The Spurgeon Series 1857 & 1858. Charles H. Spurgeon

and am I to take his white robes?” Yes, poor soul, if you desire it; if God has made you willing, if you do confess your sins, Christ is willing to take your rags, and give you his righteousness, to be yours for ever. “Well, but how is it to be obtained?” one says “must I be a holy man for many years, and then get it?” Listen! “Freely by his grace”; “freely,” because there is no price to be paid for it. “By his grace,” because we do not deserve it. “But, oh Sir, I have been praying, and I do not think God will forgive me, unless I do something to deserve it.” I tell you, Sir, if you bring in any of your merits, you shall never have it. God gives away his justification freely; if you bring anything to pay for it, he will throw it in your face, and will not give his justification to you. He gives it away freely. Old Rowland Hill once went preaching at a fair; he noticed the pedlar selling their wares by auction; so Rowland said, “I am going to hold an auction too, to sell wine and milk, without money and without price. My friends over there,” he said “find a great difficulty to get you up to their price, my difficulty is to bring you down to mine.” So it is with men. If I could preach justification to be bought by you at a sovereign a piece, who would go out of the place without being justified? If I could preach justification to you by walking a hundred miles, would we not be pilgrims tomorrow morning, every one of us? If I were to preach justification which would consist in whippings and torture, there are very few here who would not whip themselves, and that severely too. But when it is freely, freely, freely, men turn away. “What! am I to have it for nothing at all, without doing anything?” Yes, Sir, you are to have it for nothing, or else not at all; it is “freely.” “But may I not go to Christ, lay some claim to his mercy, and say, Lord, justify me because I am not so bad as others?” It will not do, Sir, because it is “by his grace.” “But may I not indulge a hope, because I go to church twice a day?” No, Sir; it is “by his grace.” “But may I not offer this plea, I mean to be better?” No, Sir; it is “by his grace.” You insult God by bringing your counterfeit coin to pay for his treasures. Oh! what poor ideas men have of the value of Christ’s gospel, if they think they can buy it! God will not have your rusty farthings to buy heaven with. A rich man, once when he was dying, had a notion that he could buy a place in heaven by building a row of almshouses. A good man stood by his bedside, and said, “How much more are you going to leave?” “Twenty thousand pounds.” He said, “That would not buy enough for your foot to stand on in heaven, for the streets are made of gold there, and therefore of what value can your gold be, it would be accounted for nothing, when the very streets are paved with it?” No, friends, we cannot buy heaven with gold nor good works, nor prayers, nor anything in the world. But how is it to be had? Why it is to be had for only the asking. As many of us as know ourselves to be sinners may have Christ for asking for him. Do you know that you need Christ? You may have Christ! “Whoever will, let him come and take of the water of life freely.” But if you cleave to your own notions, and say, “No, Sir, I mean to do a great many good things, and then I will believe in Christ.” — Sir, you will be damned if you hold such delusions. I earnestly warn you. You cannot be saved like that. “Well, but are we not to do good works?” Certainly you are; but you are not to trust in them. You must trust in Christ wholly, and then do good works afterwards. “But,” one says, “I think if I were to do a few good works, it would be a little commendation when I came.” It would not, Sir; they would be no commendation at all. Let a beggar come to your house in white kid gloves, and say he is very badly off, and wants some charity; would the white kid gloves commend him to your charity? Would a good new hat that he has been buying this morning commend him to your charity? “No,” you would say, “you are a miserable imposter; you do not need anything, and you shall not have anything either! Out with you!”

      16. The best livery for a beggar is rags, and the best livery for a sinner to go to Christ in, is for him to go just as he is, with nothing but sin about him. “But no”; you say, “I must be a little better, and then I think Christ will save me!” You cannot get any better, try as long as you please. And besides — to use a paradox — if you were to get better, you would be all the worse, for the worse you are, the better you are to come to Christ. If you are all unholy come to Christ; if you feel your sin, and renounce it, come to Christ; though you have been the most debased and abandoned soul, come to Christ; if you feel yourself to have nothing about you that can commend you, come to Christ.

      Venture on him, venture wholly;

      Let no other trust intrude.

      I do not say this to urge any man to continue in sin. God forbid! If you continue in sin, you must not come to Christ; you cannot; your sins will hamper you. You cannot be chained to your galley oar — the oar of your sins — yet come to Christ, and be a free man. No, Sir, it is repentance; it is the immediate leaving of the sin. But notice, neither by repentance, nor by leaving of your sin, can save you. It is Christ, Christ, Christ — Christ only.

      17. But I know you will go away, many of you, and try to build up your own Babel tower, to get to heaven. Some of you will go one way to work, and some another. You will go the ceremony way: you will lay the foundation of the structure with infant baptism, build confirmation on it, and the Lord’s supper. “I shall go to heaven,” you say; “Do I not keep Good Friday and Christmas day? I am a better man than those dissenters. I am a most extraordinary man. Do I not say more prayers than anyone?” You will be a long while going up that treadmill, before you get an inch higher. That is not the way to get to the stars. One says, “I will go and study the Bible, and believe right doctrine; and I have no doubt that by believing right doctrine I shall be saved.” Indeed you will not! You can no more be saved by believing right doctrine than you can by doing right actions. “There,” says another, “I like that, I shall go and believe in Christ, and live as I like.” Indeed you will not! For if you believe in Christ he will not let you live as your flesh likes; by his Spirit he will constrain you to mortify its affections and lusts. If he gives you the grace to make you believe, he will give you the grace to live a holy life afterwards. If he gives you faith, he gives you good works afterwards. You cannot believe in Christ, unless you renounce every fault, and resolve to serve him with full purpose of heart. I think at last I hear a sinner say, “Is that the only door? And may I venture through it? Then I will. But I do not quite understand you; I am something like poor Tiff, in that remarkable book ‘Dred.’ {c} They talk a great deal about a door, but I cannot see the door; they talk a great deal about the way, but I cannot see the way. For if poor Tiff could see the way, he would take these children away by it. They talk about fighting, but I do not see anyone to fight, or else I would fight.” Let me explain it then. I find in the Bible, “This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.” What have you to do, but to believe this and trust in him? You will never be disappointed with such a faith as that. Let me give you over again an illustration I have given hundreds of times, but I cannot find another as good, so I must give it again. Faith is something like this. There is a story told of a captain of a man-of-war, whose son — a young lad — was very fond of running up the rigging of the ship; and one time, running after a monkey, he ran up the mast, until at last he got on to the maintruck. Now, the maintruck, you are aware, is like a large round table put on to the mast, so that when the boy was on the maintruck there was plenty of room for him; but the difficulty was — to use the best explanation I can — that he could not reach the mast that was under the table; he was not tall enough to get down from this maintruck, reach the mast, and so descend. There he was on the maintruck; he managed to get up there, somehow or other, but he never could get down. His father saw that, and he looked up in horror; what was he to do? In a few moments his son would fall down, and be dashed to pieces! He was clinging to the maintruck with all his might, but in a little time he would fall down on the deck, and there he would be a mangled corpse. The captain called for a speaking trumpet; he put it to his mouth, and shouted, “Boy, the next time the ship lurches, throw yourself into the sea.” It was, in truth, his only way of escape; he might be picked up out of the sea, but he could not be rescued if he fell on the deck. The poor boy looked down on the sea; it was a long way; he could not bear the idea of throwing himself into the roaring current beneath him; he thought it looked angry and dangerous. How could he cast himself down into it? So he clung to the main truck with all his might, though there was no doubt that he must soon let go and perish. The father called for