The Word and the Spirit

Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord of hosts. ZECHARIAH 4:6

Spurgeon was the most gifted preacher of his century, and he knew it. He had a voice that could reach the back of a vast hall without strain, a memory that forgot almost nothing, a flood of illustration, humour and pathos, and a command of plain English that few writers have matched. It is all the more striking, then, that he insisted so relentlessly that none of it could save a single soul. The Word of God was the instrument, and the Spirit of God was the power. Without both, he believed, the finest preaching in London was noise.

A Book to be believed

Spurgeon held the Bible to be the inspired Word of God, true in all it affirms and the final authority for faith and life. He did not argue the point at great length in most of his sermons; he assumed it and preached from it. His method was nearly always to take a text, often a single verse, open it phrase by phrase, and press it on the hearer. The authority of what he said rested, in his own mind, entirely on its being what God had said.

All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness. 2 TIMOTHY 3:16

In a passage gathered in Gleanings Among the Sheaves he notes how the apostles loved to quote the old Scriptures, even though as inspired men they might have used fresh words. They preferred the old words on which the seal of God had already been set. He urges believers to do the same. The words of ministers may be sweet, he says, but the words of God are sweeter, and they will not be found wanting on the day they are needed.

This conviction lay at the root of the Down-Grade controversy, which chapter twenty-two describes. When Spurgeon saw ministers treating Scripture as a merely human book to be corrected by modern thought, he believed the foundation of everything was being removed.

A Book that must be lit

Yet he was equally clear that the Bible could be read, studied and even memorised without profit. In the same collection he writes that you may read the Bible continuously and never learn anything by it unless it is lit up by the Spirit. Then the words shine like stars. “Blind men may read the Bible with their fingers,” he says, “but blind souls cannot.” We need a light to read by, and there is no reading it in the dark.

Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law. PSALM 119:18

He adds a principle that has guided sound interpretation for centuries: “Those who would best know God’s Word, must study it in its own light.” Scripture interprets Scripture. The Spirit who inspired the Book is the Spirit who explains it, and He does so chiefly by leading the reader from one part of it to another.

Christ applied by the Spirit

The same balance governs his teaching on salvation. Spurgeon preached the cross with all his might, but he never imagined that the cross saved anyone automatically. In Gleanings he writes: “Christ on the cross is of no value to us apart from the Holy Spirit in us.” The blood flows in vain, he says, unless the Spirit applies it to the conscience; the robe of righteousness is woven in vain unless the Spirit wraps it round us. We owe as much to the Spirit as to the Son.

Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. JOHN 3:5

This raised a difficulty for his hearers, and he faced it squarely in All of Grace. If the new birth is the work of God alone, what can a seeker do? Many had despaired at that very point. Spurgeon’s answer is that the same chapter of John which says Ye must be born again also says that whoever believes in the lifted-up Son of Man shall have eternal life. The two must agree. God gives the new birth to all who believe, and their believing is the proof that it has happened. “It is ours to believe,” he writes, “it is the Lord’s to create us anew.” The seeker is not to wait for signs of regeneration before trusting Christ. He is to trust Christ, and find that he has been made new.

The Spirit and the preacher

For Spurgeon this conviction shaped everything about preaching. We have already seen him, at the end of Compel Them to Come In, turning from his hearers to the Spirit: I cannot compel you, but You can. That was not a pious formula. He believed that a sermon was dead until the Spirit gave it life, and that the most eloquent address could leave a congregation untouched while a stammering one, carried by the Spirit, could turn a boy’s life around in a Colchester chapel.

And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man’s wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power. 1 CORINTHIANS 2:4

In the sermon Christ Crucified he says that nobody truly preaches Christ who leaves out the work of the Holy Spirit. And in his lectures to the students of his college he pressed on them, repeatedly, that their gifts were worthless without the anointing of the Spirit, and that they must seek it in prayer before they sought it anywhere else. It is why the prayer meeting mattered so much to him. The preacher could prepare the fire; only God could send the flame.

Honest questions

Readers today will frame the doctrine of Scripture in different ways, and some will be uneasy with how little patience Spurgeon had for questions of history and criticism. He was a preacher, not a scholar of the text, and he sometimes treated all such questions as unbelief. It is also true, as an earlier chapter noted, that his love of finding Christ everywhere could lead him into readings that the plain sense does not support. But his central convictions stand. Scripture is God’s Word; it must be read in its own light; and it will not open to the proud or the prayerless.

For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword. HEBREWS 4:12

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Before you next open your Bible, pray Psalm 119:18 slowly and mean it.

2. Pick a difficult passage you have been puzzling over. Look up the cross-references and let Scripture explain Scripture before you reach for a commentary.

3. Ask whether you have been waiting for some sign of new birth before trusting Christ. Trust Him now, and leave the rest to the Spirit.

4. If you teach or preach, spend as long praying for the Spirit’s help as you spend preparing your material, at least once this month.

5. Memorise one verse this week, and ask the Spirit to use it in your life before the week is out.

A PRAYER

Holy Spirit, without You the Bible is a closed book to me and the cross is a picture on a wall.

Open my eyes to see Christ in Your Word. Apply His blood to my conscience. Clothe me in His righteousness.

Keep me from trusting my own gifts, or the gifts of any preacher. Not by might, nor by power, but by You.

Make the Word I read today live in me, and let it bear fruit to the glory of Jesus. Amen.