Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 3084
“By the Grace of God I am what I am.” 1 Corinthians 15:10.
[Another Sermon by Mr. Spurgeon on the same passage is #2833, Volume 49—LESSONS ON DIVINE GRACE]
IF you will read the context of this passage, you will find that these words occur in one of Paul’s digressions, or parenthesis. He was a writer who very frequently went off at a tangent—he often left the subject on which he was writing, turned his thoughts in quite another direction—and then came back and went on with the subject which he had left for a while. In this respect, I have often, in my own mind, likened the Apostle Paul to Samson. When he was on the road to Timnah with his father and mother, he turned aside to slay the lion and afterwards to find the honey in the carcass. And each time he came back to his parents, just as if nothing had happened. So the Apostle Paul often turns aside from some grand argument upon which he is engaged and says something very valuable and important upon quite another topic—and then comes back again and calmly and deliberately goes on with his argument!
There are some kinds of parenthesis which we can always excuse and, indeed, commend. For instance, the parenthesis of prayer. When we are engaged in any duty, it will not delay us—really we shall make all the better speed—if we pause for a while to pray. I like to think of the Apostle Paul, while he was writing that grand Epistle to the Ephesians, turning aside from his main argument to offer that great prayer, “For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in Heaven and earth is named, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His Glory, to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man; that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and to know the love of Christ, which passes knowledge, that you might be filled with all the
fullness of God.” [See Sermon #707, Volume 12—HEAVENLY GEOMETRY] His
argument would not suffer in the least—indeed it would be all the stronger for that little interval of prayer! At another time, it is very sweet to see how he pauses, after recording the Lord’s abundant mercy to him, to write that notable doxology, “Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honor and Glory forever and ever. Amen.” Such parenthesis of prayer and praise must be acceptable to the Most High.
Our text, then, is found in a digression of an exceedingly blessed kind. It would be well if preachers would digress thus nowadays, if by digressing they preached more of Free Grace and more about the Lord Jesus Christ! I have heard of a preacher who, on one occasion, when he entered his pulpit, found himself suddenly stricken with blindness. I think it was old Dr. Gouge, the great Puritan. Being unable to read the discourse which he had taken up with him, and being a man of unusual calmness of spirit, instead of making any outcry, or telling the people that he had lost the use of his eyes, he preached extemporaneously. And when he came down from the pulpit, a woman thanked him for the sermon. “Alas,” said the good man, “a great calamity has happened to me. I have lost my sight.” “Blessed be God for that,” said the woman, “if it makes you give up reading your sermons and enables you to preach as you have just done.” It is a good thing when a preacher loses the thread of his discourse if his discourse is made of thread, and he goes straight away to the Cross, and begins talking about Jesus Christ and Him Crucified. Or if he has been wandering in the mazes of modern thought, it is well when he gets back into the old paths and preaches about the Grace of God. That is, if he can declare, as Paul does here, “By the Grace of God I am what I am.” God grant that they who preach Free Grace Doctrines may never
get out of the habit of doing so! And may those who have almost forgotten the sound of the word, Grace—and those who never knew the music of it—be made to lose their way until they ramble into the blessed neighborhood of the Sovereign Grace of God, for I am sure that nothing but the Gospel of the Grace of God will ever drive Popery out of this country! The only antagonist that can ever overcome the self-righteousness and priestcraft of Romanism and Ritualism is a clear, bald, outspoken declaration of the great Truth of God that by the Grace of God the saints of God are what they are!
I. Coming to the text and speaking simply and plainly, and praying that God may speak to your hearts through my words, I want to prove to you, first, that THE TEXT CONTAINS A DOCTRINAL STATEMENT. “By the Grace of God I am what I am.”
And that statement may be read, first, as meaning this—that Paul ascribed his own salvation to the free favor of God. He believed himself to be a regenerate man, a forgiven man, a saved man—and he believed that condition of his was the result of the unmerited favor of God. He did not imagine that he was saved because he deservedsalvation, or that he had been forgiven because his repentance had made an atonement for his sin! He did not reckon that his prayers had merited salvation, or that his abundant labors and many sufferings had earned that gift for him at God’s hands. No, he does not for a moment speak of merit—it is a word which Paul’s mouth could not pronounce in such a connection as that. His declaration is, “It is by God’s free favor that I, Saul of Tarsus, have been converted, and made into Paul the Apostle, the servant of Jesus Christ. I attribute this great change entirely to the goodwill, the Sovereign benignity, the undeserved favor of the ever-blessed God.”