Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 599
Delivered on Sunday Morning, November 13, 1864, by C. H. Spurgeon, at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington
John 6:37.
LET it be forevermore remembered that the words of Jesus Christ are full of Truth and Grace. And that in each of these two sentences, whether we perceive the fact or not, there is the surest Truth and the freest Grace. There will be some who from the peculiarity of their minds, will prize most the first sentence. They will say, as they read these words, “All that the Father gives Me shall come to Me”—why, here is high doctrine! Here is the security of the Covenant, the purpose of God effectually carried out! Here is the Truth of God which we love and the Grace in which we glory.”
Other Brethren, overlooking the first sentence lest it should raise questions too hard to be answered, will rather grasp at the second sentence, “Him that comes to Me I will in no wise cast out.” “Why,” they say, “here is universality of description! Here is a freeness of invitation! Here is a gracious overflow of liberality—this is good free Gospel, indeed!” And they will therefore fall to proclaiming the second sentence to the neglect of the first.
But, Brothers and Sisters, let us not sin by setting one Scripture against another, or attempting to divide the living child of Revelation. It is one and it is alike glorious in all its parts. You who love to hear the Gospel preached to sinners do not be afraid of the doctrines of Sovereign Grace! And you who love Sovereign Grace but cannot well hear doctrine too high for your taste, do not be afraid of the free invitations of the Gospel and the wide door which Jesus opens for needy sinners in many passages of Scripture!
Let us receive all Truth and let us be willing to learn every lesson which the Lord has written, remembering that if we cannot as yet reconcile Truths of God, there is the promise—“What I do you know not now; but you shall know hereafter.” If we could know everything, we would be gods! Being mortals, some things must be unknown to us. Let us know our ignorance and despair of becoming infallible and thus we shall be in the path to true wisdom! But, if we boast of our wisdom, we shall be on the high road to great folly.
Let us consider the text carefully. And as it divides into two branches, let us view them one by one. Here we have Grace and Truth triumphant in specialty. And, secondly, we have Grace and Truth triumphant in liberality. May God help us to handle these so that much instruction may flow from them.
I. In the first sentence, we have GRACE TRIUMPHANT IN SPECIALTY—
“All that the Father gives Me shall come to Me.” I would bring out the meaning of this passage by a few observations.
1. You perceive here that the Lord Jesus leads us up to the original position of all things—for since a people were given to Him by the Father, it is clear that they must first have been in the Father’s hands. All men, then, are naturally, from the beginning, in the hands of the Father. And so it should be, for He has fashioned them all and made them for His pleasure. God, absolutely considered, created all things and His kingdom rules over all. Having a right to make laws, to issue rewards, or to threaten with punishments at His own pleasure, Jehovah sits upon His Throne, judging rightly. The elect were specially in the hands of the Father for He had chosen them.
The choice is ever described as being with the Father—“I thank You, O Father, Lord of Heaven and earth, because You have hid these things from the wise and prudent and have revealed them unto babes. Even so, Father: for so it seemed good in Your sight.” They belong to the Father, then, as Creator, as Governor and as the source and fountain of election. How often do Believers forget the part which the Father has in their salvation. And yet He is the basis and prompter of it all. Remember, Beloved, that He who first of all chose you was no other than our Father who is in Heaven. And though our Lord Jesus Christ undertook your cause, yet it was because the Father, first of all, out of His great love, gave you to His Son. Forget not the Father’s Grace and cease not to sing of His love—
“‘Twas with an everlasting love That God His o wn elect embraced Before He made the worlds above, Or earth on her huge columns placed. Long before the sun’s refulgent ray Primeval shades of darkness drove, They on His sacred bosom lay, Loved with an everlasting love.”
2. The Savior then proceeds to inform us of a great transaction. He says that the Father gave His people to the Son and put them into the hands of Christ—the God-man Mediator. As Jesus is God, these people always were His own. But as Mediator, He received them from the hands of the Father. Here was the Father’s condescension in noticing us at all and in bestowing us upon the Son—here was the Son’s infinite mercy and compassion, in accepting such poor souls as we are at the Father’s hands and counting us to be His precious jewels, His peculiar portion. The persons referred to as being given by the Father are not all men, although, it is true that the Father has delivered all things into Jesus’ hands and He has power over all flesh.