“Now, observe what this church was by nature…The church that Christ loved was
in her origin as sinful as the rest of the human race. Have the damned in hell
fallen through Adam’s transgression? So had the saved in glory once. The sin
that was imputed to lost spirits was equally and with as fatal consequences
imputed to them; had it not been for the incoming of the covenant head, the
second Adam, they had forever suffered with the rest. They, too, were alike
depraved in nature. Is the heart deceitful above all things in the
unregenerate? So it is in the elect before regeneration. Was the will perverse?
Was the understanding darkened? Was the whole head sick and the whole heart
faint in the case of those who continued in sin? It was just the same at first
with those who have been by sovereign grace taken into the heart of Christ. “We
were,” says the apostle, “by nature the children of wrath even as others.”
Remember that between the brightest saint in heaven and the blackest sinner in
hell, there is no difference except that which Christ has made.
Had those glorified ones been left to continue in their natural state, they
would have sinned as foully and as constantly as the worst of sinners have
done. To begin with, there is no difference between the elect and the
non-elect. They are all alike fallen: “They are all gone out of the way, they
are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one”
(Rom 3:12).
Nay, more—this church of Christ is made up of persons who are actually defiled by their own transgressions. Are you and I members of that church? Ah, then, we are compelled to confess that in us by nature dwelt all manner of [lust], vileness, and an evil heart of unbelief, ever prone to depart from the living God and to rebel against the Most High. And what since have we done? Or rather, what have we not done?
We did not all fall into the same vices, but still when the black catalogue of sin is read, we have to weep over it, and to say, “Such were some of us.” But why we should make a part of Christ’s church is a question that never can be answered except with this one reply: “Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in thy sight” (Mat 11:26). Do the wicked sink to hell with their sins like millstones about their necks? We should have sunk there too, and as rapidly and as fatally, unless eternal love had said, “Deliver him from going down into the pit, for I have found a ransom.” Look at Christ’s church as you see her visibly in the world, and I ask you, brethren, though she has much about her that is admirable, whether there is not much that might cause her Lord to cast her away. Even in her regenerate estate, she speaks truly when she says she is “black as the tents of Kedar” (Song 1:5).”
-C.H. Spurgeon British Minister 1834-1892
Nay, more—this church of Christ is made up of persons who are actually defiled by their own transgressions. Are you and I members of that church? Ah, then, we are compelled to confess that in us by nature dwelt all manner of [lust], vileness, and an evil heart of unbelief, ever prone to depart from the living God and to rebel against the Most High. And what since have we done? Or rather, what have we not done?
We did not all fall into the same vices, but still when the black catalogue of sin is read, we have to weep over it, and to say, “Such were some of us.” But why we should make a part of Christ’s church is a question that never can be answered except with this one reply: “Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in thy sight” (Mat 11:26). Do the wicked sink to hell with their sins like millstones about their necks? We should have sunk there too, and as rapidly and as fatally, unless eternal love had said, “Deliver him from going down into the pit, for I have found a ransom.” Look at Christ’s church as you see her visibly in the world, and I ask you, brethren, though she has much about her that is admirable, whether there is not much that might cause her Lord to cast her away. Even in her regenerate estate, she speaks truly when she says she is “black as the tents of Kedar” (Song 1:5).”
-C.H. Spurgeon British Minister 1834-1892
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