“Rest assured, beloved, there is no true growth in grace except that which is of the Lord. Nay, there is no sustaining the position to which you have reached except by the Lord.
“And every virtue we possess,
And every victory won,
And every thought of holiness,
Are His, and His alone.”
He has wrought all our works in us, and if we have produced any fruit to the honour of his name, from him has our fruit come, for our Lord truly said, “Without me ye can do nothing.”
We must give him all the glory, for certainly he has given us all the grace; and as it has been, so will it be. Between here and heaven there will be nothing of our own in the matter.
We shall work out our own salvation with fear and trembling, because he first works it in us to will and to do of his own good pleasure. There is no working out our salvation unless the Lord works it in.
We bring to the surface of our life what he works in the deep foundation of our inward nature; but both within and without the spiritual life is all of grace.
When we put our foot upon the threshold of glory, and pass through the gate of pearl to the golden pavement of the heavenly city, the last step will be as much taken through the grace of God as was the first step when we turned unto our great Father in our rags and misery.
Left by the grace of God for a single moment, we should perish. We are dependent as much upon grace for spiritual life as we are upon the air we breathe for this natural life.
Take the atmosphere from us; put us under an exhausted receiver, and we die: take thy grace from us, O our God, and we perish at once! What else could happen to us?
Brethren, we must always believe this and preach it, for it is the sum of all true doctrine. If you do not make salvation to be wholly of the Lord, depend upon it you will have to clip salvation down, and make it a small matter.
I have always desired to preach a great salvation, and I do not think that any other is worth preaching.
If salvation is of man, then you do not wonder that man falls from grace. Of course he does. What man begins, man also soon ends in his own way with a failure.
When God saves he saves eternally.”
–Charles H. Spurgeon, “A Testimony to Free and Sovereign Grace,” in The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit Sermons, vol. 33 (London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1887), 33: 160–161.
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