Let There Be Holy Churches

Quoting Charles H. Spurgeon:

My longing is that the churches may be more holy. I grieve to see so much of worldly conformity in believers. How often wealth leads men astray. How many Christians follow the fashion of this wicked world? We have among us avowed lovers of Christ, who act too much like “lovers of pleasure.” I charge you by the living God, do not profess to be followers of Christ, for He bids you come out from among them and be separate.

An unholy Church! It is useless to the world, and of no esteem among men. It is an abomination, hell’s laughter, and heaven’s abhorrence. The worst evils which have ever come upon the world have been brought upon her by an unholy Church. There cannot be faith in the heart unless there is holiness in the life!

Chuck Colson

In the words of columnist Rebecca Hagelin:

“The news coverage of Chuck Colson‘s recent death betrayed our secular culture’s continuing discomfort with God’s power to transform hearts and lives. Colson, ‘born again’ to a life of profound Christianity on the heels of his Watergate disgrace, founded Prison Fellowship Ministries, a life-changing ministry to prisoners and their families. He spent his life messaging the need for personal and cultural transformation in the face of sin, urging Christians to embrace and live by an authentic Christian worldview. But our secular culture — which denies the reality of sin and the need for redemption — tripped all over itself trying to explain Colson’s life without affirming the truth that changed him. … Calling Colson’s ministry a second career — or framing it as the next chapter in his political journey — makes about as much sense as talking about the apostolic journeys of the apostle Paul as if they were the second career or new political trajectory of Saul of Tarsus. Spreading the Gospel in prisons wasn’t Colson’s second career. It was his primary calling. It’s not the afterword of the story. It IS the story.”

Continue reading. . . .

“Christ Died for the Ungodly”

You must look to Christ and He will give you repentance. The Holy Spirit turns us to Christ and thereby turns us from sin. Look to Christ and He will save you. Charles H. Spurgeon writes:

For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. (Romans 5:6 ESV)

Hold you on to this one fact—“In due time Christ died for the ungodly.” This truth will not require from you any deep research or profound reasoning, or convincing argument. There it stands: “In due time Christ died for the ungodly.” Fix your mind on that, and rest there. . . .

According to the Scriptures it is a revealed fact, that in due time Christ died for the ungodly when they were yet without strength. You have heard these words hundreds of times, maybe, and yet you have never before perceived their meaning. There is a cheering savior about them, is there not? Jesus did not die for our righteousness, but He died for our sins. He did not come to save us because we were worth the saving, but because we were utterly worthless, ruined, and undone. He came not to earth out of any reason that was in us, but solely and only out of reasons which He fetched from the depths of His own divine love. In due time He died for those whom He describes, not as godly, but as ungodly, applying to them as hopeless an adjective as He could well have selected. If you have but little mind, yet fasten it to this truth, which is fitted to the smallest capacity, and is able to cheer the heaviest heart. Let this text lie under your tongue like a sweet morsel, till it dissolves into your heart and flavors all your thoughts; and then it will little matter though those thoughts should be as scattered as autumn leaves. Persons who have never shone in science, nor displayed the least originality of mind, have nevertheless been fully able to accept the doctrine of the cross, and have been saved thereby. Why should not you?

I hear another man cry, “Oh, sir my want of strength lies mainly in this, that I cannot repent sufficiently!” A curious idea men have of what repentance is! Many fancy that so many tears are to be shed, and so many groans are to be heaved, and so much despair is to be endured. . . .

Remember that the man who truly repents is never satisfied with his own repentance. We can no more repent perfectly than we can live perfectly. However pure our tears, there will always be some dirt in them: there will be something to be repented of even in our best repentance. But listen! To repent is to change your mind about sin, and Christ, and all the great things of God. There is sorrow implied in this; but the main point is the turning of the heart from sin to Christ. If there be this turning, you have the essence of true repentance, even though no alarm and no despair should ever have cast their shadow upon your mind.

If you cannot repent as you would, it will greatly aid you to do so if you will firmly believe that “in due time Christ died for the ungodly.” Think of this again and again. How can you continue to be hard-hearted when you know that out of supreme love “Christ died for the ungodly”? (All of Grace)