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Why a man is saved?
Spurgeon, "The Minister's Stock-taking”
If you are asked why a man is saved, the
only Scriptural answer is-
“Sovereign grace” — grace, unmoved by anything in the creature,
flowing spontaneously from the mighty depths of the divine heart.
The answer is this– because God willed it that way.
“He will have mercy on whom he will have mercy, and he
will have compassion on whom he will have compassion.”
“It is not of him that wills, nor of him that runs,
but of God that shows mercy.”
If any man is saved, it is not because he willed to be saved.
If any man be brought to Christ, it is not of any effort of his,
but the root, the cause, the motive of the salvation of any one
human being, and of all the chosen in heaven, is to be found
in the predestinating purpose and sovereign distinguishing
will of the Lord our God.
It is God who quickens the souls of those who believe.
If men be saved all the glory must be unto God from first to last,
and not an atom nor a particle attributed to the goodness, or the
power, or the will of the creature.
This is a doctrine which some people have not learned very fully yet,
but they will have to learn it if they are God’s people. Jonah, you
know, had never learned it from the schools, but when the Lord
got him in the whale's belly, at the bottom of the sea, with the weeds
wrapped about his head, then it was that he said, “Salvation is of
the Lord;” and often some sore trials and terrible afflictions are
necessary schoolmasters to teach us this lesson, that salvation
is of the Lord alone.
It is one of the instinctive apprehensions of every enlightened
man’s mind, that if he is saved, it is because of God’s mercy.
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