METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE PULPIT
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ALL OF GRACE
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A Sermon
Published on Thursday, October 7th, 1915.
Delivered by
C.H. SPURGEON,
At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington.
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"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 e 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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Files of the Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit are provided to ICLnet and
the internet community by the Bath Road Baptist Church, Kingston, Ontario,
Canada. The sermons are available in booklet form at the following address.
There is no charge for this service: Spurgeon Ministries
P.O. Box 1673
Kingston, Ontario
Canada
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file: /pub/resources/text/history/spurgeon: ss-0013.txt
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