“I Can’t Do Anything”

“For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.” — Romans 5:6 (ESV)

Some people believe everything so far and still groan, “I can do nothing.” It isn’t an excuse; they would if they could. Spurgeon compares it to a doctor telling a starving widow her sick son needs fine wine and a holiday at a spa — good advice, impossible to follow. But the gospel, he says, “begins where we are.” When the Good Samaritan found the beaten traveller, he didn’t tell him to get up and walk to the inn. He “came where he was” and carried him. And Spurgeon holds one verse up against every kind of helplessness: when we were “without strength,” Christ died for the ungodly. Not when we were a bit weak — when we had no strength at all.

Then he goes through the excuses one by one. I can’t think deeply enough. You don’t need to. Salvation needs “a simple reliance upon Jesus,” not long reasoning. Let that one verse sit on your tongue like a sweet. I can’t repent enough. Spurgeon admits he went through exactly this: “I used to get into a corner and weep, because I could not weep.” His heart broke because he thought it wouldn’t break. Repenting, he explains, is turning your mind from sin to Christ, and no one is ever satisfied with their own repentance. And you don’t get there by squeezing out feelings: “Repentance will not make you see Christ; but to see Christ will give you repentance.”

I’m tormented by horrible thoughts. He says he has been hunted by that wolf himself. Fighting those thoughts by force is like a traveller swatting at a swarm of angry bees. But “these thoughts, if you hate them, are none of yours”; they are the devil’s, and he is trying to drive you to despair. Do what the sick woman did who couldn’t get through the crowd to Jesus: reach out and touch the edge of his cloak anyway. Do what Luther did. When the devil said, “You are a sinner,” Luther answered, “Christ died to save sinners” — and cut off the devil’s head with his own sword. I can’t believe. But “believing does not come by trying.” If a trustworthy friend tells you something, you don’t try to believe him; you just do. “It is not great faith, but true faith, that saves.”

I can’t give up my sin. Spurgeon remembers the question that stopped young John Bunyan in the middle of a game on the village green: “Wilt thou have thy sins and go to hell, or wilt thou quit thy sins and go to heaven?” You can’t keep both. He says he tried and failed to beat his own sin until he trusted that Christ died for him — and then love gave him a power he never had: “I cannot trifle with the evil which slew my best Friend.” I can’t stand firm around other people. Spurgeon’s answer is blunt: it may be fine to do things to please your friends, but “to go to hell to please them is more than I would venture.” Peter caved in front of a servant girl, and Jesus died for him too. Get “Christ died for me” into your soul, and you’ll find you can’t be ashamed of him.

Now — what is this actually about? Your weakness is not a barrier to grace; it’s the place grace starts. Every excuse in this chapter is real. People really do find it hard to focus, to feel sorry, to quiet their minds, to believe, to quit, to stand up to their friends. Spurgeon never says, “Try harder.” He says the same thing every time: Christ died for people exactly like that. Then he lets that fact do the work.

One thing to do this week: find the excuse in this chapter that sounds most like you — and write Romans 5:6 underneath it. Every time that “I can’t” comes up this week, answer it out loud, the way Luther did: “That’s true. And while I was still weak, Christ died for the ungodly.”