Spurgeon On The Life Of Faith

Charles H. Spurgeon

From Spurgeon’s Morning Devotions:

Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving. (Colossians 2:6-7 ESV)

The life of faith is represented as receiving- an act which implies the very opposite of anything like merit. It is simply the acceptance of a gift. As the earth drinks in the rain, as the sea receives the streams, as night accepts light from the stars, so we, giving nothing, partake freely of the grace of God. The saints are not, by nature, wells, or streams, they are but cisterns into which the living water flows; they are empty vessels into which God pours His salvation. The idea of receiving implies a sense of realization, making the matter a reality. One cannot very well receive a shadow; we receive that which is substantial: so is it in the life of faith, Christ becomes real to us. While we are without faith, Jesus is a mere name to us-a person who lived a long while ago, so long ago that His life is only a history to us now! By an act of faith Jesus becomes a real person in the consciousness of our heart. But receiving also means grasping or getting possession of. The thing which I receive becomes my own: I appropriate to myself that which is given. When I receive Jesus, He becomes my Savior, so mine that neither life nor death shall be able to rob me of Him. All this is to receive Christ-to take Him as God’s free gift; to realize Him in my heart, and to appropriate Him as mine. Salvation may be described as the blind receiving sight, the deaf receiving hearing, the dead receiving life; but we have not only received these blessings, we have received CHRIST JESUS Himself. It is true that He gave us life from the dead. He gave us pardon of sin; He gave us imputed righteousness. These are all precious things, but we are not content with them; we have received Christ Himself. The Son of God has been poured into us, and we have received Him, and appropriated Him. What a heartful Jesus must be, for heaven itself cannot contain Him!

The Restoration Is Coming

Martyn Lloyd-Jones

15 He [Jesus Christ] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. 16 For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. 17 And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 18 And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. 19 For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, 20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. (Colossians 1)

We note in the verses above that everything that was created was made in Him, by Him, through and for Him. This includes the world and animals, angels, thrones, principalities and powers. All things were in perfect harmony. The Lord Jesus Christ was over all. This harmony did not continue, however, and the presence of sin in our world is due to that fact. First, there was a rebellion in heaven itself. The devil rebelled and fell with a large number of the angels. Satan then came and tempted man and man fell. The result was discord and sin amongst men. Also, we must be aware that even the creation itself suffered as the result of sin. So, we may ask ourselves, “What is God’s purpose in all of this?” We have a world that was perfectly created only to fall with man through the consequences of sin. “What now?” D. M. Lloyd-Jones helps us to understand what the above Scriptures teach us:

Now we are in a position to see the doctrine of this verse which we are studying. The mystic secret which we as Christians are allowed to share is that God will ultimately restore the original harmony, and re-unite again all things in Christ. Christ is over all and the old harmony will be restored. And we are told how it is going to happen. In regard to men we have already noted that it happens as the result of the redemption through the blood of Christ. Reconciliation to God and reconciliation with one another is by His blood, by His grace. . . .

Christ represents us and we are in Him, and so we are going to be elevated to the position of ‘lords of creation’ again, and everything will be placed under us. The old original harmony will be restored. Isaiah speaks of it prophetically. He saw that a day was coming when ‘the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the calf and the young lion and the fattened calf together, and a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall feed, their young ones shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice’ den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain, for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea’ [Isa 11.6-9].

The perfect harmony that will be restored will be harmony in man, and between men. Harmony on the earth and in the brute creation! Harmony in heaven and all under this blessed Lord Jesus Christ, who will be the Head of all! Everything will again be united in Him. And wonder of wonders, marvelous beyond compare, when all this happens it will never be undone again. All will be re-united in Him to all eternity. That is the message; that is God’s plan. That is the mystery which has been revealed unto us.

Once more I must ask some questions. Do you know these things? Are you prepared to give time to these things — to listen to them or to read about them? Do you know that these things are so marvelous that you will never hear anything greater, either in this world or the world to come? Do you realize that you have a part in these things . . . ?

God forbid that we should abuse the Scriptures by reducing them to the level of our ideas or contemporary events! Look at the ultimate, look at God’s grand and glorious purpose. Do not be over-particular in your interpretation of contemporary history, do not waste your time in attempts to fix ‘times and seasons’. What matters is God’s plan, which is being worked out since the beginning of ‘the fullness of times’. Think of, and live for the ultimate restoration of that glorious harmony which is coming, when we with our whole being shall praise ‘the Lamb that was slain’. (“God’s Ultimate Purpose”)

The Birth Of The God/Man

15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. 16 For by [1] him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. 17 And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 18 And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. 19 For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, 20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. (Colossians 1)

The Scriptures above tell us that there is no one like Jesus. The Son of God is far beyond everyone else. He is infinitely above any earthly hero in fact or in fiction. If we think that we can, somehow, take Christ out of Christmas – we might as well try to remove the stars from the night sky. John MacArthur, Jr comments on this topic:

It’s always a special joy for me, also, to come to the Christmas season and have the opportunity to focus on the simple and yet profound message of the birth of Christ. You know, it is an irony of rather significant proportions in America that we celebrate the birth of someone we refuse to acknowledge. . . .

Now the truth is nobody wants to stop the celebration, that’s not the idea, not the commercial world anyway, they want the money, not the government, they need the taxes that buying and selling and traveling produces and not the party goers, they want the fun. If we can just have the party without Jesus, everybody will be happy. . . .

Is Jesus someone less important than George Washington and Abraham Lincoln or Martin Luther King? Is Jesus someone about whom we shouldn’t be making so much fuss, and certainly not so much articulation of the character of His life and what He said and why He came? Is Jesus someone to be pushed into the background? Should we keep the party and get rid of the person whose party it is? Is He insignificant? Should people who want to proclaim Christ and sing His praises be silenced?

Well the Apostle Paul wants to help us to understand who Jesus is. And I want you to look in your Bible to Colossians chapter 1. Among all of the passages of Scripture that we might have looked at to see the reality of the child who was God, none is more grand than this one in the first chapter of Colossians. . . .

Every one of those statements that is made from verse 15 through verse 19 is absolutely exclusive. They are true of Him and nobody else. And the sum of them all is at the end of verse 18 where it says that He is to have the first-place in everything. No one else is the image of the invisible God, no one else can be the first-born of all creation. No one else can be the creator of things in heaven and earth, visible and invisible. No one else sits over the thrones and dominions and rulers and authorities. No one else is before all things and held…and holds all things together. No one else is the head of the body, the church, the beginning, the first born. No one else has all the fullness dwelling in Him to the pleasure of the Father. Those are all absolutely exclusive statements. And what they tell us is that Jesus Christ is utterly unique. (“The Child Who Was God”)