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Charles Spurgeon Christian Living Classics
The Power of the Cross of Christ
At the core of Spurgeon's preaching was the work of Jesus Christ in His life, death, and resurrection. Spurgeon was thoroughly convinced that "the doctrine of the precious blood, when it gets into the heart, drives error out of it and sets up the throne of truth." His messages on the cross of Christ resonate with the amazing wonder of our reconciliation to God as well as the reason why a believer should put away sin from his life.
Come with Charles Spurgeon and glimpse the cross of Christ as he saw it. Listen as he describes Christ's agony in the Garden of Gethesemane, the suffering of Christ on the cross, the powerful words spoken from the cross, and finally the death of Christ. Life-changing messages await you.
Come with Charles Spurgeon and glimpse the cross of Christ as he saw it. Listen as he describes Christ's agony in the Garden of Gethesemane, the suffering of Christ on the cross, the powerful words spoken from the cross, and finally the death of Christ. Life-changing messages await you.
160 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 1996
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About the author
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
5,990 books1,624 followersCharles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-1892) was England's best-known preacher for most of the second half of the nineteenth century. In 1854, just four years after his conversion, Spurgeon, then only 20, became pastor of London's famed New Park Street Church (formerly pastored by the famous Baptist theologian, John Gill). The congregation quickly outgrew their building, moved to Exeter Hall, then to Surrey Music Hall. In these venues, Spurgeon frequently preached to audiences numbering more than 10,000—all in the days before electronic amplification. In 1861, the congregation moved permanently to the newly constructed Metropolitan Tabernacle.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
March 26, 2009
Spurgeon details the expiatory death of Jesus. God used this to change my life.
May 11, 2023
For my own future notes:
Page 23 - “Jesus draws men gradually. Some are brought to Christ in a moment, but many are drawn by slow degrees. The sun in some parts of the world rises above the horizon in a single instant. But in our own country, at this season of the year, it is beautiful to watch the dawn, from the first gray light to the actual break of day. Is it dark or is it light? Well, it is not quite dark: it is darkness visible. By and by there is light. No sun is up as yet, but yet the light increases till the east begins to glow and the west reflects the radiance.
Then, finally, up rises the great king of day. So does the Lord bring many to Himself by gentle degrees. They cannot tell when they were converted, but they are converted, for they have come to Christ. Rest assured that He will not send you back. Do not say, "I am not converted, for I do not know the moment of the great change." I knew an old lady once who did not know her birthday, but I never told her that she was not born because of that, for there she was. And if you do not know when you were made a Christian, yet, if you are Christian, it little matters when. If you are really born of God, the date of your new birth is interesting to curiosity but not important to godliness.”
Pages 40-41 - “"If they do these things in the green tree, what will they do in the dry?" Among other things, I think He meant this: "If I, the innocent Substitute for sinners, suffer thus, what will be done when the sinner himself--the dry tree whose sins are his own and not merely imputed to him, shall fall into the hands of an angry God?" Remember that when God saw Christ in the sinner's place, He did not spare Him, and when He finds you without Christ, He will not spare you. You have seen Jesus led away by His enemies; so shall you be dragged away by fiends to the place appointed for you. It shall be fulfilled to you:
"Depart from me, ye cursed, into ever-
lasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels" (Matt. 25:41).
Jesus was deserted of God and if He, who was only imputedly a sinner, was deserted, how much more shall you be? "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani"-what an awful shriek! But what shall be your cry when you shall say, "Good God! Why hast thou forsaken me?" and the answer shall come back, "Because I have called, and ye refused;
I have stretched out my hand, and no man regarded; but ye have set at nought all my counsel, and would none of my reproof: I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh" (Prov. 1:24-26). These are awful words, but they are not mine. They are the very words of God in Scripture. If God hides His face from Christ, how much less will He spare you! He did not spare His Son the stripes. What whips of steel for you, what knots of burning wire for you, when conscience shall smite you, when the law shall scourge you with its ten-thonged whip! Oh, who would stand in your place when God shall say, " Awake, O sword, against the rebel, against the man who rejected me; smite him, and let him feel the smart forever!" Christ was spit upon with shame; what shame will be yours! The whole universe shall hiss you. Angels shall be ashamed of you. Your own friends, yes, your sainted mother, shall say "Amen" to your condemnation. And those who loved you best shall sit as assessors with Christ to judge you and condemn you! I cannot roll up into one word all the mass of sorrows that met upon the head of Christ who died for us; therefore, it is impossible for me to tell you what streams, what oceans of grief, must roll over your spirit if you die as you now are. You may die so, and you may die now. I do beseech you, by the agonies of Christ, by His wounds and by His blood, do not bring upon yourself the curse. Do not bear in your own person the awful wrath to come! May God deliver you!
Trust in the Son of God and you shall never die.”
Pages 50-51 - “This feeling, too, may stand in the way of something a great deal better. Jesus would not have these women weep for one thing because they were to weep for another thing that far more seriously demanded their weeping. You need not weep because Christ died one-tenth so much as because your sins rendered it necessary that He should die. You need not weep over the crucifixion, but weep over your transgression, for your sins nailed the Redeemer to the accursed tree. To weep over a dying Savior is to lament the remedy; it were wiser to bewail the disease. To weep over the dying Savior is to wet the surgeon's knife with tears; it were better to bewail the spreading cancer that the knife must cut away. To weep over the Lord Jesus as He goes to the cross is to weep over that which is the subject of the highest joy that ever heaven and earth have known. Your tears are scarcely needed there; they are natural, but a deeper wisdom will make you brush them all away and chant with joy His victory over death and the grave. If we must continue our sad emotions, let us lament that we should have broken the law that He thus painfully vindicated, let us mourn that we should have incurred the penalty that He even to the death was made to endure. Jesus wished them not so much to look at His outward sufferings as at the secret inward cause of that outward sorrow, namely, the transgression and the iniquity of His people, which had laid the cross upon His shoulders and surrounded Him with enemies.”
Page 56 - “Now, dear friend, I think I have said enough on this painful matter to assure you that the most terrible warning to impenitent men in all the world is the death of Christ, for if God spared not His own Son, on whom was only laid imputed sin, will He spare sinners whose sins are actual and their own? If He smote Him to the death who only stood in the sinner's stead, will He let the impenitent sinner go free? If He who always did His Father's will and was obedient even unto death must be forsaken of God, what will become of those who reject Christ and live and die enemies to the Most High? Here is cause for weeping, and very solemnly would! say it God help me to say it so that you may feel it-the most dreadful thought is that perhaps we ourselves are in the condition of guiltiness before God and are hastening on to the judgment that Christ has foretold.”
Page 66 - “I love this prayer, also, because of the indistinctness of it. It is “Father, forgive them." Jesus does not say, "Father, forgive the soldiers who have nailed Me here." He includes them. Neither does He say, "Father, forgive the people who are beholding Me." He means them. Neither does He say, "Father, forgive sinners in ages to come who will sin against Me." But He means them. Jesus does not mention them by any accusing name: "Father, forgive My enemies. Father, forgive My murderers." No, there is no word of accusation upon those dear lips. "Father, forgive them." Now into that pronoun them I feel that I can crawl. Can you get in there? Oh, by a humble faith, appropriate the cross of Christ by trusting in it, and get into that big little word them! It seems like a chariot of mercy that has come down to earth, into which a man may step, and it shall bear him up to heaven. "Father, forgive them."
Page 77 - “Perhaps this dying thief read the gospel out of the lips of Christ's enemies. They said, "He saved others." "Ah!" thought he, "did He save others? Why should He not save me?" What a grand bit of gospel that was for the dying thief-"He saved others"! "I think I could swim to heaven on that plank, because if He saved others, He can of a surety save me."
Thus the very things that the enemies disdainfully threw at Christ would be gospel to this poor dying man. When it has been my misery to read any of the wretched prints that are sent us out of scorn, in which our Lord is held up to ridicule, I have thought,
"Why, perhaps those who read these loathsome blasphemies may, nevertheless, learn the gospel from them!" You may pick a jewel from dunghill and find its radiance undiminished. You may gather the gospel from a blasphemous mouth, and it shall be nonetheless the gospel of salvation. Perhaps this man learned the gospel from those who jested at our dying Lord, and so the servants of the devil were unconsciously made to be the servants of Christ.”
Page 85 - “I cannot make it out. If they are indeed the Lord's people, what are they here for?
They get up in the morning and eat their breakfast, and in due course eat their dinner, and their supper, and go to bed and sleep.
At the proper hour they get up the next morning and do the same as on the previous day. Is this living for Jesus? Is this life? It does not come to much. Can this be the life of God in man? O Christian people, do justify your Lord in keeping you waiting here! How can you justify Him but by serving Him to the utmost of your power?
The Lord help you to do so? Why, you owe as much to Him as the dying thief! I know I owe a great deal more. What a mercy it is to have been converted while you were yet a boy, to be brought to the Savior while you were yet a girl! What a debt of obligation young Christians owe to the Lord! And if this poor thief crammed a life full of testimony into a few minutes, ought not you and I, who are spared, for years after conversion perform good service for our Lord? Come, let us wake up if we have been asleep! Let us begin to live if we have been half dead.”
Page 91 - “Further, this miracle was not only out of the order of nature, but it was one that would have been pronounced impossible. It is not possible that there should be an eclipse of the sun at the time of the full moon. The moon at the time when she is in her full is not in a position in which she could possibly cast her shadow upon the earth. The Passover was at the time of the full moon, and therefore it was not possible that the sun should then undergo an eclipse.
This darkening of the sun was not strictly an astronomical eclipse.
The darkness was doubtless produced in some other way, yet to those who were present, it did seem to be a total eclipse of the sun--a thing impossible. Ah, when we come to deal with man, and the fall, and sin, and God, and Christ, and the atonement, we are at home with impossibilities. We have now reached a region where prodigies and marvels and surprises are the order of the day.”
Page 181 - “A second and most awful change is also foretold by the incident in our text- namely, the effect that a sight of Christ enthroned will have upon the proud and obstinate, who in this life rebelled against Him. Here they fearlessly jested concerning Him and insultingly demanded, "Who is the Lord, that we should obey Him?" Here they boldly united in a conspiracy to break His bands sunder and cast His cords from them, but when they wake up at the blast of the last trumpet and see the great white throne, which, like a mirror, shall reflect their conduct upon them, what a change will be in their minds! Where then will be the quips and jests, where then the malicious speeches and persecuting words? What!
Is there not one who can play the man and insult the Man of Nazareth to His face? No, not one! Like cowardly dogs, they slink away! The infidel's bragging tongue is silent! The proud spirit of the atheist is broken, his blusterings and his carpings hushed for-ever! With shrieks of dismay and clamorous cries of terror, they entreat the hills to cover them and the mountains to conceal them from the face of that very Man whose cross was once the subject of their scorn. Take heed, I pray you, and be changed this day by grace lest you be changed later by terror, for the heart that will not be bent by the love of Christ shall be broken by the terror of His name. If Jesus upon the cross does not save you, Christ on the throne shall damn you. If Christ dying is not your life, Christ living shall be your death. If Christ on earth is not your heaven, Christ coming from heaven shall be your hell. May God's grace work a blessed turning of face in each of us, that we may not be turned into hell in the dread day of reckoning.”
Page 23 - “Jesus draws men gradually. Some are brought to Christ in a moment, but many are drawn by slow degrees. The sun in some parts of the world rises above the horizon in a single instant. But in our own country, at this season of the year, it is beautiful to watch the dawn, from the first gray light to the actual break of day. Is it dark or is it light? Well, it is not quite dark: it is darkness visible. By and by there is light. No sun is up as yet, but yet the light increases till the east begins to glow and the west reflects the radiance.
Then, finally, up rises the great king of day. So does the Lord bring many to Himself by gentle degrees. They cannot tell when they were converted, but they are converted, for they have come to Christ. Rest assured that He will not send you back. Do not say, "I am not converted, for I do not know the moment of the great change." I knew an old lady once who did not know her birthday, but I never told her that she was not born because of that, for there she was. And if you do not know when you were made a Christian, yet, if you are Christian, it little matters when. If you are really born of God, the date of your new birth is interesting to curiosity but not important to godliness.”
Pages 40-41 - “"If they do these things in the green tree, what will they do in the dry?" Among other things, I think He meant this: "If I, the innocent Substitute for sinners, suffer thus, what will be done when the sinner himself--the dry tree whose sins are his own and not merely imputed to him, shall fall into the hands of an angry God?" Remember that when God saw Christ in the sinner's place, He did not spare Him, and when He finds you without Christ, He will not spare you. You have seen Jesus led away by His enemies; so shall you be dragged away by fiends to the place appointed for you. It shall be fulfilled to you:
"Depart from me, ye cursed, into ever-
lasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels" (Matt. 25:41).
Jesus was deserted of God and if He, who was only imputedly a sinner, was deserted, how much more shall you be? "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani"-what an awful shriek! But what shall be your cry when you shall say, "Good God! Why hast thou forsaken me?" and the answer shall come back, "Because I have called, and ye refused;
I have stretched out my hand, and no man regarded; but ye have set at nought all my counsel, and would none of my reproof: I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh" (Prov. 1:24-26). These are awful words, but they are not mine. They are the very words of God in Scripture. If God hides His face from Christ, how much less will He spare you! He did not spare His Son the stripes. What whips of steel for you, what knots of burning wire for you, when conscience shall smite you, when the law shall scourge you with its ten-thonged whip! Oh, who would stand in your place when God shall say, " Awake, O sword, against the rebel, against the man who rejected me; smite him, and let him feel the smart forever!" Christ was spit upon with shame; what shame will be yours! The whole universe shall hiss you. Angels shall be ashamed of you. Your own friends, yes, your sainted mother, shall say "Amen" to your condemnation. And those who loved you best shall sit as assessors with Christ to judge you and condemn you! I cannot roll up into one word all the mass of sorrows that met upon the head of Christ who died for us; therefore, it is impossible for me to tell you what streams, what oceans of grief, must roll over your spirit if you die as you now are. You may die so, and you may die now. I do beseech you, by the agonies of Christ, by His wounds and by His blood, do not bring upon yourself the curse. Do not bear in your own person the awful wrath to come! May God deliver you!
Trust in the Son of God and you shall never die.”
Pages 50-51 - “This feeling, too, may stand in the way of something a great deal better. Jesus would not have these women weep for one thing because they were to weep for another thing that far more seriously demanded their weeping. You need not weep because Christ died one-tenth so much as because your sins rendered it necessary that He should die. You need not weep over the crucifixion, but weep over your transgression, for your sins nailed the Redeemer to the accursed tree. To weep over a dying Savior is to lament the remedy; it were wiser to bewail the disease. To weep over the dying Savior is to wet the surgeon's knife with tears; it were better to bewail the spreading cancer that the knife must cut away. To weep over the Lord Jesus as He goes to the cross is to weep over that which is the subject of the highest joy that ever heaven and earth have known. Your tears are scarcely needed there; they are natural, but a deeper wisdom will make you brush them all away and chant with joy His victory over death and the grave. If we must continue our sad emotions, let us lament that we should have broken the law that He thus painfully vindicated, let us mourn that we should have incurred the penalty that He even to the death was made to endure. Jesus wished them not so much to look at His outward sufferings as at the secret inward cause of that outward sorrow, namely, the transgression and the iniquity of His people, which had laid the cross upon His shoulders and surrounded Him with enemies.”
Page 56 - “Now, dear friend, I think I have said enough on this painful matter to assure you that the most terrible warning to impenitent men in all the world is the death of Christ, for if God spared not His own Son, on whom was only laid imputed sin, will He spare sinners whose sins are actual and their own? If He smote Him to the death who only stood in the sinner's stead, will He let the impenitent sinner go free? If He who always did His Father's will and was obedient even unto death must be forsaken of God, what will become of those who reject Christ and live and die enemies to the Most High? Here is cause for weeping, and very solemnly would! say it God help me to say it so that you may feel it-the most dreadful thought is that perhaps we ourselves are in the condition of guiltiness before God and are hastening on to the judgment that Christ has foretold.”
Page 66 - “I love this prayer, also, because of the indistinctness of it. It is “Father, forgive them." Jesus does not say, "Father, forgive the soldiers who have nailed Me here." He includes them. Neither does He say, "Father, forgive the people who are beholding Me." He means them. Neither does He say, "Father, forgive sinners in ages to come who will sin against Me." But He means them. Jesus does not mention them by any accusing name: "Father, forgive My enemies. Father, forgive My murderers." No, there is no word of accusation upon those dear lips. "Father, forgive them." Now into that pronoun them I feel that I can crawl. Can you get in there? Oh, by a humble faith, appropriate the cross of Christ by trusting in it, and get into that big little word them! It seems like a chariot of mercy that has come down to earth, into which a man may step, and it shall bear him up to heaven. "Father, forgive them."
Page 77 - “Perhaps this dying thief read the gospel out of the lips of Christ's enemies. They said, "He saved others." "Ah!" thought he, "did He save others? Why should He not save me?" What a grand bit of gospel that was for the dying thief-"He saved others"! "I think I could swim to heaven on that plank, because if He saved others, He can of a surety save me."
Thus the very things that the enemies disdainfully threw at Christ would be gospel to this poor dying man. When it has been my misery to read any of the wretched prints that are sent us out of scorn, in which our Lord is held up to ridicule, I have thought,
"Why, perhaps those who read these loathsome blasphemies may, nevertheless, learn the gospel from them!" You may pick a jewel from dunghill and find its radiance undiminished. You may gather the gospel from a blasphemous mouth, and it shall be nonetheless the gospel of salvation. Perhaps this man learned the gospel from those who jested at our dying Lord, and so the servants of the devil were unconsciously made to be the servants of Christ.”
Page 85 - “I cannot make it out. If they are indeed the Lord's people, what are they here for?
They get up in the morning and eat their breakfast, and in due course eat their dinner, and their supper, and go to bed and sleep.
At the proper hour they get up the next morning and do the same as on the previous day. Is this living for Jesus? Is this life? It does not come to much. Can this be the life of God in man? O Christian people, do justify your Lord in keeping you waiting here! How can you justify Him but by serving Him to the utmost of your power?
The Lord help you to do so? Why, you owe as much to Him as the dying thief! I know I owe a great deal more. What a mercy it is to have been converted while you were yet a boy, to be brought to the Savior while you were yet a girl! What a debt of obligation young Christians owe to the Lord! And if this poor thief crammed a life full of testimony into a few minutes, ought not you and I, who are spared, for years after conversion perform good service for our Lord? Come, let us wake up if we have been asleep! Let us begin to live if we have been half dead.”
Page 91 - “Further, this miracle was not only out of the order of nature, but it was one that would have been pronounced impossible. It is not possible that there should be an eclipse of the sun at the time of the full moon. The moon at the time when she is in her full is not in a position in which she could possibly cast her shadow upon the earth. The Passover was at the time of the full moon, and therefore it was not possible that the sun should then undergo an eclipse.
This darkening of the sun was not strictly an astronomical eclipse.
The darkness was doubtless produced in some other way, yet to those who were present, it did seem to be a total eclipse of the sun--a thing impossible. Ah, when we come to deal with man, and the fall, and sin, and God, and Christ, and the atonement, we are at home with impossibilities. We have now reached a region where prodigies and marvels and surprises are the order of the day.”
Page 181 - “A second and most awful change is also foretold by the incident in our text- namely, the effect that a sight of Christ enthroned will have upon the proud and obstinate, who in this life rebelled against Him. Here they fearlessly jested concerning Him and insultingly demanded, "Who is the Lord, that we should obey Him?" Here they boldly united in a conspiracy to break His bands sunder and cast His cords from them, but when they wake up at the blast of the last trumpet and see the great white throne, which, like a mirror, shall reflect their conduct upon them, what a change will be in their minds! Where then will be the quips and jests, where then the malicious speeches and persecuting words? What!
Is there not one who can play the man and insult the Man of Nazareth to His face? No, not one! Like cowardly dogs, they slink away! The infidel's bragging tongue is silent! The proud spirit of the atheist is broken, his blusterings and his carpings hushed for-ever! With shrieks of dismay and clamorous cries of terror, they entreat the hills to cover them and the mountains to conceal them from the face of that very Man whose cross was once the subject of their scorn. Take heed, I pray you, and be changed this day by grace lest you be changed later by terror, for the heart that will not be bent by the love of Christ shall be broken by the terror of His name. If Jesus upon the cross does not save you, Christ on the throne shall damn you. If Christ dying is not your life, Christ living shall be your death. If Christ on earth is not your heaven, Christ coming from heaven shall be your hell. May God's grace work a blessed turning of face in each of us, that we may not be turned into hell in the dread day of reckoning.”
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 28, 2021
I have long been encouraged and challenged by Spurgeon's Biblical teachings and sermons, so I have been curious about this collection of sermons he preached about the cross, and basically, the gospel. Spurgeon's writing was not too lofty or old-fashioned, so it was easy to follow along with his thoughts. This was somewhat of a Lent devotional, though I started it several weeks before Lent, because I knew I had a few other devotionals I wanted to read in preparation for Easter. It has easily become my favorite book to read before Easter, so I am sure to revisit it in future years. Spurgeon does a phenomenal job of finding lessons and thought-provoking statements on the events leading up to the crucifixion of Christ as he explores the ways Jesus and His work on the cross are like a "marvelous magnet", drawing sinners to Himself. In an early chapter, he looks to the women who were mourning Jesus as He carried His cross to Calvary and discusses the reasons we should weep as well (not just because it was a horrible thing done to Him, but because our own sin, along with everyone else's sin, was the reason He died on the cross). He then uses the next seven chapters to dig into each of the seven last phrases of Jesus while on the cross, from His plea for ignorant sinners ("Father, forgive them for they know not what they do"), to His words to the repentant thief on the cross ("Truly I say to you, today you will be with Me in Paradise"), the painful loneliness of His Father turning His face from Jesus ("My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?"), His suffering and torture ("I thirst"), the complete justification and work of salvation ("It is finished"), and His restored community with His Father ("Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit"). He also looks at two miracles that occurred, the three hours of darkness at noon and the torn veil in the temple, in other chapters. If you want to dig into the narrative of the gospel, this is a great resource.
Rating: G
Reading Challenge: This is the third book I read in 2021 that is from my bookshelf (Goal: read at least 1 book a month from my bookshelf for the Unread Bookshelf Challenge).
Rating: G
Reading Challenge: This is the third book I read in 2021 that is from my bookshelf (Goal: read at least 1 book a month from my bookshelf for the Unread Bookshelf Challenge).
January 31, 2023
The way the cross is described in this book is probably more vivid and striking than I’ve ever heard it before. This book has really moved me and will have a lasting impact on me. If you’re looking to get a deeper understanding of Christ and him crucified, I definitely recommend this one!
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