High Doctrine

Spurgeon takes "all things are of God" as a summary of his entire ministry's teaching, arguing systematically that every part of the new spiritual creation — the first desire toward Christ, the new nature, the privileges of pardon and adoption, and even the holy actions and sufferings of believers — comes from God alone in its planning, its purchase through Christ's blood, its application to the individual soul, its ongoing maintenance, and its final completion, with man contributing nothing since a dead sinner can no more raise himself spiritually than a corpse can rise on its own. He defends this doctrine by appealing to Scripture's statement that "every good gift comes from above," to the fact that all glory for salvation belongs to God (which only makes sense if all the work belongs to God too), and to the testimony of every Christian's own experience, which credits grace rather than self for any good within them. He closes by showing this doctrine's practical benefits — it humbles human pride, kills self-sufficiency, gives lasting comfort since a salvation entirely secured by God cannot collapse the way one resting partly on human effort could, and far from discouraging sinners, actually invites them to come exactly as they are, since every quality they lack — a new heart, true repentance, saving faith, the power to persevere — is itself a gift that God freely supplies to those who simply come and receive.Sermon delivered by Charles Spurgeon on June 3rd, 1860.