Charles H. Spurgeon - Salvation is of the Lord

INTRODUCTION TO THE SERMON

Human pride takes many forms, but perhaps none is as persistent as the need to participate in one’s own salvation. We accept with relative ease the idea that we need help; what is difficult for us to admit is that we need to be saved. There is an immense difference between the two.

The person who asks for help still imagines that he possesses some strength which, if properly supplemented, will be able to carry him to his destination. The person who truly needs to be saved recognizes that his hope must come from outside himself. And it is precisely at this point that the Gospel strikes one of the deepest convictions of the fallen human heart: the belief that somewhere within us there remains something capable of claiming a share of the glory of our salvation.

Jonah had to come to a place where that illusion could not survive. Surrounded by the waters, far removed from any human help, and incapable of bringing about his own deliverance, he uttered one of the briefest and most comprehensive confessions in Scripture: “Salvation is of the LORD” (Jonah 2.9). Few words could say so much. In them, man is removed from the center, grace assumes its rightful place, and God receives what belongs to Him: all the glory.

It is not difficult to confess this truth while we remain strong. We can utter it easily when our resources are still available, our abilities seem sufficient, and some way of escape remains within reach of our hands. It is very different to learn it when all our alternatives disappear. Certain biblical truths are understood by the mind before their true weight is felt by the soul. We know that God is sufficient, yet we continue gathering little securities around ourselves. We confess that we depend upon the grace of Christ, while silently preserving some confidence in our own ability. We say that Christ is everything, but frequently we perceive the meaning of that confession only when what we once called strength can no longer sustain us.

The depths of our abysses have a severe way of exposing our false saviors. Not because suffering possesses any redemptive virtue in itself. Pain does not automatically sanctify, affliction does not necessarily make anyone wise, and despair, when left to itself, may harden rather than break the heart. But the providence of God knows how to use what empties us to reveal how much of our security rested in the wrong place. When our hands are empty, we begin to perceive what we were truly holding. When our strength diminishes, we discover where our confidence rested. When human paths come to an end, the sufficiency of God ceases to be merely a correct statement and begins to fill the entire horizon before us.

Yet Jonah 2.9 reaches a depth far greater than the deliverance of a prophet in danger. The statement touches the very heart of redemption itself. If salvation is of the Lord, then it does not originate in man. Its source does not rest in our strength, moral disposition, religiosity, works, feelings, or in any spiritual ability preserved after the Fall. The source is God.

This is the point at which grace ceases to be merely a pleasant word and begins seriously to confront our view of ourselves. Natural man prefers to imagine himself sick rather than admit that he is dead. The sick man can still cooperate with the physician; the dead man must receive life. Scripture, however, does not describe our natural condition with the delicacy our pride would like to find. We are “dead in trespasses and sins” (Ephesians 2.1).

Our tragedy does not consist merely in our ignorance of the right way. Our will has been affected by sin, our affections have been disordered, our understanding has been darkened, and our hearts have become inclined to turn away from God. Humanity’s problem is not a lack of religious information. We need spiritual resurrection.

For this reason, the Gospel is not the announcement that God has done His part and now waits for the sinner, by some independent ability, to complete the rest. The grace of God does not build almost the entire bridge while leaving man to cross the final span alone. That which begins in eternity, is manifested in history through Christ, is applied by the Holy Spirit, and will be consummated in glory has one single source. Salvation belongs to the Lord.

Before there was a sinner seeking mercy, there was a God who had determined to manifest it. Before anyone could conceive the need for a Redeemer, the purpose of the LORD was already established. Redemption was not improvised after the Fall, as though sin had introduced an unforeseen difficulty into the government of God. The God who knows the end from the beginning did not need hastily to repair something that had escaped His control. The purpose of grace rests in His eternal will. Paul contemplates this reality and declares that God chose His people in Christ “before the foundation of the world” (Ephesians 1.4).

Here our imagination must give way to worship. No creature counseled God concerning redemption. No angel presented the plan of the incarnation. No created intelligence conceived the cross. No human mind discovered a way to preserve at the same time the holiness of the God who judges and the hope of the one who deserves to be judged. The Gospel did not ascend from man to God; it descended from God to man. And at the center of this purpose stands Jesus Christ.

At the cross, the declaration “Salvation is of the LORD” receives its brightest demonstration. The sinner does not provide the sacrifice. God provides it. The guilty man does not produce the righteousness he needs. Christ fulfills it. The condemned man does not pay the debt and then ask for mercy. The Son takes upon Himself the guilt of His people and accomplishes a redemption that is sufficient, perfect, and complete. Therefore, when Jesus declared, “It is finished” (John 19.30), He was not announcing that He had made salvation merely possible for those who would later succeed in completing it. He was proclaiming the perfection of a work that admits no human addition.

Our empty hands, therefore, are no obstacle to coming to Christ. They are precisely the hands with which the sinner must come. The problem begins when we insist on putting something into them. Some carry morality. Others, religion. Some trust in human knowledge marked by self, in spiritual experiences misaligned with the Word, in past decisions, tears without repentance, supposed services rendered to the Lord, or convenient comparisons with people regarded as worse than themselves. The human heart possesses an extraordinary ability to transform legitimate things into illegitimate grounds of confidence. We can make obedience a rival to grace, sound doctrine a reason for boasting, and even faith itself a kind of merit by which we imagine that we deserve what God freely gives. But before the cross, every coin minted by self-righteousness loses its value. Grace does not bargain with our merits. It dethrones them.

This truth, however, was not given merely to crush the proud. It also reaches the person who, after discovering his helplessness, has fallen into the opposite extreme and transformed his inability into despair. The same heart that yesterday said, “I can save myself,” may today say, “Not even God can save someone like me.” The words have changed, but the man continues looking at himself. Before, he contemplated his strength and judged it sufficient; now he contemplates his ruin and considers it greater than the saving grace of God. The Gospel turns our eyes away from both places.

The decisive question is not whether there is enough strength in you. The question is whether there is enough power in God. It is not whether your guilt is small, but whether the blood of Christ is sufficient. It is not whether you can produce spiritual life, but whether the Holy Spirit can quicken the dead. It is not whether your hands can preserve salvation to the end, but whether the God who began the good work is faithful to complete it.

And then the same doctrine that humbles begins to comfort. If salvation ultimately depended upon us, no soul conscious of its own weakness could rest. Our feelings change. Our spiritual perception fluctuates. Our strength diminishes. There are days when faith seems firm and others when we utter our prayers almost like someone clinging to the last plank in the midst of the sea. If eternal security rested upon the stability of these things, Christian peace would be impossible.

But that which was born of grace continues to depend upon grace. The God who gives life does not abandon His children after granting them life. He does not raise us from death only to require us afterward to preserve by ourselves what we have received. Christ is not merely the door through which we enter; He is also the vine from which we continue to receive life. “Without me ye can do nothing” (John 15.5) is not a word intended only for the unbeliever. It is the permanent condition of the Christian life. We depend upon Christ at the first awakening of faith, and we shall continue to depend upon Christ at our final breath.

Such dependence does not produce passivity. It produces humility, perseverance, and courage. The person who knows that God alone can save does not need to manipulate men in order to produce spiritual results. He can faithfully proclaim the Gospel and pray that the Holy Spirit of God will accomplish what no eloquence can perform. He can labor without imagining that the Kingdom rests upon his shoulders. He can sow even when the ground appears impossible, because the hardness of the human heart has never been greater than the power of God who calls the dead to life.

He can also pass through suffering without needing to receive today all the grace he will need tomorrow. God does not promise an advance supply of spiritual