What Christ Came to Do¹

C H Spurgeon

What does Paul mean really when he says that “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners”? He means, first, that Jesus came to save them from the punishment of their sin. Their sin shall not be laid to their charge, so that they shall be condemned for it, if they do but trust in Him who was punished in the place of those who were really guilty. That is one thing that Christ Jesus came into the world to do for sinners.

He came also to save them from the pollution of their sin, so that, though their mind has been debased and their taste degraded and their conscience deadened by sin, He came to take that evil away and to give them a tender heart and a hatred of sin and a love for holiness and a desire for purity. That is a great work for Him to accomplish; yet Jesus came to do even more than that.

He came also to take away our tendencies to sin, those tendencies which are born in us and grow up with us. He came by His Spirit to eradicate them, to pluck them up by the roots, and to put within us another principle, which shall fight with the old principle of sin and overcome it, till Christ alone shall reign and every thought shall be brought into captivity to Him.

Further, Jesus came to save His people from apostasy. He “came into the world to save sinners”, in the fullest possible sense, by keeping them faithful to the end, so that they shall not go back unto perdition. This is a very important part of the work of divine grace. To start a man right is but little, but to keep that man holding on even to the end is a triumph of almighty grace, and this is what Christ has come to do.

Christ Jesus came into the world, not to half-save you, not to save you in this direction or that, and in this light or that, but to save you from your sin, to save you from an angry temper, to save you from pride, to save you from strong drink, to save you from covetousness, to save you from every evil thing, “and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy”.

This is a glorious truth: “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners”. He came to Bethlehem’s manger and afterwards to Calvary’s cross, with this as His one business: that He might save sinners. Is He not able to save? Is He not just the Saviour that we need? God and yet man in one adorable Person, He is able to sympathise because He is man, and He is able to save because He is God. Blessed God-man, Jesus Christ.

¹Taken from Spurgeon’s “Good Tidings of Great Joy”: Christ’s Incarnation the Foundation of Christianity.

“Let Israel Hope in the Lord” (1)¹

John Bunyan

I come now to show more distinctly who, and what particular persons, they are that are concerned in this exhortation to hope. They are put, as you see, under this general term, “Israel”. “Let Israel hope in the Lord”, and, “He shall redeem Israel from all his iniquities”.

“Israel” is to be taken three ways in the Scriptures: (1) for such as are Israel after the flesh; (2) for such as are Israel neither after the flesh nor the Spirit; (3) for such as are Israel after God, or after the Spirit.

1. Israel is to be taken for those that are so after the flesh; that is, for those that sprang from the loins of Jacob and are called, “Israel after the flesh”, “the children of the flesh”. Now these, as such, are not those who have an interest in this exhortation, for no true spiritual and eternal grace comes by the flesh. Men are not within the bounds of the promise of eternal life, as they are the children of the flesh, either in the more gross or the more refined sense. Jacob was as spiritual a father as any, I suppose, that now professes the gospel; but this spiritualness could not convey, to his children that were such only after the flesh, the spirit and grace that causes sound conversion and salvation by Jesus Christ. Hence Paul counts it a carnal thing to glory in this and tells us plainly, if he had heretofore known Christ thus – that is, to have been His brother or kinsman according to the flesh – he would henceforth know Him thus no more. For though the children of Israel are as the sand of the sea, yet not that multitude, but the remnant that the Lord has chosen and shall call, shall be saved.

This therefore is an arrow against the face of that false doctrine that the Jews leant upon: that is, that they were in the state of God’s grace and everlasting favour, because they were the children and offspring of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

1. Israel may be taken for such as are neither so after the flesh, nor after the spirit, but only in their own imagination. Such I take to be all those that you read of in Revelation 2:9, who said they were Jews and were not, but did lie. These I take to be those carnal gospellers, from among the Gentiles, that pretended to be Jews inwardly, which circumcision is that of the heart in the Spirit; when they were such only in their own fancies and conceits, and made out their profession as a lie.

There is an abundance of these at this day in the world, men who know

¹An edited extract from Bunyan’s Israel’s Hope Encouraged, in which he expounds Psalm 130:7: “Let Israel hope in the Lord: for with the Lord there is mercy, and with Him is plenteous redemption”.

neither the Father or the Son, nor anything of the way of the Spirit in the work of regeneration, and yet presume to say that they are Jews – that is, truly and spiritually the seed of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. “For he is not a Jew, which is one outwardly; neither is that circumcision, which is outward in the flesh: but he is a Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God.”

And although it may please someone to say, as was of old said to them of the captivity: “We seek your God as ye do”; it will be found at last that such “have no portion, nor right, nor memorial, in Jerusalem”. And I will from hence caution all to take heed of presuming to count themselves Jews, unless they have a substantial ground to do so. For to do this without a good foundation makes all our profession a lie; not only so but it hinders us from obtaining a sight of our lack of an interest in Jesus Christ – without which we cannot be saved. Yes, such a person is a great self-deceiver, and so the worst deceiver of all; he that deceives his own self, his own heart, is a deceiver in the worst sense. Nor can any disappointment be like that which casts away soul and body at once. O slender thread, that a man should think that, because he fancies he is an Israelite indeed, he shall be taken for one on the day of judgement, or that he shall be able to cheat God with a pitiful say-so!

1. But the Israel under consideration in the text is Israel after God, or after the Spirit. Hence they are called “the Israel of God”, because He has made them so, not by generation or by fancy, but by divine power.

Thus the first who had this name was made so. “Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel.” This is the man concerned in the text, “Let Israel hope in the Lord”, namely, Israel that is made so by God, and whom God has allowed to be so. For men are not debarred from calling themselves after this most godly name, provided they are so indeed. What is dangerous is when men think this privilege comes by carnal generation, or that their fancying themselves to be such will bear them out in the Day of judgement. Otherwise, if men become the true servants of God by Christ, they have, as I said, authority so to subscribe themselves. “One shall say, I am the Lord’s; and another shall call himself by the name of Jacob; and another shall subscribe with his hand unto the Lord, and surname himself by the name of Israel.”

But, to describe such people further, they must be men of circumcised and tender hearts; they must be such as worship God in the spirit, that rejoice in Christ Jesus and that have no confidence in the flesh. For these are the Nathaniels, the Israelites “indeed in whom there is no guile”; and these are the ones intended in the exhortation, when He says, “Let Israel hope in the Lord”. (1.) For these are formed for that very end, that they might hope in

the Lord. Yes, the word and testament is given to them for that very purpose. (2.) These are prisoners of hope (Zec 9:12) all the time they are in the state of nature, even as the whole creation is subjected under hope all the time of its bondage, by the sin and villainy of man. And unto them it shall be said, in the dispensation of the fullness of time, “Turn you to the stronghold, ye prisoners of hope”, as certainly as that which is called “the creature itself” (Rom 8:21) shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.

Only here, as I said before, let all men have a care in this. This is the point: he that is right here is right in all that is necessary to salvation, but he that misses here can by no means be right anywhere to his soul’s advantage in the other world.