faith in Christ and the evidences of salvation - C.H. Spurgeon

“unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord” - Psalm 27:13

“Most people see to believe, but in David’s case the process was reversed, and put into gospel order: he believed to see and this is the key-note of our discourse. The prayer of my heart is, that some may be led to believe to see, and that those who have been trying to see in order to believe, may now come and trust in Jesus, and believe and see the grace of God…

I hear another objection, one which is very frequently made indeed. Someone says, “But I want to see in myself the evidences of salvation; I know that when a man is saved, there very soon appear in his character certain signs and tokens which mark the work of the Holy Spirit, and I cannot believe that I am saved on the mere word of God; I want to see the evidences of it…

Let me point you to the thirty-sixth verse of the third of John: “He that believeth on the Son, hath everlasting life;” and to the eighteenth verse of the same chapter, “He that believeth on him, is not condemned.” Are not these words quite sufficient, though as yet no other evidence can be seen? But sometimes I have heard persons saying, “Well, but we must have evidences; we cannot trust Christ without them:” and consequently they try to manufacture signs of grace, whereas, be it never forgotten, that evidences are the product of faith, and not the cause of faith...

It is as though you had a piece of ground, and you said to yourself, “Well, now, here are these trees; they produce very little fruit-if I could secure a large crop that would be evidence that the soil is good. I must put fresh fruit on the trees, and then that will prove that the ground is fertile.” Not at all so. Make the soil good, and then the fruit will come naturally. So with your faith. Faith is the soil in which the fruits of faith must grow. Do not be thinking about the evidences. Think about the faith that will grow the evidences. Seek to go to Christ, and trust in him, and you will get the signs of grace soon enough. Your main business is with Jesus, not with evidences. Rest in him-his finished work and ascension power-and, if you depend there, without evidences, you will soon have plenty of them; but, if you look to external or other signs, in order to get faith, you look, as I have already told you, in the wrong quarter, and reverse the order of grace...

The fact is, that strong faith is the great sanctifying agent through the power of the Holy Spirit, & the application of the precious blood of Jesus. Thou wilt never overcome thy sins by doubting Christ. Thou wilt never get sanctification by putting thy holiness into the place of Christ’s righteousness...There is no holiness, no true holiness apart from faith. It is not by doubting that we come to be holy. I never could overcome a sin by saying, “I am afraid I am not a child of God.”

C.H. Spurgeon, Believing to See

http://www.spurgeongems.org/vols13-15/chs766.pdf

double failure of Christians - Martyn Lloyd-Jones

“But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.” Eph. 2:4-7

“We most therefore all admit as we read the first seven verses of this chapter (Eph. 2) that most of our troubles are due to the fact that we are guilty of a double failure; we fail on the one hand to realize the depth of sin, & on the other hand we fail to realize the greatness & the height & the glory of our salvation. We may admit that we are not perfect, we may say that we occasionally do things that we should not do, & we think that that is sin, & that is a consciousness of sin. But when we read these 1^st three verses (Eph. 2:1-3), we really are given to see what sin is, & how deeply involved in sin we all are, & how fallen our nature is as a result of the original transgression of Adam. We don’t realize, I say, the depth of sin. But on the other hand do we not all fail to realize the greatness & the height & the glory of our salvation. Oftentimes we are content to think of our salvation merely in terms of the forgiveness of sins. Not that one wants to depreciate that, for there is nothing more wonderful or more glorious. My point is that to stop at that is surely tragic. And I verily believe that the whole condition & state of the Church today is largely due to the fact that we fail at both points. It is because we never realize the depth of the pit out of which we have been brought by the grace of God that we do not thank God as we ought. And then there is our failure to realize the great heights to which He raised us. That is what the apostle is dealing with now. He is telling us about the deliverance, the salvation. Here, of course, the apostle is not so much concerned about the way in which we are saved. At this point, he is not interested in evangelism; that is something that has already happened; he is writing to people who are already Christians, & he wants them to realize & to understand what is really true of them as Christian people. He wants them to know ‘the exceeding greatness of God’s power to us-ward who believe’, and so he expounds it.”

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, God's Way of Reconciliation: An Exposition of Ephesians 2

A test whether one loves and accepts the way and method of grace – C.H. Spurgeon

“Do you seem inclined to accept the way and method of grace? Let me test you. Some men think they love a thing and yet they do not, for they have made a mistake concerning it. Do you understand that you are to have no claim upon God? He says, “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.” When it comes to pure mercy, then no one can possibly urge a claim; in fact, no claim can exist. If it he of grace it is not of debt, and if of debt it is not of grace. If God wills to save one man, and another be left to perish in his own willful sin, that other cannot dare to dispute with God. Or if he do, the answer is- “Can I not do as I will with my own? “Oh, but you seem now as if you started back from it! See, your pride revolts against the sovereignty of grace. Let me beckon you back again. Though you have no claim, there is another truth, which smiles upon you; for, on the other hand, there is no bar to your obtaining mercy. If no goodness is needed to recommend you to God, since all must be pure favor which he gives, then also no badness can shut you out from that favor. However guilty you may be, it may be God may show favor to you. He has in other cases called out the chief of sinners; why not in your case also? At any rate, no aggravation of sin, no continuance in sin, no height of sin, can be a reason why God should not look with grace upon you; for if pure grace and nothing else but grace is to have sway then the jet black transgressor may be saved. In his case there is room for grace to manifest its greatness. I have heard men make excuse out of the doctrine of election, and they have said, “What if I should not be elected?” It seems to me far wiser to say, “What if I should be elected?” Yea, I am elected if I believe in Jesus; for there never was a soul yet that cast itself upon the atonement of Christ but what that soul was chosen of God from before the foundation of the world.

This is the gospel of the grace of God, and I know that it touches the heart of many of you. It often stirs my soul like the sound of martial music, to think of my Lord’s grace from old eternity, a grace that is constant to its choice, and will be constant to it when all these visible things shall disappear as sparks that fly from the chimney. My heart is glad within me to have to preach free grace and dying love: I can understand why crowds met at dead of night to hear of the grace of God. I can understand the Covenanters on the bleak hills listening, with sparkling eyes, as Cameron preached of the grace of the great King! There is something in a free-grace gospel worth preaching, worth listening to, worth living for, and worth dying for!”

C.H. Spurgeon, A Gospel Worth Dying For

http://www.spurgeongems.org/vols28-30/chs1734.pdf

What is evil? - John Piper

"What is evil? What is ultimate evil according to Jeremiah 2:13?

Be appalled, O heavens at this; be shocked, be utterly [dismayed]...for my people have committed two [great] evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water. (Jeremiah 2:12-13)

That's evil. So what is evil? Evil is to be presented by the Living God with a fountain of water that will carry you into eternity and satisfy your heart forever and ever—never ending—and then to turn your nose at it! Then you turn around and take a little shovel and start digging in dry dirt, putting your mouth to it, trying to get something satisfying out of it. That's evil!

This means that to do good — the opposite of evil—is to be a hedonist. Go to the Fountain! The opposite of coming to the fountain is evil. The essence of coming to the fountain is drinking and drinking until it satisfies your soul, and you say, "Ah!" And then you begin to commend it in Indonesia, Pakistan, China, Saudi Arabia, North Korea, Cuba, and Vietnam at cost to your life.”

John Piper, Let Your Passion Be Single

http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/ConferenceMessages/ByDate/1999/1814_Let_Your_Passion_Be_Single/

Salvation belongs to the Lord - exposition by C.H. Spurgeon

“Salvation belongs to the Lord; your blessing be on your people! Selah” Psalm 3:8

“This verse contains the sum and substance of Calvinistic doctrine. Search Scripture through, and you must, if you read it with a candid mind, be persuaded that the doctrine of salvation by grace alone is the great doctrine of the word of God: "Salvation belongs unto the Lord." This is a point concerning which we are daily fighting. Our opponents say, "Salvation belongs to the free will of man; if not to man's merit, yet at least to man's will;" but we hold and teach that salvation from first to last, in every iota of it, belongs to the Most High God. It is God that chooses his people. He calls them by his grace; he quickens them by his Spirit, and keeps them by his power. It is not of man, neither by man; "not of him that wills, nor of him that runs, but of God that shows mercy." May we all learn this truth experimentally, for our proud flesh and blood will never permit us to learn it in any other way. In the last sentence the peculiarity and speciality of salvation are plainly stated: " Your blessing be on your people." Neither upon Egypt, nor upon Tyre, nor upon Ninevah; Your blessing is upon thy chosen, Your blood-bought, Your everlastingly-beloved people. "Selah:" lift up your hearts, and pause, and meditate upon this doctrine. " Your blessing be on your people." Divine, discriminating, distinguishing, eternal, infinite, immutable love, is a subject for constant adoration. Pause, my soul, at this Selah, and consider thine own interest in the salvation of God; and if by humble faith thou art enabled to see Jesus as thine by his own free gift of himself to thee, if this greatest of all blessings be upon thee, rise up and sing —

"Rise, my soul! adore and wonder!

Ask, `O why such love to me?'

Grace hath put me in the number

Of the Saviour's family:

Hallelujah!

Thanks, eternal thanks, to thee!"

- C.H. Spurgeon, The Treasury of David