowed the body to be removed from the cross had He not been duly certified that Jesus was indeed dead. His relatives and friends who wrapped Him in linen and laid Him in Joseph’s tomb, were sorrowfully sure that all that lay before them was a corpse. The Christ really died, and in saying that, we mean that He suffered all the pangs incident to death; only He endured much more and worse, for His was a death of peculiar pain and shame, and was not only attended by the forsaking of man, but by the departure of His God. That cry, “My God, my God! why hast Thou forsaken Me?” was the innermost blackness of the thick darkness of death.

Our Lord’s death was penal, inflicted upon Him by divine justice; and rightly so, for on Him lay our iniquities, and therefore on Him must lay the suffering. “It pleased the Father to bruise Him; He hath put Him to grief.” He died under circumstances which made His death most terrible. Condemned to a felon’s gibbet, He was crucified amid a mob of jesters, with few sympathising eyes to gaze upon Him; He bore the gaze of malice and the glance of scorn; He was hooted and jeered by a ribald throng, who were cruelly inventive in their taunts and blasphemies. There He hung, bleeding from many wounds, exposed to the sun, burning with fever, and devoured with thirst, under every circumstance of contumely, pain, and utter wretchedness; His death was of all deaths the most deadly death, and emphatically “Christ died.” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1191.cfm