Jesus Came to Save Sinners: An Earnest Conversation with Those Who Long for Salvation and Eternal Life

by Charles Haddon Spurgeon

I heard a story about a minister who called at the home of a poor woman. He intended to give her financial help, because he knew she was very poor. With his money in his hand, he knocked at the door, but she didn’t answer. He decided she wasn’t home and went his way. A little while later, he met her at the church and told her he’d remembered her need. “I called at your house and knocked several times,” he said. “I supposed you weren’t at home, because no one came to the door.”

“What time was this, sir?” “It was about noon.” “Oh dear,” she said. “I heard you, and I am so sorry I didn’t answer. I thought it was the landlord calling for the rent.” Many who are financially struggling understand what this meant. It is my desire to be heard, and therefore, I want to say I’m not calling for the rent. Without question, the object of this book isn’t to ask anything of you, but to tell you that salvation is totally by grace, which means free, for nothing, without charge. Often, when we want to gain someone’s attention, they tend to think, “Now I’m going to be told what I’m required to do. This man knocking on my door is going to ask me to give what is due to God. But I’m sure I have nothing to pay with so I will pretend to not be at home.” This book isn’t like this. It doesn’t demand anything from you. Instead, it brings you something. We aren’t going to talk about law, duty, and

No, we will talk about love, goodness, forgiveness, mercy, and eternal life. Therefore, don’t act like you’re not at home – don’t turn a deaf ear or a careless heart. I’m asking nothing of you in the name of God or man. It’s not my intent to require anything from your hands. Instead, I come in God’s name to brin...

Perhaps you know a little about God and give lip service to faith in Him, but you don’t live for Him. You use His name in vain, you cheat on taxes, or you gossip about others behind their back. Perhaps you are even living in sexual immorality, all the while telling me that you love God.

You could possibly be a person of another sort. Perhaps you’ve regularly taken part in all the outward forms of religion, but your heart isn’t in them. Even though you’ve been meeting with the people of God, you’ve never met with God yourself on a personal level. You’ve been in the choir and have praised the Lord with your lips but not with your heart. You’ve lived without real love for God in your heart or any regard for His commands in your daily life. Instead, you’ve really lived an ungodly life.

For Him to make a person just who is already just isn’t a work for God – that’s a job for a fool. But to make an unjust person just − that is work for infinite love and mercy. To justify the ungodly − this is a miracle worthy of God.

At

first, it seems most amazing that salvation could really be for a person lost and guilty. We think it must be for the one who is penitent, forgetting that repentance is a part of salvation. Such a person thinks, “I must clean up my life and do this and

that.” All of this is true, because his life will change in this way as the result of salvation, but salvation comes to him before he has any of the results of salvation. It comes while he deserves only this bare, beggarly, base, abominable description,...