Devote Yourself to Jesus

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. – Romans 12:1

Did our blessed Lord take your sin, my brethren, and suffer all its terrific consequences for you, so that you are delivered? By His blood and wounds, by His death, and by the love that made Him die, I conjure you treat Him as He should be treated! Love Him as He should be loved! Serve Him as He should be served! You will tell me that you have obeyed His precepts. I am glad to hear it. Are you sure that you have? “If ye love Me, keep My commandments.” Have you kept the ordinances as He delivered them? Have you sought to be obedient to Him in all respects? In all your Lord’s appointed ways have you scrupulously pursued your journey? If you can say this, I am not content; it does not seem to me that with such a leader as Christ mere obedience should be all…It is out of and beyond all categories of law, it is far exceeding all that law ventured to ask, and yet not supererogation for all that, for ye are not under the law but under grace; and ye will do more out of love than ye would have done out of the compulsion of demand. What shall I do for my Master? What shall I do for my Lord? How shall I set Him forth? Christ stands for me, oh may I learn to stand for Him, and plead for Him, and live for Him, and suffer for Him, and pray for Him, and preach and labor for Him as He may help me! 

O Christian, by the blood of Jesus devote yourself to Him again! Now, men and brethren, sisters, every one of you who have tasted that the Lord is gracious, devote yourselves this day to live, to die, to spend, and to be spent for King Jesus. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0694.cfm

Matchless Security

Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth; who is he that condemneth? It is Christ Jesus that died, yea rather, that was raised from the dead, who is at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us. – Romans 8:33,34

I look at the attributes of God, and though to me, as a sinner, they all seem bristling as with sharp points, thrusting themselves upon me; yet when I know that Jesus died for me, and did literally take my sin, what fear I the attributes of God? There is justice, sharp and bright, like a lance; but justice is my friend. If God be just, He cannot punish me for sin for which Jesus has offered satisfaction. As long as there is justice in the heart of Deity, it cannot be that a soul justly claiming Christ as his substitute can himself be punished. As for mercy, love, truth, honor, everything matchless, Godlike and divine about Deity, I say of all these, “You are my friends; you are all guarantees that Jesus died for me, I cannot die.” How grandly does the apostle put it! It seems to me as if he never was worked up by the Holy Spirit to such a pitch of eloquence as when speaking about the death and resurrection of the Savior. He propounds that splendid question, “Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect?” There, where eternal justice sits upon a flaming throne, the apostle gazes with eye undimmed into the ineffable splendor, and though some one seems to say, “The Judge will condemn,” he replies, “Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth.” Can He justify and then condemn us? He justifies those for whom Christ died, for we are justified by His resurrection. How then shall He condemn? And then he lifts up his voice yet again-“Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea, rather that is risen again, who sitteth at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.” On other grounds a man must feel unsafe, but here he may know himself sure. I know that I have no cause for fear since Jesus died for me. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0694.cfm

What Jesus Saw in Us

Scarcely for a righteous man will one die; peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die; but God commendeth His love towards us in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. – Romans 5:7,8

When Christ has renewed us by His Spirit, there may be a temptation to imagine that some excellency in us won the Savior’s heart; but, my brethren, you must understand that Christ died for us while we were yet sinners. Not that infant washed and swaddled, not that fair maiden with the jewel in her ear, and with the pure golden crown upon her head, not that lovely princess, presented like a chaste virgin to her husband; no, that was not what Jesus saw when He died. He saw all that in the glass of His prescience, but the actual condition of that fair maid was very different when He died for her; she was cast out, unwashed, unsalted, unswaddled, in her blood, a foul, filthy thing. Ah! my brethren, there is no filthy thing under heaven so filthy as a filthy sinner. When there was not a ray of beauty to be discovered in us, when neither without nor within a single thing could be found to commend us, but we were morally altogether abhorrent to the Holy nature of Christ, then-oh wondrous grace! -He came from the highest heaven that the mass of our sin might meet on Him… Such a wonderful union is there between Christ and the sinner that I venture to say there are some expressions in the New Testament and in the Old with regard to Christ’s connection with the sin of man that I would not dare to use except as direct quotations from Holy Writ; but being there you shall see how wondrously the love of Jesus Christ induced Him to take upon Himself our sad condition and plight. But, oh the love! oh the love! God over all, blessed for ever, should have laid on Him the iniquity of us all! ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0694.cfm

Trust in Jesus’ Righteousness

Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us… – Titus 3:5

Have you an imagination that your own merits may make atonement for sin? I pray you think what Christ had to do before He could cast sin off from Himself, what griefs He bore, through what an ocean of wrath He passed; and do you think that your poor merits, if they be merits, can ever avail to do what the Savior suffered so much to accomplish? Do you hope to escape without a punishment? If you do, let me pray you to think the matter over; for if God smote His own Son, do you think He will permit you to go scot-free? …Sinner, bow the knee to this plan of salvation, for be it known to you -and I speak now, knowing what I say, and coolly too-there is none other plan of salvation under heaven. There may be other ways of salvation preached, but other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, Jesus Christ the Righteous…If thou shalt be going about to establish thine own righteousness, but not submitting thyself to the righteousness of Christ, thou shalt perish. But let me ask thee, does not this plan commend itself to thee? If I trust Jesus, this is to me the evidence that He took my sins and suffered in my stead. Oh, the joy it gives me! I speak to you honestly of my own experience now; there is no doctrine that fires my soul with such delight as that of substitution…when I know that Christ was literally and positively, not metaphorically and by way of figure, but literally and positively the substitute for His own people, and when I know that trusting in Him I have the evidence of being one of His people, why my soul begins to say, Now let me live! I’m clean, through Jesus’ blood I’m clean. Now let me die! for I shall boldly stand in the day of resurrection, through Jesus, my Lord. Why, soul, it seems to me as if it were enough to make you leap into the arms of Christ, crucified! covered with blood for you! disinterestedly suffering for His own enemies that they might live! Oh, stay not away! ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0694.cfm

Did Christ Bear Your Sins?

All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all. – Isaiah 53:6

There is a countless company whose sins the Lord Jesus bore; did He bear yours? Do you wish to have an answer? Are you unable to give one? Let me read this verse to you and see if you can join in it. I do not mean join in it saying, “That is true,” but feeling that it is true in your own souls. “All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned every one to his own way, and the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all.” If there be in you a penitential confession which leads you to acknowledge that you have erred and strayed like a lost sheep, if there be in you a personal sense of sin which makes you feel that you have turned to your own way, and if now you can trust in Jesus, then a second question is not wanted; the Lord hath laid on Him your iniquity, and the iniquity of all such as confess their sin and look alone to Christ. But if you will not trust to Christ, I cannot say to you that the Lord hath taken the sin from you and laid it upon Christ, for in my soul I know that living and dying as you now are, that sin of yours will rise up in judgment against you to condemn you…Let me ask you, do you mean to bear your sin yourself? Do you know what that means? Jesus smarted when He bore the sin of His people, but what a smart shall yours be when you bear your own! “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” There are some now-a-days who are mightily angry at the doctrine of everlasting punishment; I, too, might be angry at it if it were an invention of man; but when it is most certainly threatened in God’s Book, it is vain for me to kick against the pricks; my question should not be, “How can I dispute against it?” but “How can I escape from it?” Dear hearer, do not venture into God’s presence with your sins upon yourself; even our God is a consuming fire, and His fury will break forth against you when you come to stand there. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0694.cfm

Justice Asks No More

But as it is, He has appeared once for all at the end of the age to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. – Hebrews 9:26

Sin meets on Christ and Christ is punished for sin, and what then? Why then sin is put away. If the penalty be endured justice asks no more. The debt discharged-there is no debt; the claim made and the claim met-the claim ceases to be. Though we could not meet that claim in our proper persons, yet we have met it in One who is so united and allied to us that we are in Him even as Levi was in the loins of Abraham. Jesus Himself also is free. Upon Him the gathered tempest has spent itself, and not a single cloud lingers in the serene sky. Though the waters came His love has dried them up, His suffering has opened the sluices, and made the floods for ever spend themselves. Though the bills were brought He has honored them all, and there is not one outstanding account against a single soul for whom He died as a substitute.

“Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.” Here is a rock to stand on, a safe resting-place for those who trust in Jesus. As for you who trust Him not, your blood be upon your own heads! If ye trust Him not, ye have no part nor lot in this matter, ye shall go down to your own punishment to bear it yourselves; the wrath of God abideth on you; you shall find that the blood of Jesus has made no atonement for your sins. You have rejected the invitation that was given, and put far from you the cross of Christ, and upon your heads the pardoning blood shall never drop, and for you it shall never plead, but you must perish under the law, seeing you refuse to be saved under the gospel. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0694.cfm