The Spurgeon Series 1857 & 1858. Charles H. Spurgeon

your enemies. Get temperance of lip, temperance of life, temperance of heart, temperance of thought. Do not be passionate: do not be carried away by every wind of doctrine. Get temperance, and then add to it by God’s Holy Spirit patience; ask him to give you that patience which endures affliction, which, when it is tried, shall come forth as gold. Array yourself with patience, that you may not murmur in your sicknesses; that you may not curse God in your losses, nor be depressed in your afflictions. Pray, without ceasing, until the Holy Spirit has nerved you with patience to endure to the end. And when you have that, get godliness. Godliness is something more than religion. The most religious men may be the most godless men, and sometimes a godly man may seem to be irreligious. Let me just explain that seeming paradox. A real religious man is a man who sighs after sacraments, attends churches and chapels, and is outwardly good, but does not go any farther. A godly man is a man who does not look so much to the dress as to the person: he does not look to the outward form, but to the inward and spiritual grace, he is a godly man, as well as attentive to religion. Some men, however, are godly, and to a great extent despise form; they may be godly, without some degree of religion; but a man cannot be fully righteous without being godly in the true meaning of each of these words, though not in the general common sense and meaning of them. Add to your patience an eye to God; live in his sight; dwell close to him; seek for fellowship with him; and you have obtained godliness. And then to that add brotherly love. Be loving towards all the members of Christ’s church; have a love to all the saints, of every denomination. And then add to that charity, which opens its arms to all men, and loves them; and when you have obtained all these, then you will know your calling and election, and just in proportion as you practise these heavenly rules of life, in this heavenly manner, you will come to know that you are called and that you are elect. But by no other means can you attain to a knowledge of that, except by the witness of the Spirit, bearing witness with your spirit that you are born of God, and then witnessing in your conscience that you are not what you were, but are a new man in Christ Jesus, and are therefore called and therefore elected.

      11. A man over there he says is elect. He gets drunk. Indeed, you are elect by the devil, sir; that is about your only election. Another man says, “Blessed be God, I do not care about evidences a bit; I am not so legal as you are!” No, I dare say you are not; but you have no great reason to bless God about it, for, my dear friend, unless you have these evidences of a new birth take heed to yourself. “God is not mocked: whatever a man sows, that shall he also reap.” “Well,” says another, “but I think that doctrine of election is a very licentious doctrine.” Think on as long as you please; but please to bear me witness that as I have preached it today there is nothing licentious about it. Very likely you are licentious, and you would make the doctrine licentious, if you believed it; but “to the pure all things are pure.” He who receives God’s truth in his heart does not often pervert it and turn aside from it to wicked ways. No man, let me repeat, has any right to believe himself elect of God, unless he has been renewed by God; no man has any right to believe himself called, unless his life is in the main consistent with his vocation, and he walks worthy of that to which he is called. Away with an election that lets you live in sin! Away with it! away with it! That was never the design of God’s Word; and it never was the doctrine of Calvinists either. Though we have been lied against and our teachings perverted, we have always stood by this — that good works, though they do not procure nor in any degree merit salvation, yet they are the necessary evidences of salvation; and unless they are in men the soul is still dead, uncalled and unrenewed. The nearer you live to Christ, the more you imitate him, the more your life is conformed to him, and the more simply you hang upon him by faith, the more certain you may be of your election in Christ and of your calling by his Holy Spirit. May the Holy One of Israel give you the sweet assurance of grace, by affording you “tokens for good” in the graces which he enables you to display.

      12. III. And now I shall close up by giving you THE APOSTLE’S REASONS WHY YOU SHOULD MAKE YOUR CALLING AND ELECTION SURE.

      13. I put in one of my own to begin with. It is because, as I have said, it will make you so happy. Men who doubt their calling and election cannot be full of joy; but the happiest saints are those who know and believe it. You know our friends say this is a howling wilderness, and you know my reply to it is, that they make all the howling themselves: there would not be much howling, if they were to look up a little more and look down a little less, for by faith they would make it blossom like the rose, and give to it the excellence and glory of Carmel and Sharon. But why they howl so much is because they do not believe. Our happiness and our faith are to a great degree proportionate; they are Siamese twins to the Christian; they must flourish or decay together.

      When I can say my God is mine,

      Then I can all my griefs resign;

      Can tread the world beneath my feet,

      And all that earth calls good or great.

      But ah

      When gloomy doubts prevail,

      I fear to call him mine;

      The streams of comfort seem to fail,

      And all my hopes decline.

      Only faith can make a Christian lead a happy life.

      14. But now for Peter’s reasons. First, because “if you do these things you shall never fall.” “Perhaps,” one says, “in attention to election we may forget our daily walk, and like the old philosopher who looked up to the stars we may walk on and tumble into the ditch!” “No, no,” Peter says, “if you take care of your calling and election, you shall not trip; but, with your eyes up there, looking for your calling and election, God will take care of your feet, and you shall never fall.” Is it not very notable, that, in many churches and chapels, you do not often hear a sermon about today; it is always either about old eternity, or else about the millennium; either about what God did before men was made, or else about what God will do when all are dead and buried? It is a pity that they do not tell us something about what we are to do today, now, in our daily walk and conversation! Peter removes this difficulty. He says, “This point is a practical point; for you can only answer your election for yourself by taking care of your practice; and while you are so taking care of your practice and assuring yourself of your election, you are doing the best possible thing to keep you from falling.” And is it not desirable that a true Christian should be kept from falling? Notice the difference between falling and falling away. The true believer can never fall away and perish; but he may fall and injure himself. He shall not fall and break his neck; but a broken leg is bad enough, without a broken neck. “Though he falls he shall not be utterly cast down”; but that is no reason why he should dash himself against a stone. His desire is, that day by day he may grow more holy; that hour by hour he may be more thoroughly renewed, until conformed to the image of Christ, he may enter into bliss eternal. If, then, you take care of your calling and election, you are doing the best thing in the world to prevent yourself from falling; for in so doing you shall never fall.

      15. And now, the other reason, and then I shall have almost concluded. “For so an entrance shall be ministered to you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.” An “abundant entrance” has sometimes been illustrated in this way. You see that ship. After a long voyage, it has neared the haven, but is much damaged, the sails are rent to ribbons, and it is in such a forlorn condition that it cannot sail up to the harbour: a steam tug is pulling it in with the greatest possible difficulty. That is like the righteous being “scarcely saved.” But do you see that other ship? It has made a prosperous voyage and now, laden to the water’s edge, with the sails all up and with the white canvass filled with the wind, it rides into the harbour joyously and nobly. That is an “abundant entrance”; and if you and I are helped by God’s Spirit to add to our faith virtue, and so on, we shall have at the last “an abundant entrance into the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ.” There is a man who is a Christian; but, alas! there are many inconsistencies in his life for which he has to mourn. He lies there, dying on his bed. The thought of his past life rushes upon him. He cries, “Oh Lord, have mercy upon me, a sinner,” and the prayer is answered;