Not Calling for the Rent

“Come now, let us reason together, says the LORD: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.” — Isaiah 1:18 (ESV)

Spurgeon opens his book with a picture. A man once set up a drinking fountain by a busy roadside and hung a cup beside it on a little chain. Some time later he was told that a famous art critic had found a lot of fault with its design. The man only asked one thing: did many thirsty people drink at it? Thousands, they told him — poor men, women and children, every day. He smiled. He wasn’t bothered by the critic; he just hoped that on some hot summer’s day the critic himself might fill the cup and be refreshed. Then Spurgeon turns to you: “Here is my fountain, and here is my cup: find fault if you please; but do drink of the water of life.” He wrote in the plainest words he could on purpose, and he tells you straight what the book is for — nothing less than you finding Christ.

Then he tells a story he heard from the north of England. A minister knew a woman in his area was very poor, so one day he went to her house with money in his hand to help her. He knocked. Nothing. He knocked again, several times, and finally decided she must be out. A little later he met her at church and told her he’d called round about noon. “Oh, dear,” she said. “I heard you, sir, and I am so sorry I did not answer; but I thought it was the man calling for the rent.”

That, Spurgeon says, is exactly how most people hear anything about God. They hear the knock and assume someone has come to collect — duty, demands, a bill they know they can’t pay. So they stay quiet behind the door and pretend they’re not home. He wants to be heard, so he says it as plainly as he can: “I am not calling for the rent.” This book isn’t here to ask anything of you. It’s here to tell you that “salvation is all of grace, which means, free, gratis, for nothing.” It isn’t going to talk about law and punishment but about love, goodness, forgiveness, mercy and eternal life. And the one really knocking, he says, is Jesus, who “knocks with a hand which was nailed to the tree for such as you are.” God wouldn’t invite you to talk if he didn’t mean you well. So, Spurgeon says, “Open the door, and let my pleadings enter.”

Now — what is this actually about? You might be hiding from a gift because you think it’s a bill. A lot of people carry around a picture of God as a kind of landlord: someone who only turns up to tell you what you owe and where you’ve fallen short. So whenever anything about God comes near — a conversation, a verse, a thought at two in the morning — you go quiet behind the curtain and wait for it to leave. Spurgeon’s opening move is to say: you’ve misread the knock.

Notice why the woman hid. It wasn’t because she was wicked; it was because she was poor and knew she couldn’t pay. If that’s you — if you’ve kept God at arm’s length because you’re sure you could never measure up — then the knock is meant for exactly you. Spurgeon isn’t pretending it doesn’t matter how you live; the book will get there. He’s saying the first word from God is not a demand. It’s an offer. He even points out that reading is a kind of hearing, and “faith may come to you while you are reading this book.” So don’t read the next chapters with your shoulders braced for a lecture.

One thing to do this week: catch your reflex. Each time God, church or the Bible comes up this week, notice what you instantly expect — a rule, a guilt trip, a demand? Then write one honest sentence: “I think what God wants from me is ___.” Keep it, and read it again when you finish this book. Ask yourself whether the door you’ve kept shut was ever really the rent man.