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|
Farley's Bold Christian Mail
FBCMAIL presents
C. H. SPURGEON,
All of Grace  
"For by grace are
ye saved through faith;
and that not of yourselves:
it is the gift of God."—Ephesians 2:8.
OF
THE THINGS which I have spoken unto you these many years, this is the
sum. Within the circle of these words my theology is contained, so far
as it refers to the salvation of men. I rejoice also to remember that
those of my family who were ministers of Christ before me preached this
doctrine, and none other. My father, who is still able to bear his
personal testimony for his Lord, knows no other doctrine, neither did
his father before him.
I am led to remember this by the fact that a somewhat singular
circumstance, recorded in my memory, connects this text with myself and
my grandfather. It is now long years ago. I was announced to preach in
a certain country town in the Eastern Counties. It does not often
happen to me to be behind time, for I feel that punctuality is one of
those little virtues which may prevent great sins. But we have no
control over railway delays, and breakdowns; and so it happened that I
reached the appointed place considerably behind the time. Like sensible
people, they had begun their worship, and had proceeded as far as the
sermon. As I neared the chapel, I perceived that someone was in the
pulpit preaching, and who should the preacher be but my dear and
venerable grandfather! He saw me as I came in at the front door and
made my way up the aisle, and at once he said, "Here comes my grandson!
He may preach the gospel better than I can, but he cannot preach a
better gospel; can you, Charles?" As I made my way through the throng,
I answered, "You can preach better than I can. Pray go on." But he
would not agree to that. I must take the sermon, and so I did,
going on with the subject there and then, just where he left off.
"There," said he, "I was preaching of 'For by grace are ye saved.' I
have been setting forth the source and fountain-head of salvation; and
I am now showing them the channel of it, through faith. Now you take it
up, and go on." I am so much at home with these glorious truths that I
could not feel any difficulty in taking from my grandfather the thread
of his discourse, and joining my thread to it, so as to continue
without a break. Our agreement in the things of God made it easy for us
to be joint-preachers of the same discourse. I went on with "through
faith," and then I proceeded to the next point, "and that not of
yourselves." Upon this I was explaining the weakness and inability of
human nature, and the certainty that salvation could not be of
ourselves, when I had my coat-tail pulled, and my well-beloved
grandsire took his turn again. "When I spoke of our depraved human
nature," the good old man said, "I know most about that, dear friends";
and so he took up the parable, and for the next five minutes set forth
a solemn and humbling description of our lost estate, the depravity of
our nature, and the spiritual death under which we were found. When he
had said his say in a very gracious manner, his grandson was allowed to
go on again, to the dear old man's great delight; for now and then he
would say, in a gentle tone, "Good! Good!" Once he said, "Tell them
that again, Charles," and, of course, I did tell them that again. It
was a happy exercise to me to take my share in bearing witness to
truths of such vital importance, which are so deeply impressed upon my
heart. While announcing this text I seem to hear that dear voice, which
has been so long lost to earth, saying to me, "TELL THEM THAT AGAIN." I
am not contradicting the testimony of forefathers who are now with God.
If my grandfather could return to earth, he would find me where he left
me, steadfast in the faith, and true to that form of doctrine which was
once delivered to the saints.
I
shall handle the text briefly, by way of making a few statements. The
first statement is clearly contained in the text:—
I.
There Is Present Salvation.
The
apostle says, "Ye are saved." Not "ye shall be," or "ye may
be"; but "ye are saved." He says not, "Ye are partly saved," nor "in
the way to being saved," nor "hopeful of salvation"; but "by grace are
ye saved." Let us be as clear on this point as he was, and let us never
rest till we know that we are saved. At this moment we are either saved
or unsaved. That is clear. To which class do we belong? I hope that, by
the witness of the Holy Ghost, we may be so assured of our safety as to
sing, "The Lord is my strength and my song; he also is become my
salvation." Upon this I will not linger, but pass on to note the next
point.
II.
A Present Salvation Must Be Through Grace.
If
we can say of any man, or of any set of people, "Ye are saved," we
shall have to preface it with the words "by grace." There is no other
present salvation except that which begins and ends with grace. As far
as I know, I do not think that anyone in the wide world pretends to
preach or to possess a present salvation, except those who believe
salvation to be all of grace. No one in the Church of Rome claims to be
now saved—completely and eternally saved. Such a profession would be
heretical. Some few Catholics may hope to enter heaven when they die,
but the most of them have the miserable prospect of purgatory before
their eyes. We see constant requests for prayers for departed souls,
and this would not be if those souls were saved, and glorified with
their Saviour. Masses for the repose of the soul indicate the
incompleteness of the salvation Rome has to offer. Well may it be so,
since Papal salvation is by works, and even if salvation by good works
were possible, no man can ever be sure that he has performed enough of
them to secure his salvation.
Among
those who dwell around us, we find many who are altogether strangers to
the doctrine of grace, and these never dream of present salvation.
Possibly they trust that they may be saved when they die; they half
hope that, after years of watchful holiness, they may, perhaps, be
saved at last; but, to be saved now, and to know that they are saved,
is quite beyond them, and they think it presumption.
There
can be no present salvation unless it be upon this footing—"By grace
are ye saved." It is a very singular thing that no one has risen up to
preach a present salvation by works. I suppose it would be too absurd.
The works being unfinished, the salvation would be incomplete; or, the
salvation being complete, the main motive of the legalist would be gone.
Salvation
must be by grace. If man be lost by sin, how can he be saved except
through the grace of God? If he has sinned, he is condemned; and how
can he, of himself, reverse that condemnation? Suppose that he should
keep the law all the rest of his life, he will then only have done what
he was always bound to have done, and he will still be an unprofitable
servant. What is to become of the past? How can old sins be blotted
out? How can the old ruin be retrieved? According to Scripture, and
according to common sense, salvation can only be through the free
favour of God.
Salvation
in the present tense must be by the free favour of God. Persons may
contend for salvation by works, but you will not hear anyone support
his own argument by saying, "I am myself saved by what I have done."
That would be a superfluity of naughtiness to which few men would go.
Pride could hardly compass itself about with such extravagant boasting.
No, if we are saved, it must be by the free favour of God. No one
professes to be an example of the opposite view.
Salvation
to be complete must be by free favour. The saints, when they come
to die, never conclude their lives by hoping in their good works. Those
who have lived the most holy and useful lives invariably look to free
grace in their final moments. I never stood by the bedside of a godly
man who reposed any confidence whatever in his own prayers, or
repentance, or religiousness. I have heard eminently holy men quoting
in death the words, "Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners."
In fact, the nearer men come to heaven, and the more prepared they are
for it, the more simply is their trust in the merit of the Lord Jesus,
and the more intensely do they abhor all trust in themselves. If this
be the case in our last moments, when the conflict is almost over, much
more ought we to feel it to be so while we are in the thick of the
fight. If a man be completely saved in this present time of warfare,
how can it be except by grace. While he has to mourn over sin that
dwelleth in him, while he has to confess innumerable shortcomings and
transgressions, while sin is mixed with all he does, how can he believe
that he is completely saved except it be by the free favour of God?
Paul
speaks of this salvation as belonging to the Ephesians, "By grace are ye
saved." The Ephesians had been given to curious arts and works of
divination. They had thus made a covenant with the powers of darkness.
Now if such as these were saved, it must be by grace alone. So is it
with us also: our original condition and character render it certain
that, if saved at all, we must owe it to the free favour of God. I know
it is so in my own case; and I believe the same rule holds good in the
rest of believers. This is clear enough, and so I advance to the next
observation:—
III.
Present Salvation by Grace Must Be Through Faith.
A
present salvation must be through grace, and salvation by grace must be
through faith. You cannot get a hold of salvation by grace by any other
means than by faith. This live coal from off the altar needs the golden
tongs of faith with which to carry it. I suppose that it might have
been possible, if God had so willed it, that salvation might have been
through works, and yet by grace; for if Adam had perfectly obeyed the
law of God, still he would only have done what he was bound to do; and
so, if God should have rewarded him, the reward itself must have been
according to grace, since the Creator owes nothing to the creature.
This would have been a very difficult system to work, while the object
of it was perfect; but in our case it would not work at all. Salvation
in our case means deliverance from guilt and ruin, and this could not
have been laid hold of by a measure of good works, since we are not in
a condition to perform any. Suppose I had to preach that you as sinners
must do certain works, and then you would be saved; and suppose that
you could perform them; such a salvation would not then have been seen
to be altogether of grace; it would have soon appeared to be of debt.
Apprehended in such a fashion, it would have come to you in some
measure as the reward of work done, and its whole aspect would have
been changed. Salvation by grace can only be gripped by the hand of
faith: the attempt to lay hold upon it by the doing of certain acts of
law would cause the grace to evaporate. "Therefore, it is of faith that
it might be by grace." "If by grace, then it is no more of works:
otherwise grace is no more grace. But if it be of works, then it is no
more grace: otherwise work is no more work."
Some
try to lay hold upon salvation by grace through the use of ceremonies;
but it will not do. You are christened, confirmed, and caused to
receive "the holy sacrament" from priestly hands, or you are baptized,
join the church, sit at the Lord's table: does this bring you
salvation? I ask you, "have you salvation?" "You dare not say." If you
did claim salvation of a sort, yet I am sure it would not be in your
minds salvation by grace.
Again,
you cannot lay hold upon salvation by grace through your feelings. The
hand of faith is constructed for the grasping of a present salvation by
grace. But feeling is not adapted for that end. If you go about to say,
"I must feel that I am saved. I must feel so much sorrow and so much
joy or else I will not admit that I am saved," you will find that this
method will not answer. As well might you hope to see with your ear, or
taste with your eye, or hear with your nose, as to believe by feeling:
it is the wrong organ. After you have believed, you can enjoy salvation
by feeling its heavenly influences; but to dream of getting a grasp of
it by your own feelings is as foolish as to attempt to bear away the
sunlight in the palm of your hand, or the breath of heaven between the
lashes of your eyes. There is an essential absurdity in the whole
affair.
Moreover,
the evidence yielded by feeling is singularly fickle. When your
feelings are peaceful and delightful, they are soon broken in upon, and
become restless and melancholy. The most fickle of elements, the most
feeble of creatures, the most contemptible circumstances, may sink or
raise your spirits: experienced men come to think less and less of
their present emotions as they reflect upon the little reliance which
can be safely placed upon them. Faith receives the statement of God
concerning His way of gracious pardon, and thus it brings salvation to
the man believing; but feeling, warming under passionate appeals,
yielding itself deliriously to a hope which it dares not examine,
whirling round and round in a sort of dervish dance of excitement which
has become necessary for its own sustaining, is all on a stir, like the
troubled sea which cannot rest. From its boilings and ragings, feeling
is apt to drop to lukewarmness, despondency, despair and all the
kindred evils. Feelings are a set of cloudy, windy phenomena which
cannot be trusted in reference to the eternal verities of God. We now
go a step further:—
IV.
Salvation by Grace, Through Faith, Is Not of Ourselves.
The
salvation, and the faith, and the whole gracious work together, are not
of ourselves.
First,
they are not of our former deservings: they are not the reward
of former good endeavours. No unregenerate person has lived so well
that God is bound to give him further grace, and to bestow on him
eternal life; else it were no longer of grace, but of debt. Salvation
is given to us, not earned by us. Our first life is
always a wandering away from God, and our new life of return to God is
always a work of undeserved mercy, wrought upon those who greatly need,
but never deserve it.
It
is not of ourselves, in the further sense, that it is not out of
our original excellence. Salvation comes from above; it is never
evolved from within. Can eternal life be evolved from the bare ribs of
death? Some dare to tell us that faith in Christ, and the new birth,
are only the development of good things that lay hidden in us by
nature; but in this, like their father, they speak of their own. Sirs,
if an heir of wrath is left to be developed, he will become more and
more fit for the place prepared for the devil and his angels! You may
take the unregenerate man, and educate him to the highest; but he
remains, and must forever remain, dead in sin, unless a higher power
shall come in and save him from himself. Grace brings into the heart an
entirely foreign element. It does not improve and perpetuate; it kills
and makes alive. There is no continuity between the state of nature and
the state of grace: the one is darkness and the other is light; the one
is death and the other is life. Grace, when it comes to us, is like a
firebrand dropped into the sea, where it would certainly be quenched
were it not of such a miraculous quality that it baffles the
water-floods, and sets up its reign of fire and light even in the
depths.
Salvation
by grace, through faith is not of ourselves in the sense of being
the result of our own power. We are bound to view salvation as
being as surely a divine act as creation, or providence, or
resurrection. At every point of the process of salvation this word is
appropriate—"not of yourselves." From the first desire after it
to the full reception of it by faith, it is evermore of the Lord alone,
and not of ourselves. The man believes, but that belief is only one
result among many of the implantation of divine life within the man's
soul by God Himself.
Even
the very will thus to be saved by grace is not of ourselves, but it
is the gift of God. There lies the stress of the question. A man ought
to believe in Jesus: it is his duty to receive him whom God has set
forth to be a propitiation for sins. But man will not believe in Jesus;
he prefers anything to faith in his redeemer. Unless the Spirit of God
convinces the judgment, and constrains the will, man has no heart to
believe in Jesus unto eternal life. I ask any saved man to look back
upon his own conversion, and explain how it came about. You turned to
Christ, and believed in his name: these were your own acts and deeds.
But what caused you thus to turn? What sacred force was that which
turned you from sin to righteousness? Do you attribute this singular
renewal to the existence of a something better in you than has been yet
discovered in your unconverted neighbour? No, you confess that you
might have been what he now is if it had not been that there was a
potent something which touched the spring of your will, enlightened
your understanding, and guided you to the foot of the cross. Gratefully
we confess the fact; it must be so. Salvation by grace, through faith,
is not of ourselves, and none of us would dream of taking any honour to
ourselves from our conversion, or from any gracious effect which has
flowed from the first divine cause. Last of all:—
V.
"By Grace Are Ye Saved Through Faith; and That Not of Yourselves: It Is
the Gift of God."
Salvation
may be called Theodora, or God's gift: and each saved soul may
be surnamed Dorothea, which is another form of the same
expression. Multiply your phrases, and expand your expositions; but
salvation truly traced to its well-head is all contained in the gift
unspeakable, the free, unmeasured benison of love.
Salvation
is the gift of God, in opposition to a wage. When a man pays
another his wage, he does what is right; and no one dreams of belauding
him for it. But we praise God for salvation because it is not the
payment of debt, but the gift of grace. No man enters eternal life on
earth, or in heaven, as his due: it is the gift of God. We say,
"nothing is freer than a gift". Salvation is so purely, so absolutely a
gift of God, that nothing can be more free. God gives it because he
chooses to give it, according to that grand text which has made many a
man bite his lip in wrath, "I will have mercy on whom I will have
mercy, I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion." You are
all guilty and condemned, and the great King pardons whom he wills from
among you. This is his royal prerogative. He saves in infinite
sovereignty of grace.
Salvation
is the gift of God: that is to say completely so, in opposition to the
notion of growth. Salvation is not a natural production from
within: it is brought from a foreign zone, and planted within the heart
by heavenly hands. Salvation is in its entirety a gift from God. If
thou wilt have it, there it is, complete. Wilt thou have it as a
perfect gift? "No; I will produce it in my own workshop." Thou canst
not forge a work so rare and costly, upon which even Jesus spent his
life's blood. Here is a garment without seam, woven from the top
throughout. It will cover thee and make thee glorious. Wilt thou have
it? "No; I will sit at the loom, and I will weave a raiment of my own!"
Proud fool that thou art! Thou spinnest cobwebs. Thou weavest a dream.
Oh! that thou wouldst freely take what Christ upon the cross declared
to be finished.
It
is the gift of God: that is, it is eternally secure in opposition
to the gifts of men, which soon pass away. "Not as the world
giveth, give I unto you," says our Lord Jesus. If my Lord Jesus gives
you salvation at this moment, you have it, and you have it
forever. He will never take it back again; and if he does not take it
from you, who can? If he saves you now through faith, you are
saved—so saved that you shall never perish, neither shall any pluck you
out of his hand. May it be so with every one of us! Amen.
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