The Prince of Preachers Charles
Haddon Spurgeon has been called England's greatest contribution
to the spread of the gospel in the
19th century.
One of his contemporaries said that the chief
secret of Spurgeon's attractiveness was the fact that
in every sermon, no matter what the text
or the occasion, he explained the way of
salvation in simple terms.
Spurgeon's messages remain one of the great treasure
houses of Christian literature, still bringing the light
of the gospel and the comfort of the
scriptures to hungry souls long after the preacher
has passed into glory.
This is Charles Kelsch inviting you to listen
to a message from the Prince of Preachers.
C.
H.
Spurgeon preached this message on April 15th, 1860
at the New Park Street Chapel.
It is entitled, Christ Our Substitute.
The text is found in 2 Corinthians chapter
5 and verse 21.
For he hath made him to be sin
for us, who knew no sin, that we
might be made the righteousness of God in
him.
Some time ago an excellent lady sought an
interview with me with the object, as she
said, of enlisting my sympathy upon the question
of anti-capital punishment.
I heard the excellent reasons she urged against
hanging men who had committed murder, and though
they did not convince me, I did not
seek to answer them.
She proposed that when a man committed murder
he should be confined for life.
My remark was that a great many men
who had been confined half their lives were
not a bit the better for it, and
as for her belief that they would necessarily
be brought to repentance, I was afraid it
was but a dream.
Ah, said she, good soul as she was,
that is because we have been all wrong
about punishments.
We punish people because we think they deserve
to be punished.
Now we ought to show them, said she,
that we love them, that we only punish
them to make them better.
Indeed, madam, I said, I have heard that
theory a great many times, and I have
seen much fine writing upon the matter, but
I am no believer in it.
The design of punishment should be amendment, but
the ground of punishment lies in the positive
guilt of the offender.
I believe that when a man does wrong
he ought to be punished for it, and
that there is a guilt in sin which
justly merits punishment.
Oh no, she could not see that.
Sin is a very wrong thing, but punishment
was not a proper idea.
She thought that people were treated too cruelly
in prison, and that they ought to be
taught that we love them.
If they were treated kindly in prison and
tenderly dealt with, they would grow so much
better, she was sure.
With a view of interpreting her own theory,
I said, I suppose then you would give
criminals all sorts of indulgences in prison.
Some great vagabond who has committed burglary dozens
of times, I suppose you would let him
sit in an easy chair in the evening
before a nice fire, and mix him a
glass of spirits and water, and give him
his pipe, and make him happy, to show
him how much we love him.
Well no, she would not give him the
spirits, but still all the rest would do
him good.
I thought that was a delightful picture, certainly.
It seemed to me to be the most
prolific method of cultivating rogues which ingenuity could
invent.
I imagine that you could grow any number
of thieves in that way, for it would
be a special means of propagating all manner
of roguery and wickedness.
These very delightful theories to such a simple
mind as mine were the source of much
amusement.
The idea of fondling villains and treating their
crimes as if they were the tumbles and
falls of children made me laugh heartily.
I fancied I saw the government resigning its
functions to these excellent persons, and the grand
results of their marvelously kind experiments.
The sword of the magistrate transformed into a
gruel spoon, and the jail became a sweet
retreat for injured reputations.
Little, however, did I think I should live
to see this kind of stuff taught in
pulpits.
I had no idea that there would come
out a divinity which would bring down God's
moral government from the solemn aspect in which
Scripture reveals it, to a namby-pamby sentimentalism
which adores a deity destitute of every masculine
virtue.
But we never know today what may occur
tomorrow.
We have lived to see a certain sort
of men—thank God they are not Baptists, though
I am sorry to say there are a
great many Baptists who are beginning to follow
in their trail— who seek to teach nowadays
that God is a universal Father, and that
our ideas of his dealing with the impenitent
as a judge and not as a father
are remnants of antiquated error.
Sin, according to these men, is a disorder
rather than an offense, and error rather than
a crime.
Love is the only attribute they can discern,
and the full-orbed deity they have not
known.
Some of these men push their way very
far into the bogs and mire of falsehood
until they inform us that eternal punishment is
ridiculed as a dream.
In fact, books now appear which teach us
that there is no such thing as the
vicarious sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ.
They use the word atonement, it is true,
but in regard to its meaning they have
removed the ancient landmark.
They acknowledge that the Father has shown his
great love to poor sinful men by sending
his Son, but not that God was inflexibly
just in the exhibition of his mercy, not
that he punished Christ on the behalf of
his people, nor that indeed God ever will
punish anybody in his wrath, or that there
is such a thing as justice apart from
discipline.
Even sin and hell are but old words
employed henceforth in a new and altered sense.
Those are old-fashioned notions, and we poor
souls who go on talking about election and
imputed righteousness are behind our time.
I and the gentlemen who bring out books
on this subject applaud Mr. Morris and Professor
Scott and the like, but are too cowardly
to follow them and boldly propound these sentiments.
These are the new men whom God has
sent down from heaven to tell us that
the apostle Paul was all wrong, that our
faith is vain, that we have been quite
mistaken, that there was no need for propitiating
blood to wash away our sins, that the
fact was our sins needed discipline, but penal
vengeance and righteous wrath are quite out of
the question.
When I thus speak, I am free to
confess that such ideas are not boldly taught
by a certain individual whose volume excites these
remarks, but as he puffs the books of
gross perverters of the truth, I am compelled
to believe that he endorses such theology.
Well, brethren, I am happy to say that
sort of stuff has not gained entrance into
this pulpit.
I dare say the worms will eat the
wood before there will be anything of that
sort sounded in this place.
And may these bones be picked by vultures,
and this flesh be rent asunder by lions,
and may every nerve in this body suffer
pangs and tortures ere these lips shall give
utterance to any such doctrines or sentiments.
We are content to remain among the vulgar
souls who believe the old doctrines of grace.
We are willing to still be behind in
the great march of intellect and stand by
that unmoving cross, which, like the pole star,
never advances because it never stirs, but always
abides in its place, the guide of the
soul to heaven, the one foundation other than
which no man can lay, and without building
upon which no man shall ever see the
face of God and live.
Thus much have I said upon a matter
which is now exciting controversy.
It has been my high privilege to be
associated with six of our ablest brethren in
the ministry in a letter of protest against
the countenance which a certain newspaper seemed willing
to lend to this modern heresy.
We trust it may be the means in
the hands of God of helping to check
that downward march, that wandering from truth which
seems by some singular infatuation to have unsettled
the minds of some brethren in our denomination.
Now I come to address you upon the
topic which is most continually assailed by those
who preach another gospel, which is not another,
but there be some that trouble you and
would pervert the gospel of Christ, namely, the
doctrine of the substitution of Christ on our
behalf, His actual atonement for our sins, and
our positive and actual justification through His sufferings
and righteousness.
It seems to me that until language can
mean the very reverse of what it says,
until by some strange logic God's word can
be contradicted and can be made to belie
itself, the doctrine of substitution can never be
rooted out of the words which I have
selected for my text.
He hath made Him to be sin for
us who knew no sin, that we might
be made the righteousness of God in Him.
First, then, the sinlessness of the substitute, secondly,
the reality of the imputation of sin to
Him, and thirdly, the glorious reality of the
imputation of righteousness to us.
First, the sinlessness of the substitute.
The doctrine of Holy Scripture is this, that
inasmuch as man could not keep God's law,
having fallen in Adam, Christ came and fulfilled
the law on the behalf of His people,
and that inasmuch as man had already broken
the divine law and incurred the penalty of
the wrath of God, Christ came and suffered
in the room, place, and stead of His
elect ones, that so by His enduring the
full vials of wrath they might be emptied
out, and not a drop might ever fall
upon the heads of His blood-bought people.
Now you will readily perceive that if one
is to be a substitute for another before
God, either to work out a righteousness or
to suffer a penalty, that substitute must himself
be free from sin.
If he hath sin of his own, all
that he can suffer will be but the
due reward of his own iniquity.
If he hath himself transgressed, he cannot suffer
for another, because all his sufferings are already
due on his own personal account.
On the other hand, it is quite clear
that none but a perfect man could ever
work out a spotless righteousness for us and
keep the law in our stead, for if
he hath dishonored the commandment in his thought,
there must be a corresponding flaw in his
service.
If the wharf and wolf be speckled, how
shall he bring forth the robe of milk
-white purity and wrap it about our loins?
He must be a spotless one who shall
become the representative of his people, either to
give them a passive or active righteousness, either
to offer a satisfaction as the penalty of
their sins, or a righteousness as the fulfillment
of God's demand.
It is satisfactory for us to know and
to believe beyond a doubt that our Lord
Jesus was without sin.
Of course, in His divine nature He could
not know iniquity, and as for His human
nature, it never knew the original taint of
depravity.
He was of the seed of the woman,
but not of the tainted and infected seed
of Adam.
Overshadowed as was the Virgin by the Holy
Ghost, no corruption entered into His nativity.
That holy thing which was born of Her
was neither conceived in sin nor shaped in
iniquity.
He was brought into this world immaculate.
He was immaculately conceived and immaculately born.
In Him that natural black blood which we
have inherited from Adam never dwelt.
His heart was upright within Him.
His soul was without any bias to evil.
His imagination had never been darkened.
He had no infatuated mind.
There was no tendency whatever in Him but
to do that which was good, holy, and
honorable.
And as He did not share in the
original depravity, so He did not share in
the imputed sin of Adam which we have
inherited.
Not, I mean, in Himself personally, though He
took the consequences of that as He stood
as our representative.
The sin of Adam had never passed over
the head of the second Adam.
All that were in the loins of Adam
sinned in Him when He touched the fruit.
But Jesus was not in the loins of
Adam.
Though He might be conceived of as being
in the womb of a woman, a new
thing which the Lord created in the earth,
He lay not in Adam when He sinned.
And consequently no guilt from Adam, either of
depravity of nature or of distance from God,
ever fell upon Jesus as the result of
anything that Adam did.
I mean upon Jesus as considered in Himself,
though He certainly took the sin of Adam
as He was the representative of His people.
Again, as in His nature He was free
from the corruption and condemnation of the sin
of Adam, so also in His life no
sin ever corrupted His way.
His eye never flashed with unhallowed anger.
His lip never uttered a treacherous or deceitful
word.
His heart never harbored an evil imagination.
Never did He wander after lust.
No covetousness ever so much as glanced into
His soul.
He was holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners.
From the beginning of His life to the
end, you cannot put your finger even upon
a mistake, much less upon a willful error.
So perfect was He that no virtue seems
to preponderate or by an opposing quality give
a bias to the scale of absolute rectitude.
John is distinguished for his love, Peter for
his courage, but Jesus Christ is distinguished for
neither one above another because He possesses all
in such sublime unison, such heavenly harmony, that
no one virtue stands out above the rest.
He is meek, but He is courageous.
He is loving, but He is decided.
He is bold as a lion, yet He
is quiet and peaceful as a lamb.
He was like that fine flower which was
offered before God in the burnt offering, a
flower without grit, so smooth that when you
rubbed it, it was soft and pure, no
particles could be discerned.
So was His character fully ground, fully compounded.
There was not one feature in His moral
countenance which had undue preponderance above the other,
but He was replete in everything that was
virtuous and good.
Tempted He was, it is true, but sinned
He never.
The whirlwind came from the wilderness and smote
upon the four corners of that house, but
it fell not, for it was founded upon
a rock.
The rains descended, heaven afflicted Him.
The winds blew, the mysterious agency of hell
assailed Him.
The floods came, all earth was in arms
against Him, but yet He stood firm in
the midst of all.
Never once did He even seem to bend
before the tempest, but buffeting the fury of
the blast, bearing all the temptations that could
ever happen to man which summed themselves up
and consummated their fury on Him, He stood
to the end without a single flaw in
His life or a stain upon His spotless
robe.
Let us rejoice then in this, my beloved
brothers and sisters, that we have such a
substitute, one who is fit and proper to
stand in our place and to suffer in
our stead, seeing He has no need to
offer a sacrifice for Himself, no need to
cry for Himself, Father, I have sinned, no
need to bend the knee of the penitent
and confess His own iniquities, for He is
without spot or blemish, the perfect Lamb of
God's Passover.
I would have you carefully notice the particular
expression of the text, for it struck me
as being very beautiful and significant.
Who knew no sin.
It does not merely say did none, but
knew none.
Sin was no acquaintance of His.
He was acquainted with grief, but no acquaintance
of sin.
He had to walk in the midst of
its most frequented haunts, but did not know
it.
Not that He was ignorant of its nature
or did not know its penalty, but He
did not know it.
He was a stranger to it.
He never gave it the wink or nod
of familiar recognition.
Of course He knew what sin was, for
He was very God, but with sin He
had no communion, no fellowship, no brotherhood.
He was a perfect stranger in the presence
of sin.
He was a foreigner.
He was not an inhabitant of that land
where sin is acknowledged.
He passed through the wilderness of suffering, but
into the wilderness of sin He could never
go.
He knew no sin.
Mark that expression and treasure it up.
And when you are thinking of your Substitute
and see Him hang bleeding upon the cross,
think that you see written in those lines
of blood written along His blessed body.
He knew no sin.
Mingled with the redness of His blood, that
rose of Sharon.
Behold the purity of His nature, the lily
of the valley.
He knew no sin.
Let us pass on to notice the second
and most important point.
The actual substitution of Christ and the real
imputation of sin to Him.
He made Him to be sin for us.
Here be careful to observe who transferred the
sin.
God the Father laid on Jesus the iniquities
of us all.
Man could not make Christ sin.
Man could not transfer His guilt to another.
It is not for us to say whether
Christ could or could not have made Himself
sin for us, but certain it is.
He did not take this priesthood upon Himself,
but He was called of God, as was
Aaron.
The Redeemer's vicarious position is warranted, nay, ordained
by divine authority.
He hath made Him to be sin for
us.
I must now beg you to notice how
very explicit the term is.
Some of our expositors will have it that
the word here used must mean sin offering.
He made Him to be a sin offering
for us.
I thought it well to look to my
Greek testament to see whether it could be
so.
Of course we all know that the word
here translated sin is very often translated sin
offering.
But it is always useful when you have
a disputed passage to look it through and
see whether in this case the word would
bear such a meaning.
These commentators say it means a sin offering.
Well, I will read it.
He hath made Him to be a sin
offering for us who knew no sin offering.
Does not that strike you as being ridiculous?
But they are precisely the same words.
And if it be fair to translate it
sin offering in one place, it must in
all reason be fair to translate it so
in the other.
The fact is, while in some passages it
may be rendered sin offering, in this passage
it cannot be so, because it would be
to run counter to all honesty to translate
the same word in the same sentence two
different ways.
No, we must take them as they stand.
He hath made Him to be sin for
us.
Not merely an offering, but sin for us.
My predecessor, Dr. Gill, edited the works of
Tobias Crisp.
But Tobias Crisp went further than Dr. Gill
or any of us can approve.
For in one place Crisp calls Christ a
sinner, though he does not mean that he
ever sinned himself.
He actually calls Christ a transgressor and justifies
himself by that passage which says he was
numbered with the transgressors.
Martin Luther is refuted to have broadly said
that although Jesus Christ was sinless, yet He
was the greatest sinner that ever lived because
all the sins of His people lay upon
Him.
Now, such expressions I think to be unguarded,
if not profane.
Certainly Christian men should take care that they
use not language which, by the ignorant and
uninstructed, may be translated to mean what they
never intended to teach.
The fact is, brethren, that in no sense
whatever take that as I say it, in
no sense whatever can Jesus Christ ever be
conceived of as having been guilty.
He knew no sin.
Not only was He not guilty of any
sin which He committed Himself, but He was
not guilty of our sins.
No guilt can possibly attach to a man
who has not been guilty.
He must have had complicity in the deed
itself, or else no guilt can possibly be
laid on Him.
Jesus Christ stands in the midst of all
the divine thunders and suffers all the punishment,
but not a drop of sin ever stained
Him.
In no sense is He ever a guilty
man, but always is He an accepted and
a holy one.
What, then, is the meaning of that very
forcible expression of my text?
We must interpret scriptural modes of expression by
the verbiage of the speakers.
We know that our Master once said Himself,
This cup is the new covenant in my
blood.
He did not mean that the cup was
the covenant.
He said, Take, eat, this is my body.
No one of us conceives that the bread
is the literal flesh and blood of Christ.
We take that bread as if it were
the body, and it actually represents it.
Now, we are to read a passage like
this, according to the analogy of faith.
Jesus Christ was made by His Father sin
for us.
That is, He was treated as if He
had Himself been sin.
He was not sin.
He was not sinful.
He was not guilty.
But He was treated by His Father as
if He had not only been sinful, but
as if He had been sin itself.
That is a strong expression used here.
Not only hath He made Him to be
the substitute for sin, but to be sin.
God looked on Christ as if Christ had
been sin, not as if He had taken
up the sins of His people, or as
if they were laid on Him, though that
were true, but as if He Himself had
positively been that noxious, that God-hating, that
soul-damning thing called sin.
When the judge of all the earth said,
Where is sin?
Christ presented Himself.
He stood before His Father as if He
had been the accumulation of all human guilt,
as if He Himself were that thing which
God cannot endure, but which He must drive
from His presence forever.
And now see how this making of Jesus
to be sin was enacted to the fullest
extent.
The righteous Lord looked on Christ as being
sin, and therefore Christ must be taken without
the camp.
Sin cannot be born in God's Zion, cannot
be allowed to dwell in God's Jerusalem.
It must be taken without the camp.
It is a leprous thing.
Put it away.
Cast out from fellowship, from love, from pity,
sin must ever be.
Take Him away.
Take Him away, ye crowd.
Hurry Him through the streets and bear Him
to Calvary.
Take Him without the camp.
As was the beast which was offered for
sin without the camp, so must Christ be
who was made sin for us.
And now God looks on Him as being
sin, and sin must bear punishment.
Christ is punished.
The most fearful of deaths is extracted at
His hand, and God has no pity for
Him.
How should He have pity on sin?
God hates it.
No tongue can tell.
No soul can divine the terrible hatred of
God to that which is evil.
And He treats Christ as if He were
sin.
He prays, but heaven shuts out His prayer.
He cries for water, but heaven and earth
refuse to wet His lips except with vinegar.
He turns His eye to heaven, but He
sees nothing there.
How should He?
God cannot look on sin, and sin cannot
have any claim on God.
My God, my God, He cries, why hast
Thou forsaken Me?
O solemn necessity, how could God do anything
with sin but forsake it?
How could iniquity have fellowship with God?
Shall divine smiles rest on sin?
Nay, nay, it must not be.
Therefore is it that he who is made
sin must be moaned.
Desertion and terror.
God cannot touch Him, cannot dwell with Him,
cannot come near Him.
He is abhorred, cast away.
It hath pleased the Father to bruise Him.
He hath put Him to grief.
At last He dies.
God will not keep Him in life.
How should He?
Is it not the meatiest thing in the
world that sin should be buried?
Bury it out of My sight.
Hide this corruption.
And lo, Jesus, as if He were sin,
is put away out of the sight of
God and man as a thing obnoxious.
I do not know whether I have clearly
uttered what I want to state.
But what a grim picture that is.
To conceive of sin gathered up into one
mass.
Murder, lust, and rapine, and adultery, and all
manner of crime all piled together in one
hideous heap.
We ourselves, brethren, impure though we be, could
not bear this.
How much less should God with His pure
and holy eyes bear with that mass of
sin.
And yet there it is.
And God looked upon Christ as if He
were that mass of sin.
He was not sin, but He looked upon
Him as made sin for us.
He stands in our place, assumes our guilt,
takes on Him our iniquity, and God treats
Him as if He had been sin.
Now, my dear brothers and sisters, let us
just lift up our hearts with gratitude for
a few moments.
Here we are tonight.
We know that we are guilty.
But our sins have all been punished years
ago.
Before my soul believed in Christ, the punishment
of my sin had all been endured.
We are not to think that Christ's blood
derives its efficacy from our faith.
Fact precedes faith.
Christ hath redeemed us.
Faith discovers this.
But it was a fact long before we
knew it, and an undisputed fact, too.
Today we are secure because of that finished
sacrifice.
Though still defiled by sin, yet who can
lay anything to the charge of the man
whose guilt is gone, lifted bodily from off
him and put upon Christ?
How can any punishment fall on that man
who ceases to possess sins because his sin
has eighteen hundred years ago been cast upon
Christ, and Christ has suffered in his place
instead?
O glorious triumph of faith!
To be able to say, whenever I feel
the guilt of sin, whenever conscience pricks me,
Yes, it is true, but my Lord is
answerable for it all, for He has taken
it all upon Himself and suffered in my
room and place instead.
How precious, when I see my deaths, to
be able to say, Yes, but the blood
of Christ, God's dear Son, hath cleansed me
from all sin.
How precious not only to see my sin
dying when I believe, but to know that
it was dead, it was gone, it ceased
to be eighteen hundred years ago.
All the sins that you and I have
ever committed, or ever shall commit, if we
be heirs of mercy and children of God,
are all dead things.
Our Jesus nailed them to His cross and
sung the triumph when He rose.
These cannot rise in judgment to condemn us.
They have all been slain, shrouded, buried.
They are removed from us as far as
the east is from the west, because He
hath made Him to be sinned for us
who knew no sin.
You see then the reality of the imputation
of sin to Christ from the amazing doctrine
that Christ is made sin for us.
But now notice the concluding thought, upon which
I must dwell a moment, but it must
be very briefly, for two reasons.
My time is gone and my strength is
gone too.
That we might be made the righteousness of
God in Him.
Now here I beg you to notice that
it does not simply say that we might
be made righteous, but that we might be
made the righteousness of God in Him, as
if righteousness, that lovely, glorious, God-honoring, God
-delighting thing, as if we were actually made
that.
God looks on His people as being abstract
righteousness, not only righteous, but righteousness.
To be righteous is as if a man
should have a box covered with gold.
The box would then be golden.
But to be righteousness is to have a
box of solid gold.
To be a righteous man is to have
righteousness cast over me.
But to be made righteousness, that is to
be made solid, essential righteousness in the sight
of God.
Well now, this is a glorious fact, and
the most wonderful privilege, that we poor sinners
are made the righteousness of God in Him.
God sees no sin in any one of
His people, no iniquity in Jacob, when He
looks upon them in Christ.
In themselves He sees nothing but filth and
abomination, in Christ nothing but purity and righteousness.
Is it not, and must it not ever
be to the Christian, one of His most
delightful privileges to know that altogether apart from
anything that we have ever done or can
do, God looks upon His people as being
righteous, nay, as being righteousness, and that despite
all the sins they've ever committed, they are
accepted in Him as if they had been
Christ, while Christ was punished for them as
if He had been sin?
Why, when I stand in my own place,
I am lost and ruined.
My place is the place where Judas stood,
the place where the devil lies in everlasting
shame.
But when I stand in Christ's place, and
I fail to stand where faith has put
me till I stand there, when I stand
in Christ's place, the Father's everlastingly beloved one,
the Father's accepted one, He whom the Father
delighteth to honor, when I stand there, I
stand where faith has a right to put
me, and I am in the most joyous
spot that a creature of God can occupy.
O Christian, get thee up, get thee up
into the high mountain, and stand where thy
Savior stands, for that is thy place.
Lie not there on the dunghill of fallen
humanity.
That is not thy place now.
Christ has once taken it on thy behalf.
He made Him to be sin for us.
Thy place is yonder there, above the starry
host, where He hath raised us up together
and made us sit together in heavenly places
in Him.
Not there at the day of judgment, where
the wicked shriek for shelter and beg for
the hills to cover them.
But there, where Jesus sits upon His throne,
there is thy place, my soul.
He will make thee to sit upon His
throne, even as He has overcome and as
sat down with His Father upon His throne.
O that I could mount to the heights
of this argument tonight!
It needs a Seraphic preacher to picture the
saint in Christ, robed in Christ's righteousness, wearing
Christ's nature, bearing Christ's palm of victory, sitting
on Christ's throne, wearing Christ's crown.
And yet this is our privilege.
He wore my crown, the crown of thorns.
I wear His crown, the crown of glory.
He wore my dress.
Nay, rather, He wore my nakedness when He
died upon the cross.
I wear His robes, the royal robes of
the King of kings.
He bore my shame.
I bear His honor.
He endured my sufferings to this end, that
my joy may be full and that His
joy may be fulfilled in me.
He laid in the grave that I might
rise from the dead and that I may
dwell in Him.
And all this He comes again to give
me, to make it sure to me and
to all that love His appearing, to show
that all His people shall enter into their
inheritance.
Now, my brothers and sisters, Mr. Morris, McLeod,
Campbell, and their great admirer, Mr. Brown, may
go on with their preaching as long as
they like, but they will never make a
convert of a man who knows what the
vitality of religion is.
For he who knows what substitution means, he
who knows what it is to stand where
Christ stands, will never occupy the ground on
which Mr. Morris stands.
He who has ever been made to sit
together with Christ and wants to enjoy the
real preciousness of a transfer of Christ's righteousness
to Him and His sin to Christ, that
man has eaten the bread of heaven and
will never renounce it for husks.
No, my brethren, we could lay down our
lives for this truth rather than give it
up.
No, we cannot by any means turn aside
from this glorious stability of faith and for
this good reason that there is nothing for
us in the doctrine which these men teach.
It may suit intellectual gentlefolk.
I dare say it does, but it will
not suit us.
We are poor sinners and nothing at all,
and if Christ is not our all in
all, there is nothing for us.
I have often thought that the best answer
for all these new ideas is that the
true gospel was always preached to the poor.
The poor have the gospel preached to them.
I am sure that the poor will never
learn the gospel of these new divines, for
they cannot make head or tail of it,
nor the rich either.
For after you have read through one of
their volumes, you have not the least idea
of what the book is about until you
have read it through eight or nine times.
Then you begin to think you are very
stupid for ever having read such inflated heresy,
for it sours your temper and makes you
feel angry to see the precious truths of
God trodden underfoot.
Some of us must stand out against these
attacks on truth, although we love not controversy.
We rejoice in the liberty of our fellow
men and would have them proclaim their convictions,
but if they touch these precious things, they
touch the apple of our eye.
We can allow a thousand opinions in the
world, but that which infringes upon the precious
doctrine of a covenant salvation through the imputed
righteousness of our Lord Jesus Christ, against that
we must and will enter our hearty and
solemn protest as long as God spares us.
Take away once from us these glorious doctrines,
and where are we, brethren?
We may lay us down and die for
nothing remains that is worth living for.
We have come to the valley of the
shadow of death when we find these doctrines
to be untrue.
If these things which I speak to you
tonight be not the verities of Christ, if
they be not true, there is no comfort
left for any poor man under God's sky,
and it were better for us never to
have been born.
I may say what Jonathan Edwards says at
the end of his book.
If any man could disprove the doctrines of
the gospel, he should then sit down and
weep to think they were not true.
For, says he, it would be the most
dreadful calamity that could happen to the world
to have a glimpse of such truths, and
then for them to melt away in the
thin air of fiction as having no substantiality
in them.
Stand up for the truth of Christ.
I would not have you to be bigoted,
but I would have you to be decided.
Do not give countenance to any of this
trash and error which is going abroad, but
stand firm.
Be not turned away from your steadfastness by
any pretense of intellectuality and high philosophy, but
earnestly contend for the faith once delivered to
the saints, and hold fast the form of
sound words which you have heard of us
and have been taught, even as ye have
read in this sacred book, which is the
way of everlasting life.
Thus then, my beloved, without gathering up my
strength for the fray, or attempting to analyze
the subtleties of those who would pervert the
simple gospel, I speak out my mind and
utter the kindlings of my heart among you.
Little enough will ye wreck over whom the
Holy Ghost hath given me the oversight what
the grievous wolves may design if ye keep
within the fold.
Break not the sacred bounds wherein God hath
enclosed His church.
He hath encircled us in the arms of
covenant love.
He hath united us in indissoluble bonds to
the Lord Jesus.
He hath fortified us with the assurance that
the Holy Spirit shall guide us into all
truth.
God grant that those beyond the pale of
visible fellowship with us in this eternal gospel
may see their danger and escape from the
fowler's snare.
This message, Christ Our Substitute, was preached by
Charles Haddon Spurgeon on April 15, 1860.
This is Charles Kelsch inviting you to join
me again for another message from the Prince
of Preachers.