The Holy Spirit

New Creatures in Christ Jesus

Sherry Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, salvation, Sovereignty of God, The Holy Spirit 7 Comments

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new. – 2 Corinthians 5:17

Christ has made for us a new covenant. The old covenant was, “Do this and live.” That covenant was a sentence of death upon us all. We could not do, therefore we could not live, and so we died…The covenant of grace reveals God’s kindness towards us, and our part thereof has been fulfilled for us by our surety, Christ Jesus. Thus it runs, “Their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more for ever; a new heart also will I give them, and a right spirit will I put within them.” The old world is still under the old covenant of works, and its children perish, for they cannot carry out the conditions of the covenant, they cannot keep God’s law, they break it constantly, and they die. But the children of grace are under the new covenant of grace, and through the precious blood, which is the penalty of the old broken covenant, and through the spotless righteousness of Christ, which is the fulfilment and magnifying of the old covenant, the Christian stands secure, and rejoices that he is saved. Christ has thus made His people dwell under a new covenant, instead of under the old one.

In addition to the new covenant, Christ has been pleased to make us new men. His saints are “new creatures in Christ Jesus.” They have a new nature. God has breathed into them a new life. The Holy Spirit, though the old nature is still there, has been pleased to put within them a new nature. There is now a contending force within them-the old carnal nature inclining to evil, and the new God-given nature panting after perfection. They are new men, “begotten again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” This new nature is moved by new principles. The old nature needed to be awed with threatenings, or bribed with rewards; the new nature feels the impulse of love. Gratitude is its mainspring: “We love Him because He first loved us.” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3467.cfm

Life Incorruptible

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

And this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. – 1 John 5:11

“Now Jehovah’s banner’s furled,
Sheathed His sword because ’tis done”;

Reel, ye pillars of earth! Be shaken, ye arches of the starry heavens! Pass away, O Time, and you ye rolling worlds, dissolve into your native nothingness! But the believer must live on, because Jesus lives, and until the Lord’s Christ can bow His head, till He who hath immortality can expire, till God Himself can cease to be, no soul that believed in Jesus can lose the life incorruptible which God’s own Spirit hath put within it.

I want to sing, brethren, rather than to talk with you. These are words and thoughts fit for some ancient bard, or for the spirit of some inspired prophet sent from heaven. I do but lisp where even seraphs might find their loudest songs fail in the them. Let your hearts mount! Let your souls exult! Let your spirits be glad! Do you

“Long for evening to undress,
That you may rest with God,”

and enter into His heaven? Long for the evening of death, when your toil shall be over, and the hour of your bliss shall have come.  ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3401.cfm

Then Shalt Thou Come to the King

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

And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God – Job 19:26

Concerning this very body, there is no decree of annihilation. It will smoulder away. It may be taken up by the spade of the careless sexton, and scattered to the winds of heaven may all the atoms of the body be. But there is a life-germ within it which no human power can destroy, and over which the divine eye perpetually watches; and when that mysterious and long-expected sound of the angelic trump shall ring o’er land and sea, through heaven and earth, and the graves shall all be opened, then shall my soul find my body yet again-fashioned after a more beautiful form; more fit for the spirit than aforetime; more elastic; altogether free from weakness; no longer such as shall be subject to pain, to sickness, to accident, to decay, to ultimate corruption; but a spiritual body, raised in power, in glory, and in immortality; not raised in the likeness of the first Adam in the garden, but in the likeness of the second Adam in the everlasting Paradise of God. Courage, my eyes, courage! Ye shall be closed for a while, but ye shall not be so for ever, for ye, even ye, shall strike the strings of those celestial harps that pour forth His praise. Courage, all ye members of my body, which have been sanctified to be members of Christ, and made to be parts of the Holy Spirit’s temple! Ye shall all take your part in the grand triumphal entry of Christ, when He shall descend to take possession of His kingdom. “Though worms destroy this body yet in my flesh shall I see God, whom I shall behold for myself, and not another.” So go to thy bed in the earth, poor body, and sleep there awhile. Bathe thyself like her who bathed herself in spices to make herself ready for the King, so go and get thyself prepared to meet thy Lord. Put off thy work-day dress, and put on thy Sabbath garments, thy bridal array, and then shalt thou come to the King and see Him in His beauty…Yea, because He lives in the body which He bore, this body shall live again, also. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3401.cfm

Because Christ Lives, We Live

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, prayer, promises, salvation, Sovereignty of God, The Holy Spirit 4 Comments

…because I live, ye shall live also. – John 14:19

Life is promised to Christ’s people. This does not mean their natural existence. That they have received from Adam, and, through their sin, it has become a curse to them, rather than a blessing. Should they remain unpardoned, the fact of continued existence will become to them the dreadful of calamities, since it must be an existence in God’s holy abhorrence of sin for ever; driven from every glimpse or hope of forgiveness.

The life which comes to us through Christ is of this sort-I trust you know it in your own hearts-it is life spiritual, given to us in regeneration. When the Holy Spirit quickens a dead soul, that dead soul then receives the life of Christ. No man is alive unto God spiritually, except through Christ. Because Christ lives, we live. When a dead soul gets into living contact with the living Saviour by the power of the Spirit, then it is that spiritual life begins. The very first evidence of spiritual life is trusting in Jesus, which shows that us the first symptom is alliance to Christ, the cause of the life must be somewhere here, namely, union with Christ. One of the very first outward signs is prayer-prayer to Christ, and that, again, rises from the fact that Christ gives us of His life, and then that life goes back again to Him…Do you not see, “Because I live, ye shall live”? Then no sinner ever will live spiritually apart from Christ. Though you and I cannot quicken them, yet we can preach the gospel to them, and faith cometh by hearing, and where faith is, there life is. It is no use trying to raise the dead by preaching the law to them. That is only covering them up fairly with a lie in their right hand; but preach of dying love and of rising power, to tell of pardons bought with blood, and to declare that Christ died a substitute for sinners-this is the hopeful way of bringing life to the dead. It is by such instrumentality that souls are brought to life eternal. Because Christ is alive, His elect in due time receives spiritual life by the power of the Holy Spirit, and, although once they were dead in sin, they begin to live unto righteousness.~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3401.cfm

I See My Lord, Not by Fancy, but by Faith

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

Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us. – Romans 8:34

We are so very apt to mystify and becloud everything, and to suppose that Christ lives by His influence only, or lives by His Spirit. Brethren, He lives, the very man that died, as surely as He bled upon the tree, and in His own_proper person, from five actual wounds poured out the warm life-torrents of His heart, so surely does He actually live at this present moment in the midst of unnumbered hearts that sound His praise-the delightful object of the vision of the myriads of spirits who continually adore Him. He actually lives; He really and truly lives, as He lived here below… He is as busy now as He was when here. He proposed to Himself when He went away a certain work. “I go to prepare a place for you,” said He. He is preparing that place for us still. He intercedes, also, daily for His people. Oh! if your faith is strong enough, even now you can see Him distinctly standing before the throne of God, pleading His glorious merits. I think I see Him now as clearly as ever the Jews saw Aaron when he stood with his breast-plate on before the mercy-seat, for remember, the Jew never did see Aaron at all there, for the curtain was dropped, and Aaron was within the veil, and therefore, the Jew could only see him in his fancy. But I say I see Him as clearly as that, for I see my Lord, not by fancy, but by faith. There, where the veil is rent, so that He is not hidden from my soul’s gaze, I see Him with my name and yours upon His breast, pleading before God. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3401.cfm

 

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

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