In his sermon, “Salvation by Faith and the Work of the Spirit,” Charles Spurgeon wrote how “grace must ever be the subject of our praise.” Consider these stirring words by Spurgeon.
If I ever get to heaven it will be in no measure because I deserve to get there, but because God willed it that I should enter glory by his abounding grace. No man has any claim upon God whatever. If God gives man what he may claim in justice he will award him eternal destruction from the glory of his power: that is all man has a right to; he is an undeserving, ill-deserving, hell-deserving sinner. If any good thing therefore comes to us it must be extended to the guilty, infinite compassion looking upon our misery and determining to reveal itself in a free gift, not to be won by effort not to be deserved nor purchased, but bestowed solely because he “will have mercy on whom he will have mercy, and he will have compassion on whom he will have compassion.” Our hope stands on pure grace, sovereign grace, grace unqualified. God blesses us because he is good, not because we are so, and saves us because he is gracious, not because he sees any grace inherent in us. He blesses as according to his great love wherewith he loved us even when we were dead in trespasses and sins; and therefore grace must ever be the subject of our praise. We can never endure the preaching of any other confidence, for we know it to be a delusion and a snare.
Friends, do we preach and teach sovereign grace like this? Shall we offer confidence in man, in free will, or any other delusion and snare? Far be it that we, who were dead in our sins and by nature children of wrath, offer any other message, any other boast, any other confidence save the free, electing grace of God who in love lavished mercy on the chief of sinners. Pure grace. Sovereign grace. Grace unqualified–apart from which we are but worms, wretches, and hell-deserving sinners. May we ever be amazed by God’s great grace!
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.”
Ephesians 1:3-6