Father, Glorify Thy Name!

Why is Christ resolved to die? Is it to save men? Yes, but not as the chief reason. His first prayer is not, “Father, save my people,” but “Father, glorify thy name.” The glory of God was the chief end and object of our Savior’s life and death. It is that the Father’s name may be illustrious that Jesus would have souls redeemed. His passion had for its main intent the exhibition of the attributes of God. And, brethren, how completely he has glorified Jehovah’s name! Upon the cross we see the divine justice in the streaming wounds of the great Substitute: for the Son of God must needs die when sin is laid upon him. There also you behold infinite wisdom, for what but infallible wisdom could have devised the way whereby God might be just and yet the justifier of him that believeth. There, too, is love, rich, free, boundless love - never so conspicuous as in the death of man’s Redeemer.

Till this day it still remains a question concerning the atonement which of the letters best is writ, the justice, the wisdom, or the love. In the atonement the divine attributes are all so perfectly glorified that no one crowds out the other: each one has its full display without in the least degree diminishing the glory of any other. Our blessed Lord, that the Father might be glorified, pushed on to the end which he had set before him. Whatever conflict might be within his spirit, his heart was fixed upon bearing to the death our load, and suffering to the end our penalty.

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "A Golden Prayer," delivered December 30, 1877. Image by jd.echendar on Flickr under Creative Commons License.

His Ways Are Higher Than Ours

Could man have dreamed that he was the object of eternal love, and that God would assume his nature? Could we have imagined that the Almighty would give his only-begotten Son to die for guilty man? The atonement was a thought which never would have crossed man’s mind if it had not first of all been revealed to him by the great Father. The divine way of lifting up the poor from the dust and the needy from the dunghill, by his rich, free, omnipotent grace, is not of man nor by man. 

The Lord’s thought of choosing the base things of this world, and things that are not to bring to nought the things that are, his thoughts of sovereignty and thoughts of grace, all consistent with his thoughts of justice, are far above human invention, and out of man’s range of thought. Even when the Lord explains his thoughts and ways to us, and brings them down to our comprehension as far as they can be, yet we cannot fail to wonder at their elevation and grandeur...

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "God's Thought And Ways far Above Ours," delivered December 2, 1877. Image by Peggy2012CREATIVELENZ on Flickr under Creative Commons License.

Nothing But The Blood

That part of the line of battle which is most fiercely assailed by the enemy is sure to be that which he knows to be most important to carry. Men hate those they fear. The antagonism of the enemies of the gospel is mainly against the cross. From the very first it was so. They cried “Let him come down from the cross and we will believe in him.” They will write us pretty lives of Christ and tell us what an excellent man he was, and do our Lord such homage as their Judas’ lips can afford him; they will also take his sermon on the mount and say what a wonderful insight he had into the human heart, and what a splendid code of morals he taught, and so on. “We will be Christians” say they, “but the dogma of atonement we utterly reject.”

Our answer is, we do not care one farthing what they have to say about our Master if they deny his substitutionary sacrifice, whether they give him wine or vinegar is a small question so long as they reject the claims of the Crucified. The praises of unbelievers are sickening; who wants to hear polluted lips lauding him? Such sugared words are very like those which came out of the mouth of the devil when he said “Thou Son of the Highest,” and Jesus rebuked him and said “Hold thy peace, and come out of him.” Even thus would we say to unbelievers who extol Christ’s life: “Hold your peace! We know your enmity, disguise it as you may. Jesus is the Savior of men or he is nothing; if you will not have Christ crucified you cannot have him at all.”

My brethren in Jesus let us glory in the blood of Jesus, let it be conspicuous as though it were sprinkled upon the lintel and the two side posts of our doors, and let the world know that redemption by blood is written upon the innermost tablets of our hearts.

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "The Man Of One Subject," delivered October 31, 1875. Image by Steve Dunleavy on Flickr under Creative Commons License.

Saved Through God's Own Blood

If one man might suffer for another, yet one man’s sufferings could not avail for ten thousand times ten thousand men. What efficacy could there be in the death of one innocent person to put away the transgressions of a multitude? Nay, but because he who carried our sins up to the tree was God over all, blessed for ever; because he who suffered his feet to be fastened to the wood was none other than that same Word who was in the beginning with God, and who also was God; because he who bowed his head to death was none other than the Christ, who is immortality and life: — his dying had efficacy in it to take away the sins of all for whom he died.

As I think of my Redeemer and remember that he is God himself, I feel that if he took my nature and died, then indeed my sin is gone. I can rest on that. I am sure that if he who is infinite and omnipotent offered a satisfaction for my sins I need not enquire as to the sufficiency of the atonement, for who dares to suggest a limit to its power? What Jesus did and suffered must be equal to any emergency. Were my sins even greater than they are his blood could make them whiter than snow. If God incarnate died in my stead my iniquities are cleansed.

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "Jesus, The Substitute For His People." Image by Steve Garvie on Flickr under Creative Commons License.

Messiah was cut off

Now Messiah was to be cut off, but not for himself; he was to make his soul an offering for sin, he was to make his grave with the wicked, and lie in the heart of the earth. The blood of the covenant was to be shed, the paschal victim was to be slain, the Shepherd was to be smitten, the Lamb was to be led to the slaughter, and therefore only by the shedding of his blood could Jesus prove himself to be the Messiah so long foretold.

However pure the life he led, had he never died he could not have been the Savior appointed to bear the iniquity of us all. The blood was needed to complete the witness. The blood must now with the water, the suffering with the serving. The most pious example would not have proved him to be the divine Shepherd, if he had not laid down his life for the sheep. Take away the atonement, and Jesus is no more than any other prophet, the essential point of his mission is gone. It is evident that he who was to come was to finish transgression, and to make reconciliation for iniquity. Now, this could not be done except by an expiation, and as Jesus has made such an expiation by his own blood, we know him to be the Christ of God. His blood is the seal of his mission, the very life of his work.

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "The Three Witnesses," delivered August 9, 1874. Image by blinking idiot on Flickr under Creative Commons License.

Not merely like a man, but man indeed

Less than God could not have borne your sin so as to put it away; but the infinitely glorious Son of God did actually stoop to become a sin-bearer. I wonder how I can talk of it as I do.

 It is a truth scarcely to be declared in words. It wants flame and blood and tears with which to tell this story of an offended God, the Heaven-Maker and the Earth-Creator, stooping from his glory that he might save the reptiles which had dared to insult his honor and to rebel against his glory; and, becoming one of them, to suffer for them, that without violation of his law he might have pity upon the offending things — things so inconsiderable that if he had stamped them all out, as men burn a nest of wasps, there had been no loss to the universe. But he had pity on them, and became one of them, and bare their sins. Oh, love ye him; adore ye him; let your souls climb up to the right hand of the majesty above, this morning, and there bow down in lowliest reverence and adoring affection, that he, the God over all, whom you had offended, should his own self bear our sins.

Though thus God over all, he became a man like unto ourselves; a body was prepared for him, and that body, mark you, not prepared alone, and made like to man but not of man. No, he was not otherwise fashioned than ourselves, he came into the world as we also come, born of a woman, a child of a mother, to hang upon a woman’s breast; not merely like to man, but man, born in the pedigree of manhood, and so bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh, yet without a taint of sin. And he, in that double nature but united person, was Jesus, Son of God and Son of the Virgin; he it was who “bare our sins in his own body on the tree.”

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "Death For Sin, And Death To Sin," delivered November 16, 1873. Image by itslegitx on Flickr under Creative Commons License.

Let us talk about the best things

There is no preaching the gospel if the atonement be left out. No matter how well we speak of Jesus as a pattern, we have done nothing unless we point him out as the substitute and sinbearer. We must, in fact, continually imitate the apostle, and speak plainly of him “Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree.” It is to Christ, then, this morning as the sin-bearer that I am about to direct your attention. It may not be many times longer that I may have the opportunity to preach the gospel, for bodily pain reminds me of my mortality. How soon are the hale and the strong, as well as the sickly, carried off! and so many during the last few days whom we knew have been borne from among us to the silent tomb, that we are reminded how feeble our life is, how short our time for service.

 Let us, then, brethren, deal always with the best things, and attend to the most necessary works while yet our little oil suffices to feed the lamp of life. Rising newly from a sick bed, I have felt that if any theme in the Scriptures has an importance far above all the rest, it is the subject of the atoning blood, and I have resolved to repeat that old, old story again and again.

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "Death For Sin And Death To Sin," delivered November 16, 1873. Image by itslegitx on Flickr under Creative Commons License.

Trifling with Divine Truth

There are some truths which must be believed, they are essential to salvation, and if not heartily accepted the soul will be ruined.... Now, in those days the saints did not say, as the sham saints do now, “We must be largely charitable, and leave this brother to his own opinion; he sees truth from a different standpoint, and has a rather different way of putting it, but his opinions are as good as our own, and we must not say that he is in error.” That is at present the fashionable way of trifling with divine truth, and making things pleasant all round. Thus the gospel is debased and another gospel propagated....

It was not in this way that the apostles regarded error. They did not prescribe large-hearted charity towards falsehood, or hold up the errorist as a man of deep thought, whose views were “refreshingly original;” far less did they utter some wicked nonsense about the probability of there being more faith in honest doubt than in half the creeds. They did not believe in justification by doubting, as our neologians do; they set about the conversion of the erring brother; they treated him as a person who needed conversion, and viewed him as a man who, if he were not converted, would suffer the death of his soul, and be covered with a multitude of sins. They were not such easy-going people as our cultured friends of the school of “modern thought,” who have learned at last that the deity of Christ may be denied, the work of the Holy Spirit ignored, the inspiration of Scripture rejected, the atonement disbelieved, and regeneration dispensed with, and yet the man who does all this may be as good a Christian as the most devout believer!

O God, deliver us from this deceitful infidelity, which while it does damage to the erring man, and often prevents his being reclaimed, does yet more mischief to our own hearts by teaching us that truth is unimportant, and falsehood a trifle, and so destroys our allegiance to the God of truth, and makes us traitors instead of loyal subjects to the King of kings.

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "To Sabbath-School Teachers And Other Soulwinners," delivered October 19, 1873. Image by Greg on Flickr under Creative Commons License.

Trees of Righteousness

We are not only freed from sin through his atonement, but we are rendered acceptable to God through his obedience as our responsible surety. We are “accepted in the beloved,” we are justified through his righteousness. God seeth not us marred in the likeness of the first Adam who sinned, but he seeth us in Christ, the second Adam, remade, redeemed, restored, arrayed in garments of glory and beauty, with the Savior’s vesture on, as holy as the Holy One. He seeth “no sin in Jacob nor iniquity in Israel.” When Jacob learns to trust in the Messiah, and Israel hides behind his representative, the Lord our Righteousness, Jacob ceases to wrestle, for he prevails, and Israel stands in honor, for he is a prince with God. Blessed, thrice blessed, are they who are partakers of Christ in his righteousness.

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "A Persuasive to Steadfastness," delivered February 29, 1872. Image by Paul Sapiano under Creative Commons License.

So that we might never bear it

Christ Jesus bore the wrath of God that we might never bear it. He has made a full atonement to the justice of God for the sins of all believers. Against him that believeth there remaineth no record of guilt; his transgressions are blotted out, for a Christ Jesus hath finished transgression, made an end of sin, and brought in everlasting righteousness. What a comprehensive word then is this — "salvation"! It is a triumphant deliverance from the guilt of sin, from the dominion of it, from the curse of it, from the punishment of it, and ultimately from the very existence of it. Salvation is the death of sin, its burial, its annihilation, yea, and the very obliteration of its memory; for thus saith the Lord: “their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more.”

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "Your Own Salvation," delivered July 30, 1871. Image by truds09 under Creative Commons License.

The infinite and atoning God

My brethren, when in the stillness of the starry night we look up to the orbs of heaven, and remember the marvelous truths which astronomy has revealed to us, of the magnificence, the inconceivable majesty of creation, if we then reflect that the infinite God who made all these became man for us, and that as man he was fastened to the transverse wood, and bled to death for us, why it will appear to us that if all the stars were crowded with inhabitants, and all those inhabitants had everyone been rebellious against God, and had steeped themselves up to the very throat in scarlet crimes, there must be efficacy enough in the blood of such a one as God himself incarnate to take all their sins away.... If thou believest in him it is done, for to trust him is to be clean.

From a sermon entitled "The Centurion's Faith And Humility," delivered March 15, 1868. Image by Jeff under Creative Commons License.

Christ has finished the work

All that has to be done to save a soul Christ has done already. There is no more ransom to be paid; to the last drachma he hath counted down the price. There is no more righteousness to be wrought out; to the last stitch he has finished the garment. There is nothing to be done to reconcile God to sinners; he hath reconciled us unto God by his blood. There is nothing wanted to clear the way to the mercy-seat; we have a new and living way through the veil that was rent, even the body of Christ. There is no need of any preparation for our reception on the part of God. “It is finished,” was the voice from Calvary; it meant what it said, “It is finished.” Christ hath finished transgression, made an end of sin, and brought in everlasting righteousness.

From a sermon entitled "Christ - Perfect Through Sufferings," delivered November 2, 1862. Flickr photo by Heather Katsoulis; some rights reserved.

Accepted before God

The doctrine of the atonement is very simple. It just consists in the substitution of Christ in the place of the sinner; Christ being treated as if he were the sinner, and then the transgressor being treated as if he were the righteous one. It is a change of persons; Christ becomes the sinner; he stands in the sinner’s place and stead; he was numbered with the transgressors; the sinner becomes righteous; he stands in Christ’s place and stead, and is numbered with the righteous ones. Christ has no sin of his own, but he takes human guilt, and is punished for human folly. We have no righteousness of our own’ but we take the divine righteousness; we are rewarded for it, and stand accepted before God as though that righteousness had been wrought out by ourselves. “In due time Christ died for the ungodly,” that he might take away their sins.

From a sermon entitled "The Old, Old Story," delivered March 30, 1862. Flickr photo by Kevin Law; some rights reserved.

Boundless love

Oh! I know my sins reach from the east even to the west — that aiming at the eternal skies they rise like pointed mountains towards hearer. But then, blessed be the name of God, the blood of Christ is wider than my sin. That shoreless flood of Jesus’ merit is deeper than the heights of mine iniquities. My sin may be great, but his merit is greater still. I cannot conceive my own guilt, much less express it, but the blood of Jesus Christ, God’s dear Son, cleanseth us from all sin. Infinite guilt, but infinite pardon. Boundless iniquities, but boundless merits to cover all.

What if thy sins were greater than heaven’s breadth, yet Christ is greater than heaven. The heaven of heavens cannot contain him. If thy sins were deeper than the bottomless hell, yet Christ’s atonement is deeper still, for he descended deeper than ever man himself as yet hath dived — even damned men in all the horror of their agony, for Christ went to the end of punishment, and deeper thy sins can never plunge. Oh! boundless love, that covers all my faults.

My poor hearer, believe on Christ now. God help thee to believe. May the Spirit now enable thee to trust in Jesus. Thou canst not save thyself. All hopes of selfsalvation are delusive. Now give up, have done with self, and take Christ. Just as thou art, drop into his arms. He will take thee; he will save thee. He died to do it, and he lives to accomplish it. He will not lose the spirit that casts itself into his hands and makes him his all in all.

From a sermon entitled "Sin Immeasurable," delivered February 12, 1860. Flickr photo by Laszlo Ilyes; some rights reserved.

Christ the Spotless Lamb

Flickr photo by Evgeni Dinev; some rights reserved.

Christ Jesus, too, like the lamb, was not only a divinely appointed victim, but he was spotless. Had there been one sin in Christ, he had not been capable of being our Savior; but he was without spot or blemish — without original sin, without any practical transgression. In him was no sin,though he was “tempted in all points like as we are.”

Here, again, is the reason why the blood is able to save, because it is the blood of an innocent victim, a victim the only reason for whose death lay in us, and not in himself. When the poor innocent lamb was put to death, by the head of the household of Egypt, I can imagine that thoughts like these ran through his mind. “Ah!” he would say, as he struck the knife into the lamb, “This poor creature dies, not for any guilt that it has ever had, but to show me that I am guilty, and that I deserved to die like this.” Turn, then, your eye to the cross, and see Jesus bleeding there and dying for you. Remember, “For sins not his own, he died to atone;”

Sin had no foothold in him, never troubled him. The prince of this world came and looked, but he said, “I have nothing in Christ; there is no room for me to plant my foot — no piece of corrupt ground, which I may call my own.” O sinner, the blood of Jesus is able to save thee, because he was perfectly innocent himself, and “he died the just for the unjust, to bring us to God.”

From a sermon entitled "The Blood," delivered December 12, 1858.

The finished work of Christ

“This man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God; From henceforth expecting till his enemies be made his footstool.” — Hebrews 10:12, 13.

He has done all that was necessary to be done, to make an atonement and an end of sin. He has done so much, that it will never be necessary for him again to be crucified. His side, once opened, has sent forth a stream deep, deep enough, and precious enough, to wash away all sin; and he needs not again that his side should be opened, or, that any more his hands should be nailed to the cross. I infer that his work is finished, from the fact that he is described here as sitting down. Christ would not sit down in heaven if he had more work to do. Sitting down is the posture of rest. Seldom he sat down on earth; he said, “I must be about my Father’s business.” Journey after journey, labor after labor, preaching after preaching, followed each other in quick succession. His was a life of incessant toil. Rest was a word which Jesus never spelled. He may sit for a moment on the well; but even there he preaches to the woman of Samaria. He goes into the wilderness, but not to sleep; he goes there to pray. His midnights are spent in labors as hard as those of the day — labors of agonizing prayer, wrestling with his Father for the souls of men. His was a life of continual bodily, mental, and spiritual labor; his whole man was exercised. But now he rests; there is no more toil for him now; there is no more sweat of blood, no more the weary foot, no more the aching head.

No more has he to do. He sits still. But do you think my Savior would sit still if he had not done all his work? Oh! no beloved; he said once, “For Zion’s sake I will not rest until her glory goeth forth like a lamp that burneth.” And sure I am he would not rest, or be sitting still, unless the great work of our atonement were fully accomplished.... No; the very fact that he sits still, and rests, and is at ease, proves that his work is finished and is complete.

From a sermon entitled "Christ Exalted," delivered July 6, 1856.

Photo by Janne; some rights reserved.

Bear testimony to the sufferings of Christ

“The elders which are among you I exhort, who am also an elder, and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, and also a partaker of the glory that shall be revealed.” 1 Peter 5:1.

I judge that the principal business of any minister of Christ, or of any elder of the Church of Christ, is to bear testimony to the sufferings of Christ. If the atoning sufferings of Christ are left out of a ministry, that ministry is worthless. “The blood is the life thereof,” is as true about sermons as it is about animals and sacrifices. A bloodless gospel, a gospel without the atonement, is a gospel of devils, and not the gospel of God. Many are laboring hard, till their oars bend, to get away from the gospel of Jesus Christ; — I mean hundreds of so-called ministers of Christ; — but in proportion as they forsake the gospel, they cease to be what they pretend to be. They are not the ministers of God, or of his Christ; they are not ambassadors telling of reconciliation to men, if in their teaching the sufferings of Christ are beclouded, and their cause and motive and object are obscured.

It is the glory of some of us that, whatever else we bear witness to, we certainly are witnesses of the sufferings of Christ. We declare to men that there is no hope for them but in Christ who died; we testify to them that we have ourselves exercised faith in his death, and have thereby received eternal life; we tell them that we know that what we say is true, we are as sure of it as was that disciple who, when he saw the blood and water flowing from Christ’s side, bore witness to it, and added, “He knoweth that he saith true, that ye might believe.” These things are not like dreams to us, they are part of our very being; we have believed in the blood and righteousness of Jesus Christ, our troubled conscience has therein found peace, our soul has been filled with all the fullness of God; and therefore we are and must be witnesses to the sufferings of the crucified Son of God, to the reality of the atonement that he made on the cross, and to the effect of that atonement upon the heart and conscience of all those who receive it.

From a sermon entitled "A Witness And A Partaker," delivered November 4, 1883.

Photo by harvest_japan*; some rights reserved.

Brought near to God by the Blood of Christ

We read of the blood of the atonement under the old law. Christ, now, under the gospel, is the propitiation for our sins. It is through the blood that God, the infinitely just, without the violation of his character, can pass by the transgression of the guilty. It is not possible that any one attribute of God should ever shadow another. He is perfect. Infinitely merciful he is, but he will not be merciful at the expense of justice. Justice shall never triumph against mercy; mercy, on the other hand, shall never cut off the skirts of the flowing robe of justice.

It is in the person of Jesus, and especially in the blood of Jesus, that the great riddle of the ages is unriddled. God can be just, and yet the Justifier of him that believeth in Jesus. We have sinned. God must punish sin. According to the inexorable laws which God has stamped upon the: universe, the sinner cannot go unpunished. His sin is, in fact, its own punishment, and becomes the mother of unnumbered griefs. The Mediator steps in — the Son of God and the Son of Man, eternal, and yet as man, born of Mary, and slumbering in Bethlehem’s manger — he comes as the substitute for the guilty. “The chastisement of our peace was upon him, and by his stripes we are healed,” and “now in Christ Jesus, we who some time were afar off are made nigh by the blood of Christ.” God can be gracious without the violation of the severity of his judgment. His moral government remains untarnished in all the majesty of its purity, and yet he puts out the right hand of reconciliation, and love to all who approach him, making mention of the blood of the atonement of his dear Son.

From a sermon entitled "The Savior's Precious Blood."

Photo by hillary h; some rights reserved.