The Root of the Matter

Spurgeon uses Job's confident cry — "the root of the matter is found in me" — to comfort trembling, fruit-poor believers by distinguishing what is essential from what is desirable, working through three areas: in doctrine, he names the Trinity, Christ's substitutionary atonement, and justification by faith as the genuine roots without which there is no Christianity, while treating election, final perseverance, and other Calvinist specifics as precious but non-essential branches that a true believer may not yet have grasped; in experience, the root is simply a living faith in a living Savior, a real hatred of sin, and a soul that has died to all hope in its own merit, while deep anguish of conviction, rich communion with Christ, and advanced spiritual feeling — though greatly desirable — are branches rather than roots; and in practice, the root is simply the changed will that now desires what it once hated and hates what it once loved, while zeal, active service, and mature fruitfulness are the branches that grow from that root in due season. He draws three properties of a root to test whether this life is genuinely present — it is a fixing thing (keeping the believer stable through storms that blow over the rootless professor), a quickening thing (an inward living principle that does not stop when outward circumstances stop), and a receiving thing (actively drawing nourishment from Scripture, sermons, and providence rather than depending entirely on external stimulation). He closes with two practical exhortations flowing from the doctrine: to strong believers, stop quarreling and condemning those who have only the root and not yet all your branches — Christ has received them and so must you, since you cannot intimidate a child of God without making his Father angry; and to anyone without the root at all, to look now to Christ's five wounds, since the Spirit can yet plant that root in the hardest heart and the vilest sinner need do nothing but look to the crucified Savior and live.Sermon delivered by Charles Spurgeon on April 12, 1863.