God is too Good to be Unkind and He is too Wise to be Mistaken

God is too good to be unkind and He is too wise to be mistaken. And when we cannot trace His hand, we must trust His heart. When you are so weak that you cannot do much more than cry, you coin diamonds with both your eyes. The sweetest prayers God ever hears are the groans and sighs of those who have no hope in anything but his love.
Charles Spurgeon

Think about the first line because it speaks to who God is. God is not unkind to you and God never makes a mistake concerning you regardless of what it looks like or how it feels. The sweetest prayers sounds like some of my prayers lately sometimes I feel that I have no hope in anything but God's love for me. In the third movie in The Lord of the Rings, "The Return of the King" Elrond the Elf King comes to Aragorn to bring him the sword that had been broken but had been reforged, he tells him that the dead men that live in the mountain can provide Aragorn with a great army and says "They will listen to the King of Gondor" The last thing Elrond says is "I give hope to men" Aragorn replies "I keep none for myself"

That's how I feel at times and why this quote from Spurgeon really speaks to me, God hears the groans and sighs of those who have no hope in anything but his love.

What Faith Is

Charles Spurgeon said in “All of Grace” — “Faith is chosen by God to be the receiver of salvation because it does not pretend to create salvation, nor to help in it, but it is content humbly to receive it. Faith is the tongue that begs pardon, the hand which receives it and the eye which sees it; but it is not the price which buys it. Faith never makes herself her own plea, she rests all her argument upon the blood of Christ. She becomes a good servant to bring the riches of the Lord Jesus to the soul, because she acknowledges whence she drew them and owns that grace alone entrusted her with them”.

What It Means To Preach The Gospel

I do not believe we can preach the gospel, if we do not preach justification by faith, without works; nor unless we preach the sovereignty of God in His dispensation of grace; nor unless we exalt the electing, unchangeable, eternal, immutable, conquering love of Jehovah; nor do I think we can preach the gospel, unless we base it upon the special and particular redemption of His elect and chosen people which Christ wrought out upon the cross; nor can I comprehend a gospel which lets saints fall away after they are called, and suffers the children of God to be burned in the fires of damnation after having once believed in Jesus. Such a gospel I abhor.

"If ever it should come to pass,
That sheep of Christ might fall away,
My fickle, feeble soul, alas!
Would fall a thousand times a day."

If one dear saint of God had perished, so might all; if one of the covenant ones be lost, so may all be; and then there is no gospel promise true, but the Bible is a lie, and there is nothing in it worth my acceptance. I will be an infidel at once when I can believe that a saint of God can ever fall finally. If God hath loved me once, then He will love me for ever. (Charles Spurgeon)

Good News "It Is Finished!"

“If today you feel that sin is hateful to you, believe in Him who has said, ‘It is finished.’ Let me link your hand in mine. Let us come together, both of us, and say, ‘Here are two poor naked souls, good Lord; we cannot clothe ourselves,’ and He will give us a robe, for ‘it is finished.’ . . . ‘But must we not add tears to it?’ ‘No,’ says He, ‘no, it is finished, there is enough.’
Child of God, will you have Christ’s finished righteousness this morning, and will you rejoice in it more than you ever have before?”

Charles Haddon Spurgeon, The Treasury of the New Testament

No Reason But Grace Alone

I would have to agree with Spurgeon when he said, "I cannot understand the reason why I am saved, except upon the ground that God would have it so. I cannot, if I look ever so earnestly, discover any kind of reason in myself why I should be a partaker of Divine grace. If I am not at this moment without Christ, it is only because Christ Jesus would have his will with me, and that will was that I should be with him where he is, and should share his glory. I can put the crown nowhere but upon the head of him whose mighty grace has saved me from going down into the pit." Charles Spurgeon

All I can say is amen I cannot give any reason why God should have saved me except the words of the Apostle Paul, Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost" Nothing in my hands I bring simply to thy cross I cling, oh lamb of God I come.

Nothing To Boast About

Spurgeon, writing reflectively on Ephesians 2:8-9--
What does faith exclude? Well, I am sure it excludes boasting. 'He that believeth is not condemned' (John 3:18). Oh, if it said, 'He that works is not condemned,' then you and I might boast in unlimited quantity. . . .
No, Lord, if I am not condemned, it is Your free grace, for I have deserved to be condemned a thousand times since I sat down to write this. When I am on my knees and I am not condemned, I am sure it must be sovereign grace, for even when I am praying, I deserve to be condemned. Even when we are repenting, we are sinning, and adding to our sins while we are repenting of them. . . .
Our best performances are so stained with sin that it is hard to know whether they are good works or bad works. . . . Ah, then, we cannot boast! Be gone, pride! Be gone! Quit boasting, Christian. Live humbly before your God, and never let a word of self-congratulation escape your lips.

--Charles Spurgeon, Faith (Whitaker House 1995), 88

I have nothing to boast about except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ by which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world.

Grace Changes You

Living a self-centered life indicates that your profession of faith may not have been real in the first place. Charles Spurgeon said, “If the grace which I profess to have received leaves me exactly the same kind of person as I was before receiving it, it’s not New Testament salvation. The grace which does not drastically alter my behavior will never alter my destiny.”

How to Spell 'Grace'

Charles Spurgeon, in a sermon he preached during his later years said--
"I have known some that, at first conversion, have not been very clear in the gospel, who have been made evangelical by their discoveries of their own need of mercy. They could not spell the word 'grace.' They began with a G, but they very soon went on with an F, till it spelt very like 'freewill' before they had done with it.

But after they have learned their weakness, after they have fallen into serious fault, and God has restored them, or after they have passed through deep depression of mind, they have sung a new song. In the school of repentance they have learned to spell. They began to write the word 'free,' but they went on from free, not to 'will' but to 'grace.' And there it stood in capitals, 'FREE GRACE'. . . . They became clearer in their divinity, and truer in their faith than ever they were before."
--quoted in Iain Murray, The Forgotten Spurgeon (Banner of Truth 1966), 69-70

You can have free will but I'll take free grace. It's easy to make the focus all about you and your choices and miss the grace of God. I love the line: "In the school of repentance they have learned to spell." Have you learned to spell free grace?

How Did You Become A Christian?

The thought struck me, How did you come to be a Christian? I sought the Lord. But how did you come to seek the Lord? The truth flashed across my mind in a moment—I should not have sought him unless there had been some previous influence in my mind to make me seek him. I prayed, thought I, but then I asked myself, How came I to pray? I was induced to pray by reading the Scriptures. How came I to read the Scriptures? I did read them, but what led me to do so?
Then, in a moment, I saw that God was at the bottom of it all, and that he was the Author of my faith, and so the whole doctrine of grace opened up to me, and from that doctrine I have not departed to this day, and I desire to make this my constant confession, “I ascribe my change wholly to God.”
--Charles Spurgeon, as quoted in Dave Harvey, Am I Called? The Summons to Pastoral Ministry (Crossway, 2012), 38

Has the whole doctrine of grace opened up to you? Can you make the confession Spurgeon made? "I ascribe my change wholly to God" This is the beauty of the Lord's salvation.

Cleansed From Every Fear

The glory of salvation is that whoever believes in the Lord Jesus is completely pardoned. It is not some of his sin that is put away, but all of it. I rejoice to look upon it as dear Kent does when he sings,
Here’s pardon for transgressions past, It matters not how black their cast;
And, O my soul, with wonder view, For sins to come here’s pardon too.
We are plunged into the fountain of redeeming blood and cleansed from every fear of ever being found guilty before the living God. We are accepted in the Beloved through the righteousness of Jesus Christ, justified once for all and forever before the Father’s face! Christ said, ‘It is finished,’ and finished it is. And Oh, what a bliss is this — one of the things that may well stagger those who have never heard it before. But let them not reject it because it staggers them but rather let them say, ‘This wonderful system which saves and saves completely, in an instant, simply by looking out of self to Christ, is a system worthy of divine wisdom, for it magnifies the grace of God and meets man’s deepest necessities.’”
C. H. Spurgeon, The Treasury of the New Testament (Grand Rapids, 1950), I:451-452.

All I can ask is Has this truth that Christians are "justified once for all and forever before the Fathers face" really staggered you? If this truth really sinks into your life all you can do is worship God and be overwhelmingly grateful and joyfully live your life to please the God who saved you by grace alone. If this is not how you are living you really don't grasp what Christ did for you and you are in some way still trying to save yourself which results in a joyless miserable life.

It Is Christ Alone That Saves

Remember, sinner, it is not thy hold of Christ that saves thee–it is Christ; it is not thy joy in Christ that saves thee–it is Christ; it is not even faith in Christ, though that is the instrument–it is Christ’s blood and merits; therefore, look not to thy hope, but to Christ, the source of thy hope; look not to thy faith, but to Christ, the author and finisher of thy faith; and if thou doest that, ten thousand devils cannot throw thee down…There is one thing which we all of us too much becloud in our preaching, though I believe we do it very unintentionally–namely, the great truth that it is not prayer, it is not faith, it is not our doings, it is not our feelings upon which we must rest, but upon Christ, and on Christ alone. We are apt to think that we are not in a right state, that we do not feel enough, instead of remembering that our business is not with self, but Christ. Let me beseech thee, look only to Christ; never expect delieverance from self, from ministers, or from any means of any kind apart from Christ; keep thine eye simply on Him; let his death, His agonies, His groans, His sufferings, His merits, His glories, His intercession, be fresh upon thy mind; when thou wakest in the morning look for Him; when thou liest down at night look for Him. (The Forgotten Spugeon, Iain Murray, 42.)

Free Will, Really?

"...he who in his soul believes that man does of his own free-will turn to God, cannot have been taught of God, for that is one of the first principles taught us when God begins with us, that we have neither will nor power, but that he gives both; that he is "Alpha and Omega" in the salvation of men." - C. H. Spurgeon (Free Will, a Slave)

"Free will I have often heard of, but I have never seen it. I have always met with will, and plenty of it, but it has either been led captive by sin or held in the blessed bonds of grace."
- C. H. Spurgeon

Who The Gospel Comes To

I have no gospel to preach to the self-righteous, no, not a word, Jesus Christ Himself came not to call the righteous, and i am not going to do what he did not do, No, I ask you rather to look at that righteousness of yours till you see what a delusion it is. It is not half so substantial as a cobweb. Be finished with it! Flee it!

"They that are whole have no need of a physician, but they that are sick" (Mark 2:17). Is it not equally clear that the great remedies of grace and redemption are for the sick in soul? They cannot be for the whole, for they cannot be of use to such. If you feel that you are spiritually sick, the Physician has come into the world for you. If you are altogether undone by reason of your sin, you are the very person aimed at in the plan of salvation. I say that the Lord of love had precisely such as you in his eye when he arranged the system of grace.

He that is a dirty sinner is the kind of man that Jesus Christ came to make clean, Come in your disorder. Come to your heavenly Father in all your sin and sinfulness. come to Jesus just as you are: leprous, filthy, naked. Come, though despair is brooding over you, pressing upon your chest like a horrible nightmare.

Charles Spurgeon in All Of Grace

The Difference Between Calvinism and Arminianism

The difference between these two views, Calvinism &  Arminianism  is like the difference between a narrow bridge that extends all the way across a valley and a wider one that only goes halfway. Who cares how broad it is if it does not get you to the other side?
This difference is what made Charles Spurgeon argue that Arminianism, much more than Calvinism, limits the atonement of Christ. The Arminian says, “‘Christ has died that any man may be saved if’ — and then follow certain conditions of salvation. Now who is it that limits the death of Christ? Why, you. You say that Christ did not die so as infallibly to secure the salvation of anybody. We beg your pardon, when you say we limit Christ’s death; we say, ‘No, my dear sire, it is you that do it.’ We say Christ so died that he infallibly secured the salvation of a multitude that no man can number, who through Christ’s death not only may be saved, but are saved, must be saved and cannot by any possibility run the hazard of being anything but saved. You are welcome to your atonement; you may keep it. We will never renounce ours for the sake of it” (Spurgeon’s Sermons, vol. 4, p. 228).

A Hateful Delusion

Spurgeon, The Sword and the Trowel, 1876:

Consciousness of self-importance is a hateful delusion, but one into which we fall as naturally as weeds grow on a dunghill. We cannot be used of the Lord without it leading to dreaming of personal greatness, thinking ourselves almost indispensable to the church, pillars of the cause, and foundations of the temple of God.

We are nothing and nobodies, but that we do not think so is very evident, for as soon as we are put on the shelf we begin anxiously to enquire, 'How will the work go on without me?' As well might the fly on the coach wheel enquire, 'How will the mails be carried without me?'

--Charles Spurgeon, as quoted in Iain Murray, Spurgeon vs. Hyper-Calvinism: The Battle for Gospel Preaching (Banner of Truth, 1995), 20

Dane Ortlund

God Was at the Bottom of it All

One evening early in his ministry Spurgeon was wrestling through who was ultimately responsible for his conversion. He writes:

The thought struck me, How did you come to be a Christian? I sought the Lord. But how did you come to seek the Lord? The truth flashed across my mind in a moment—I should not have sought him unless there had been some previous influence in my mind to make me seek him. I prayed, thought I, but then I asked myself, How came I to pray? I was induced to pray by reading the Scriptures. How came I to read the Scriptures? I did read them, but what led me to do so?

Then, in a moment, I saw that God was at the bottom of it all, and that he was the Author of my faith, and so the whole doctrine of grace opened up to me, and from that doctrine I have not departed to this day, and I desire to make this my constant confession, “I ascribe my change wholly to God.”

--Charles Spurgeon, as quoted in Dave Harvey, Am I Called? The Summons to Pastoral Ministry (Crossway, 2012), 38

Look! The Story Of Charles Spurgeon’s Conversion

His story of his conversion sounds like gospel wakefulness to me:

I sometimes think I might have been in darkness and despair until now had it not been for the goodness of God in sending a snowstorm, one Sunday morning, while I was going to a certain place of worship. When I could go no further, I turned down a side street, and came to a little Primitive Methodist chapel. In that chapel there may have been a dozen or fifteen people. . . . The minister did not come that morning; he was snowed up, I suppose. At last, a very thin-looking man, a shoemaker, or tailor, or something of that sort, went up into the pulpit to preach. . . . He was obliged to stick to his text, for the simple reason that he had little else to say. The text was “Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth [Isaiah 45:22].” He did not even pronounce the words rightly, but that did not matter. There was, I thought, a glimpse of hope for me in that text. The preacher began thus: “My dear friends, this is a very simple text indeed. It says, ‘Look.’ Now lookin’ don’t take a deal of pain. It ain’t liftin’ your foot or your finger; it is just, ‘Look.’ Well, a man needn’t go to college to learn to look. You may be the biggest fool, and yet you can look. A man needn’t be worth a thousand a year to be able to look. Anyone can look; even a child can look.
“But then the text says, ‘Look unto Me’. . . . Many of ye are lookin’ to yourselves, but it’s no use lookin’ there. Ye will never find any comfort in yourselves. Some look to God the father. No, look to him by-and-by. Jesus Christ says, ‘Look unto Me.’ Some of ye say, ‘We must wait for the Spirit’s workin’.’ You have no business with that just now. Look to Christ. The text says, ‘Look unto Me.’”
Then the good man followed up his text in this way: “Look unto Me; I am sweatin’ and great drops of blood. Look unto Me; I am hangin’ on the cross. Look unto Me; I am dead and buried. Look unto Me; I rise again. Look unto Me; I ascend to heaven. Look unto Me; I am sittin’ at the Father’s right hand. O poor sinner, look unto Me! Look unto Me!”
When he had gone to about that length, and managed to spin out ten minutes or so he was at the end of his tether. Then he looked at me under the gallery, and I dare say, with so few present he knew me to be a stranger. Just fixing his eyes on me, as if he knew all my heart he said, “Young man, you look very miserable.” Well, I did, but I had not been accustomed to have remarks made from the pulpit on my personal appearance before. However, it was a good blow, struck right home. He continued, “and you always will be miserable—miserable in life, and miserable in death—if you don’t obey my text; but if you obey now, this moment, you will be saved.”
Then lifting up his hands, he shouted, as only a primitive Methodists could do, “Young man, look to Jesus Christ. Look! Look! Look! You have nothing to do but to look and live.” I saw at once the way of salvation. I know not what else he said—I did not take much notice of it—I was so possessed with that one thought. Like as when the brazen serpent was lifted up, the people only looked and were healed, so it was with me. I had been waiting to do fifty things, but when I heard that word, “Look!” What a charming word it seemed to me! Oh! I looked until I could have almost looked my eyes away.
There and then the cloud was gone, the darkness had rolled away, and that moment I saw the sun; and I could have risen that instant, and sung with the most enthusiastic of them, of the precious blood of Christ, and the simple faith which looks alone to him. . . . And now I can say—

E’er since by faith I saw the stream
Thy flowing wounds supply,
Redeeming love has been my theme,
And Shall be till I die.

– from Spurgeon’s Autobiography

Jared Wilson

Why Jesus Came

Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners.

It is a very surprising thing, a thing to be marveled at most of all by those who enjoy it. I know that it is to me, even to this day, the greatest wonder that I ever heard of that God should ever justify me. I feel myself to be a lump of unworthiness, a mass of corruption, and a heap of sin apart from his almighty love. I know and am fully assured that I am justified by faith which is in Christ Jesus, and I am treated as if I had been perfectly just. . . .

Who can help being astonished at this? Gratitude for such favor stands dressed in robes of wonder.

--Charles Spurgeon, All of Grace (rev. ed.; Moody, 2010), 27; italics original
Dane Ortlund

The Potent Gale of Grace

A good and powerful expression of the I in TULIP, which I believe is biblical and beautiful. Spurgeon is preaching a message entitled 'A Revival Sermon' in January 1860:

The Lord, when he means to save sinners, does not stop to ask them whether they mean to be saved, but like a mighty rushing wind the divine influence sweeps away every obstacle; the unwilling heart bends before the potent gale of grace, and sinners that would not yield are made to yield by God.

I know this, that if the Lord willed it, there is no man so desperately wicked here this morning that he would not be made now to seek for mercy, however infidel he might be; however rooted in his prejudices against the gospel, Jehovah hath to will it, and it is done. Into thy dark heart, O thou who hast never seen the light, would the light stream; if he did but say, 'Let there be light,' there would be light.

Thou mayest bend thy fist and lift up thy mouth against Jehovah; but he is thy master yet.

--quoted in Iain Murray, The Forgotten Spurgeon (Banner of Truth, 1966), 91
Dane Ortlund

How to Spell 'Grace'

Spurgeon, in a sermon during his later years--

I have known some that, at first conversion, have not been very clear in the gospel, who have been made evangelical by their discoveries of their own need of mercy. They could not spell the word 'grace.' They began with a G, but they very soon went on with an F, till it spelt very like 'freewill' before they had done with it.

But after they have learned their weakness, after they have fallen into serious fault, and God has restored them, or after they have passed through deep depression of mind, they have sung a new song. In the school of repentance they have learned to spell. They began to write the word 'free,' but they went on from free, not to 'will' but to 'grace.' And there it stood in capitals, 'FREE GRACE'. . . . They became clearer in their divinity, and truer in their faith than ever they were before.

--quoted in Iaian Murray, The Forgotten Spurgeon (Banner of Truth 1966), 69-70
Dane Ortlund