This is a weekly series with things I’m reading and pondering from Charles Spurgeon. You can read the original seed thought here, or type “Thursdays With Spurgeon” in the search box to read more entries.
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It’s Not About Me
Look to Me, and be saved, all you ends of the earth! For I am God, and there is no other. (Isaiah 45:22 NKJV)
To whom does God tell us to look for salvation? Oh, does it not lower the pride of man when we hear the Lord say, ‘Look to Me, and be saved, all you ends of the earth’? … How frequently you who are coming to Christ look to yourselves. ‘Oh!’ you say, ‘I do not repent enough.’ That is looking to yourself. ‘I do not believe enough.’ That is looking to yourself. ‘I am not worthy.’ That is looking to yourself.
‘I cannot discover,’ says another, ‘that I have any righteousness.’ It is quite right to say that you have not any righteousness. But it is quite wrong to look for any. It is ‘Look to Me.’ God will have you turn your eye off yourself and look to Him. The hardest thing in the world is to turn a man’s eye off himself. As long as he lives, he always has a predilection to turn his eye inside and look at himself, whereas God says, ‘Look to Me.’ …
It is not a consideration of what you are but a consideration of what God is and what Christ is that can save you.
For God has committed them all to disobedience, that He might have mercy on all (Romans 11:32). He has passed a sentence of condemnation on all so that the free grace of God might come upon many to salvation. ‘Look! Look! Look!’ This is the simple method of salvation. ‘Look to Me, and be saved, all you ends of the earth!’
From Sovereignty And Salvation
One of the greatest—and most effective—lies that satan keeps whispering is that you have to do something to be saved. Or you have to do something to stay in God’s favor. Or your salvation is hanging by a flimsy thread.
No, no, no! A thousand times no!
When Jesus said, “It is finished,” He meant just that: everything is done. Salvation is a free gift of God’s grace extended to you through faith in Jesus alone. Jesus paid it all, so there is absolutely nothing you or I can add to it. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast (Ephesians 2:8-9).
Tell the devil he is a liar. Then, as Spurgeon said, look away from yourself and what you think you have to do and look only to the completed work of Calvary. True freedom and eternal joy come to the heart that looks away from itself and keeps its gaze on its Savior! When Jesus said, “It is finished,” He meant it! It is no longer what I must do, but what Jesus already did!
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Craig T. Owens 