By Ed Romine
“There is no soul-winning by untruthful preaching. We must preach the truth as it is in Jesus. Workers for God must tell out the gospel and keep to the gospel. You must continually dwell upon the real truth as it is in God’s word, for nothing but this will win souls.”
Spurgeon preached these words in a sermon entitled, “Tearful Sowing and Joyful Reaping,” on Sunday morning, April 25, 1869. He believed that “all souls of men are lost by nature” because “wherever Christ is not trusted, and the Spirit has not created a new heart, and the soul has not come to the great Father, there is a lost soul.” And for Spurgeon, “The winning of souls is the greater matter.”
Spurgeon loved soul-winning, and he was urgent about the task. He once confessed, “I would sooner bring one sinner to Jesus Christ than unpick all the mysteries of the divine word, for salvation is the thing we are to live for. I would to God that I understood all mysteries, yet chief of all would I proclaim the mystery of soul-saving by faith in the blood of the Lamb.”
Spurgeon’s love of soul-winning also carried a sense of urgency for lost sinners, for he knew that “this special service of soul-winning is reserved for us who are still living on this earth.”
Spurgeon rejoiced in exalting his Savior in his evangelism, saying, “Oh, it is a wonderful thing this, that there should be attractions about the Lord Jesus Christ which can draw to him those whom nothing else that is good can possibly stir!” He rejoiced that “the Lord Jesus saves people of all sorts.” And on the last day all of redeemed humanity will exalt Jesus for His soul-saving power:
“It is most true that Jesus saves his people from their sins—earth knows it, hell howls at it, and heaven chants it; time has seen it, and eternity shall reveal it. There is none like to Jesus in saving power. All glory be to him! When he shall come from heaven with a shout, and all his hosts shall be with him, when the day of the supper of the Lamb shall come, and the bride hath made herself ready, and she that is the queen all glorious within, wearing her raiment of wrought gold, shall sit down at the table of God with her glorious husband then shall it be seen that he has saved his church, his people, from their sins.”
Spurgeon exalted in the reality that Jesus saves sinners as they are in their sinfulness. He “does not wait until [sinners] are clean before he bestows his love and pity upon them. . . He finds them in all their defilement, rebellion, and iniquity, and he deals with them just as they are. Jesus saves sinners. God’s love comes to those who in no degree merit it. His grace stoops to the ruin of the fall and lifts us up from it.” For Spurgeon, only Jesus gets all the glory in man’s salvation: “Salvation in every department, salvation from its hopeful dawning to its glorious noontide in perfection, is all of Christ Jesus. He is Savior, and he alone. . . He is the unique Savior, there is no other possible salvation now or in the world to come.”
Jesus saves because of His complete work on the cross and His resurrection from the dead. In an 1862 sermon entitled, “Faith and Repentance Inseparable,” Spurgeon reminds his congregation: “Jesus saves you, not by what you feel, but by that finished work, that blood and righteousness which God accepted on your behalf.” In his death on the cross and resurrection, Jesus won salvation for sinners.
Spurgeon explains:
“Salvation is still more linked with a risen Christ, because we see him by his resurrection destroying death, breaking down the prison of the sepulcher, bearing away like another Samson the gates of the grave. He is a Savior for us since he has vanquished the last enemy that shall be destroyed, that we having been saved from sin by his death should be saved from death through his resurrection.”
Spurgeon exalted in the resurrection of His precious Savior: “The fullness of salvation comes to us because he has risen from the dead, and is now making intercession for the transgressors. O brethren, the resurrection of Jesus is bright as the sun with glory! Faith in it thrills our hearts. Well might each line of our hymn end with a Hallelujah.” He saw the resurrection of Jesus Christ as “the key-stone of the arch of our holy faith.” Without the resurrection of Jesus, there can be no Christianity. The resurrection, for Spurgeon, most clearly displayed God’s glory. Spurgeon testified, “If you ask where God’s glory most is seen, I will not point to creation, nor to providence, but to the raising of Jesus from the dead.” At the Messiah’s resurrection, “the glory of God was laid bare.”
Spurgeon taught that believers in Jesus will benefit from His resurrection power, for, “Partakers of his death, we are also partakers of his resurrection.” Spurgeon said, “[Believers] rise because they are one with Christ in his resurrection. His resurrection is the proof and the guarantee that [believers] also shall rise in the day of his appearing.” Because He lives, believers in Jesus Christ shall live.
The risen Lord Jesus Christ is the Alpha and Omega of the Christian good news. Let believers seek to make much of Him. Let us all agree with Spurgeon on the centrality of Jesus in the gospel:
“When he was born, the angels proclaimed good tidings of great joy to the sons of men; and after his death, his human messengers went forth to all nations with messages of love. His death is the birth of our hope; his resurrection is the rising of our buried joy; his session at the right hand of God is the prophecy of our eternal bliss. Christ is the author of the gospel, the subject of the gospel, and the end of the gospel. His hand is seen in every letter of that wonderful epistle of divine love called the New Testament, or New Covenant. He, himself, is glad tidings to us in every point, and the gospel is from him in every sense. That is not gospel which does not relate to Jesus. If there is no blood-mark upon it, the roll of tidings may be rejected as a forgery. As Christ is the subject, so is he the object of the gospel: his glory is promoted by the gospel. It is the gospel of his glory among the sons of men in all ages, and it will be so throughout eternity. The gospel and the sinners saved by it will glorify the Son of God for ever.”
ED Romine | Pastor of Education & Evangelism, First Baptist Church Provo, Utah
