Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 828
Delivered on lord’s day morning, august 30, 1868, by C. H. SPURGEON, at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington..
“I die daily.” 1 Corinthians 15:31.
IN a certain sense we all do this. The very moment we begin to live we commence to die. We are like hour-glasses— there are fewer sands left to run from the very moment they begin to trickle down. The whole of our life is like an ebbing tide—our first months and years may look like advancing waves, but the whole is retreating, and by-and-by the living flood will be replaced by the mire of death—
“Our pulse, like muffled drums, are beating Funeral marches to the tomb.”
Or, as Watts words it—
“Every beating pulse we tell,
Leaves but the number less.”
This is no land of the living, but the land of the dying, and this so called life is but one protracted act of death. This is not our rest, our soul is ever on the wing. Like the swallows, we must depart for another land. Life is a long descent to the valley of the shadow of death—it shelves gradually to the precipice—and no man can prevent his feet from sliding down it every hour. We fly like arrows to that common target of mankind—the grave—so that we may all say in the words of the text, “I die daily.”
Of some, also, this may be affirmed in a very painful and unhappy sense. They die daily because they feel a thousand deaths in fearing one. They are those of whom the Apostle writes, “who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.” This nightmare oppresses them and breaks their rest. This ghost stalks before them at all hours and makes life grim with foreboding—this gall-drop makes all their pleasant things bitter. They are afraid to die and yet are so fascinated by death that they cannot take their eyes off it. They cannot shake off the chill horror of the grave. Their clothes seem to them to smell of the coffin, and their bread tastes of the morgue. They are slaves to a fear whose chains are heavy.
These timorous doves ought to remember that Jesus Christ came into this world on purpose that He might deliver such as they are. It was never His intention that any of His people should be subject to the fear of death, nor ought they to be—nor, indeed, would they be if they walked by faith—for what can there be in death for a Christian to fear? “The sting of death is sin,” but that is pardoned! “The strength of sin is the Law,” but Christ has fulfilled it! What is dying but departing to be with Christ, which is far better? And why should a man fear that which is far better for him—which will rid him of all his ills, admit him into unlimited blessedness, take him away from all fear and all care—and conduct him to the fullness of the Glory which is laid up in Christ Jesus? I trust you and I may never have to moan out, in that mournful and gloomy sense, “I die daily,” but with holy joy may we look forward to the hour of our departure which is so near at hand.
Paul used this expression in an heroic sense, to which I fear you and I are not very likely to attain. He said, “I die daily,” because every day he deliberately put his life in jeopardy for the cause of Jesus Christ. One day he went into the Jewish synagogue, knowing that in all probability they would drag him out, scourge him with rods, or, perhaps, in fanatic zeal, stone him to death. Another day he was found in the street preaching to a multitude of idolaters and denouncing their gods—irritating them by exposing their vices and by advancing truths which were novelties—and so contrary to their prejudices that they could not endure them.
Behold him often crossing the sea in a frail ship, or passing over rugged mountains among robbers! He was often in peril from the mountain-torrents, and from cold and nakedness. In all places, he lived the life of one whose neck was always on the block—who stood ready at any minute to offer himself up as a sacrifice for Christ. In these more silken days we cannot run such serious risks, and it is to our shame that there are some who are not willing to run even the little risks which the times may demand. We know professors who cannot imperil their business by an admission of their faith, and others who cannot venture the breaking of some fond connection for the sake of the Cross of Christ.
Alas, there are many who are ashamed of Jesus because a father or a mother or a brother might, perhaps, ridicule them or sneer at them. They are ashamed to bear the loss of anything, when our Apostle rejoiced to suffer the loss of all things, and did count them but dung that he might win Christ! May the heroic age of Christianity return to us, and even if it should be necessary that the furnace should be heated once again, yet if God’s gold may but glow with that clear, bright luster which it exhibited in the former days, we may well be satisfied with the fury of the blazing coals! The persecuted were happy men despite their sorrows. They were honored men notwithstanding their shame. They were earth’s princes, Heaven’s peers—for they could say that for Christ’s sake they, every day, were delivered unto death— but did rejoice and were exceedingly glad that they were privileged to suffer for the Cross of Christ.