Look unto Me

And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life. JOHN 3:14–15

Spurgeon told the story of his conversion more often than any other, not because it was remarkable but because it was ordinary. A miserable teenager heard a poor sermon on a short text and did what the text said. In Spurgeon’s view nothing more is ever needed.

The years of looking elsewhere

He was not converted from irreligion. He was raised in a devout home, had read the old Puritans in his grandfather’s study, prayed, and was sincerely afraid of sin. For years none of it gave him any peace.

The reason, as he later understood it, is that he was looking in the wrong direction. He was looking at himself — at his repentance, to see if it was deep enough; at his feelings, to see if they were the right feelings; at his prayers, to see if they were earnest. In All of Grace he describes that time with painful honesty. He had heard the plan of salvation from childhood, he says, and yet understood it in his innermost soul no better than a heathen who had never heard it. The light was there. He was blind to it.

The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined. ISAIAH 9:2

Many earnest people live in exactly this condition. They are not careless but anxious, waiting for something to happen inside them before they dare to come to Christ — and it never quite happens, because they are watching the wrong place.

A look, and nothing more

What the lay preacher in Colchester did, without any skill, was to take the young man’s eyes off himself. The text was Isaiah 45:22, and its genius is in its verb. It does not say, Feel, or Do, or Become. It says, Look.

Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else. ISAIAH 45:22

Spurgeon loved to point out how little a look requires: no strength, no education, no money, no preparation. You do not have to be good to look. In the wilderness, when the people of Israel were dying of the serpents’ bites, God did not tell them to apply medicine or to reform their conduct. He told Moses to lift up a serpent of brass on a pole.

And it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived. NUMBERS 21:9

Our Lord Himself took up that story and applied it to His own death, and Spurgeon applied it to his own conversion. In All of Grace he writes that “Jesus Christ, made sin for me, was what I saw, and that sight gave me rest.” He goes on to say that the bitten Israelites were healed the instant they looked, and so was he when he looked to the crucified Saviour. In the Cheque Book he says it more simply still: “I looked to Jesus and lived at once. I know I did.”

Why a look saves

It would be possible to hear this as a cheap gospel, as if a glance could substitute for a changed life. Spurgeon did not mean that, and he was careful to say why a look saves.

It saves because of what it looks at. The saving power is not in the eye but in the object. A look at the brass serpent healed because God had appointed it; a look anywhere else did nothing. A look at Christ saves because He has done everything needed for the salvation of a sinner. The look adds nothing to His work. It simply receives it. That is why Spurgeon could insist that faith is not a work, and that the weakest faith in a strong Saviour saves as surely as the strongest.

Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world. JOHN 1:29

It saves, secondly, because it is a look away. The man who looks at Christ has, in that act, stopped looking at himself as the ground of his hope. Spurgeon thought this was the real difficulty for most people. The look is easy to perform and hard to consent to, because it requires us to abandon every other hope. In Around the Wicket Gate he says it is wicked to suppose that Christ has half saved us and left us to finish the work with some feeling or effort of our own.

And it saves, thirdly, because it is only the beginning of a lifetime of looking. Spurgeon never treated conversion as a ticket stamped and put away. The look that saves becomes the posture of the whole Christian life. In a passage gathered in Gleanings Among the Sheaves he urges the believer to look to Christ in every trial, every temptation and every failure, and adds: “He that looks at Christ walks safely.”

Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith. HEBREWS 12:2

Awakened is not saved

There is one caution Spurgeon pressed on anxious people, and it is still needed. Being troubled about your soul is a mercy, he says in Around the Wicket Gate, but it is not the same thing as being saved. He compares it to a man who wakes to find his house on fire and sits on the edge of the bed congratulating himself on being awake. The point of waking is to get out.

Some people make a home in their anxiety. They have been seeking for years, they are sincerely concerned, and they have come to treat their concern as if it were itself a kind of faith. Spurgeon was gentle with them and very direct. You do not need to be more troubled before you come. You do not need to feel your sin more deeply, or to understand the atonement better, or to be surer that you are one of the elect. You need to look now, at the One who is lifted up for you.

Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out. JOHN 6:37

Nor did he pretend that looking always feels dramatic. His own experience happened to be vivid. He knew many whose faith came quietly, and he refused to make any particular feeling the test. The question is not how you felt when you looked, but where you are looking now.

The whole ends of the earth

One more thing in the text mattered to him. It is addressed to all the ends of the earth. The invitation is as wide as the world. Spurgeon was a Calvinist, and he believed that God had chosen His people before time began. But he never allowed that doctrine to narrow the invitation, because the text does not. He assumed that anyone listening was entitled to obey it. When his coffin was carried through London, the Bible on it lay open at this verse. He had spent his life lifting up the brass serpent and calling to dying people to look.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Where do you habitually look for assurance — to your feelings, your progress, your prayers? Name it honestly, then deliberately turn your attention to Christ crucified.

2. If you have been a seeker for a long time, ask whether you have made a home in your anxiety. Do not wait for more conviction. Look to Christ today.

3. Read Numbers 21:4–9 and John 3:14–16 together, and write down what the Israelites had to do, and what they did not have to do.

4. Each morning this week, before anything else, spend one minute looking at a passage about the cross, rather than at your plans for the day.

5. Tell someone else, in your own words, where to look. Spurgeon was saved by a man who had very little to say. You have enough.

A PRAYER

Lord Jesus, lifted up for me as the serpent was lifted up in the wilderness, I look to You.

I have searched my own heart for some reason to hope, and found only more reasons to despair. I stop searching there.

You have done everything. Let me add nothing, and trust You for everything.

And let this look become the habit of my whole life, until I see You with no veil between. Amen.