Charles Spurgeon
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"Salvation By Grace Alone"
"Dear friends, you have to do nothing, be nothing, and feel nothing by way of fitness for salvation, but just to come and accept, free, gratis, for nothing, the abundant mercy of God in Christ Jesus. He is the empty sinner's fulness, the dead sinner's life, the perishing sinner's salvation. I do not know any truth that can encourage poor sinful souls to pray, to repent, and to believe in Jesus except the truth that salvation is all of grace from first to last."
Growing Up In A Christian Family
Charles Spurgeon was born into a Christian family who lived in Colchester, Essex. From an early age Charles went to church with his parents. But he knew he was unconverted and was in deep distress.
" For some four or five years I had been seeking Christ under a heavy burden of sin. I remember well that Sabbath morning in the month of January, 1850, for there was a very severe snowstorm. I was going to the Congregational Chapel of Colchester that morning; but it snowed so heavily that I turned into a little Primitive Methodist Chapel, containing a dozen or fifteen people.”
Converted After Being Caught In A Snowstorm, January 1850
"A poor man, a shoemaker, a tailor, something of that sort, went up into the pulpit to preach. He announced his text, “Look unto Me,and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth” - (ISAIAH 45:22).
"I thank God that I owe my conversion to Christ to an unknown person, who certainly was no minister in the ordinary acceptation of the term; but who could say this much, 'Look unto Christ and be saved, all ye ends of the earth.' "
He said: "Many of ye are looking to yourselves. No use looking there. You'll never find comfort in yourselves. Some look to God, the Father. No, look to Him by and by. Jesus Christ says, 'Look unto Me.' Some of you say, 'I must wait the Spirit a working.' You have no business with that just now. Look to Christ. It runs: 'Look unto Me.'"
Then he shouted, ‘Young man, look to Jesus Christ; look now.’
"He made me start in my seat, but I did look to Jesus Christ there and then. The cloud was gone, the darkness had rolled away, and that moment I saw the sun; and I could have risen that moment and sang with the most enthusiastic of them of the precious blood of Christ, and the simple faith which looks alone to Him."
Later Spurgeon wrote:“In the text, ‘Look, look, look,’ I found salvation in the morning (at the Primitive Methodist Chapel.)In the text, ‘Accepted in the Beloved,’ preached at the Baptist church in the evening, I found peace and freedom”.
Questions
Q1 What did Charles Spurgeon discover that snowy morning that changed his life?
Q2 In what ways has your experience been similar or different?
