Spurgeon on “Easy Believe-ism”
Charles Spurgeon was a great preacher and evangelist. Here are some of his thoughts.
“A man’s converts are always a disgrace to him. It is only those that God converts that
will last. When we go fresh into a place, there is always a number of people who hear
with a degree of profit, and who are affected by us. But let that minister be taken
away, and they go back again. One wave washes them up on the shore, and the
return wave sucks them back again into the great deeps.”
“Oh,” writes one to me this week, “I have believed that Jesus died for me, but it does
not keep me from sinning in any way whatever. Our minister says that if we believe
that Jesus died for us we shall be saved.” No, no, but that is not the gospel, and such
a belief is not faith at all. I did not wonder that a poor creature should have tried
such a gospel and found it fail. Do not these men say that Christ died for everybody,
and then declare that if you believe he died for you (which he must of necessity have
done if he died for everybody) then that will save you, and yet there are scores and
hundreds who are proofs to the fact that it does not save them, but that they can
believe this universal redemption and live as they did before? “
“I have known, in my short time, certain churches, in the paroxysms of delirium,
meeting houses crowded, aisles filled, preachers stamping and thundering, hearers
intoxicated with excitement, and persons converted by wholesale—even children
converted by hundreds—they said thousands. Well, and a month or two after, where
were the congregations? where were the converts? Echo has answered, “Where,
where?” Why, the converts were worse sinners than they were before; or mere
professors, puffed up into a superficial religion, from which they soon fell into a
hopeless coldness, which has rendered it difficult ever to stir them again.”
What are you thoughts about these “superficial converts?”
Billy
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Comments
Raul Bermudez
Billy, I would agree with Spurgeon. Too many times people trust emotions to lead them to truth… this can result is tragedy. Thank God that His truth will always lead us to a real emotion.
Raul
Jeremiah Blasi
Which sermon is this from? I ask because I wish to verify something. Having read Spurgeon quite a bit, I know that Spurgeon was not a “universal redemptionist”. It seems to me that this snippet is leading to a proclamation of the Particular Redemption provided by Christ for His people. In other words, “believing that Jesus died for you” has nothing to do with the gospel message. The message is that if Christ has redeemed you, your heart will change, you will truly trust in Christ alone, and you will not continue in your depraved nature.
John Cooley
Hey Brother Bill,
Great little piece. I too agree with Spurgeon and don’t believe he, in any way, compromised the Gospel of grace or man’s responsibility to respond to it. I’ve never seen any conflict between God’s sovereignty (Election) and man’s responsibility to respond to the Gospel.
I do believe in “Lordship Salvation”, not a works-based justification, but a justification based on one’s understand of, and commitment to, the person of Christ. Jesus is God the Son. That being the case, to trust Him as Savior certainly requires one’s recognition of Him as God (the Lord), does it not? Submission to the authority of God as God is so important to God that He moved Paul to site man’s rejection of His authority as the grounds for His condemnation in Romans 1:18-32.
Paul’s presentation of the Gospel in Romans 10:9 clearly demands that Jesus be acknowledged as Lord. That one would recognize Jesus as Lord clearly implies one’s responsibility to submit to His lordship. Again, the version of “Lordship Salvation” that I believe in is not a works-based justification, but a justification by grace through faith provoked by one’s understanding of, and trust in, the person of Jesus, God the Son as Lord and Savior.
Thanks again for the article. The demands of our culture on spiritual leadership may change, but God’s never will!
Be Encouraged,
Bro John
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