THE CHIEF OF SINNERS – Charles Spurgeon
THE CHIEF OF SINNERS
“Sinners; of whom I am chief.” 1 Timothy 1:15.
Who among all the Scriptural writers can compare with Paul in the fullness of his testimony to the grace of God? Upon the doctrines of grace, upon the experience of divine grace, upon everything that has to do with the exceeding abundant grace of God through our Lord Jesus Christ, Paul is the mighty master and the great teacher. If it were right to look at him from an exclusively human point of view, and speak of his genius rather than his inspiration, I might say of him that so mighty, so clear, so eloquent a teacher of the truth of God has never existed since the days of our Lord Jesus Christ! Though Augustine was a particularly bright star, and Calvin in later generations rivaled, if he did not even excel Augustine, Paul far excels both in the brilliance with which he exhibits every quality of grace, and grace in everything that has a good quality. Or, to use another figure, Paul towers aloft above them all in the great mountain range, though many of their summits are lofty. One reason for his clearness about divine grace was that he was himself a very pattern and model of its power. In him God had expressly, as much as in any other man, and perhaps more, shown forth the super-abundant power of His love in passing by transgression, iniquity and sin—and in making the very man who had been a ringleader of mischief—to become the leader of the hosts of the Lord! Paul calls himself in our text the chief of sinners. It is possible that he literally exceeded every other sinner, dared more, and sunk deeper in crime than any of his fellows among the sons of men. If so, let no man who lives despair of mercy! If the gate of heaven is wide enough for the chief of sinners to go through, then there must in that respect be room enough for those who must be less than the chief, who, though very great, yet cannot be quite so great as Paul. I say, though I hardly think so, that it is just possible that, taking certain circumstances into consideration, Paul really was in such sense the very chief of sinners. And yet I hardly think so, because he himself, in another place, calls himself less than the least of all saints, which was the modest apprehension of one who in another place affirmed that he was not a whit behind the very chief of the apostles! Might it not, then, rather have been that his deep view of his own sinfulness, and his clear sense of his guilt made him consider himself to be the chief of sinners, though, probably, there have been tens of thousands even greater than he? Tonight my business is to find out the chiefs of sinners, and endeavor to describe them; and then to inquire how it is that so often the very chiefs of sinners are saved.
I. THE CHIEFS OF SINNERS
First, dear friends, as Saul hunted out believers, I have, tonight, TO TRY AND HUNT OUT THE CHIEFS OF SINNERS! Now who are they? They come under various characters, and may be classified in different lists. We will begin with those who directly oppose themselves to God and to His Christ. These are chiefs among sinners. Paul did join their ranks. He set himself determinately against the name of Christ, and thought with himself that he ought to do very much against that name. Now those who directly attack the person of God come, first, under the head of blasphemers. Paul says he was such. He had, no doubt, used expressions quite as strong as those sometimes used by unbelieving Jews when they are much irritated by Christians. He had said some foul things about the impostor crucified upon Mount Calvary—things, perhaps, more vile than he ever cared to remember—much less to repeat. He had been exceedingly mad, and when men are mad they say exceedingly mad things. He had been a blasphemer, and a blasphemer challenges the vengeance of the Almighty with no common effrontery. Have I one here whose mouth is foul with oaths? Has there strayed into this house of prayer tonight one who has cursed God, and dared in his angry moments to lift his puny hand of rebellion, and curse the Most High God? Have I the misfortune—no, I will not call it so—have I the hopeful privilege of talking to one who has spoken against Jesus of Nazareth, and who is determined to quench His religion, or to oppose it to the utmost of his power? Is it so? Then indeed, friend, you are one of the chief of sinners, and I am glad that you are here, that I may tell you that there is mercy even for such as you are, for “all manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men.” No matter how often or how foully you have cursed the Most High, and damned yourself, He will not damn you if you will turn from the error of your ways, and seek mercy through the blood of Him whom you have despised!
Others come under the same class. For instance, we must here put the infidel, for although his words may not take the form of blasphemy, yet the very thought that there is no God is blasphemy, and he who dares to vent that thought is not only a fool, but one of the chief of sinners! And so you have tried to suppress your conscience, and to silence its monitions by pretending to believe that there is no God? You have tried to rake up the stale arguments of Tom Paine and of Voltaire, and you have chuckled when one who called himself a bishop of God’s heritage dared to vent some strong things against the Book of His divine inspiration. You know in your heart that there is a God! Your conscience tells you that He is a just God; you expect to be punished for your sins. That start the other night when you were alone, that cold shiver when someone spoke of death—all these prove that your infidelity is not so stout and brave a thing as you have dreamed it was. A poor, cowardly thing it is, who turns pale at a sickbed and flies, with coward paleness on its cheek, when once it thinks of judgment to come! Oh, if you are here, you Atheist, you Deist, you disbeliever in Christ Jesus, you are one of the chief of sinners, and I am glad you are here, that I may tell you that a God of love waits to embrace you, and that He still declares this to be true—that He is able to save to the uttermost all them who come unto God by Him! Fling down your weapons! You cannot fight the Most High! End this unequal quarrel. Have neither truce nor parley, but consider how you may be at peace with Him! The hand of His love is stretched out to accept the hand of your submission. Oh, be reconciled to God through the death of His Son!
And here I ought to include those who hold views derogatory of the Deity and the person of Christ. Faithfulness to you, my hearers, compels me to put down the Socinian; I will not call him Unitarian, for we all hold the unity of the Godhead. Trinitarians, but Unitarians are we still. Far otherwise the Socinian and the Arian—I put them down here—the men who say that Christ is not God, that the Redeemer of the world was but the son of Mary, that He who walked the waters of the deep, chained the winds, cast out evil spirits, and made even Hades startle with His voice when the soul of Lazarus came back—that He was but a prophet, a creature, a mere man! Surely, sir, you are one of the chief of sinners to have talked thus of Him who is “very God of very God,” the express image of His Father’s person! But even to you is Jesus gracious, and He bids you still believe in Him. You shall bow the knee to Him one day, and worship Him, for, “At the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, and every tongue confess that He is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” Bow your knee, NOW, and kiss the Son lest He be angry and you perish from the way when His wrath is kindled but a little. He bids you come to Him, then will He blot out your sins like a cloud, and like a thick cloud your iniquities. The chiefs of sinners, we are sure, are found among those who directly attack the person of Jehovah’s Christ; yet even to these is the gospel of salvation sent!
Another group of princes and peers in the realm of evil may be described as those who attack Christ’s people and who seek to pervert them from the right way. This sin pressed heavily upon the conscience of Paul. He had not only put them in prison, which was bad enough, but he had taken the saints into the synagogue, and probably they had been beaten before the assembly, and compelled to blaspheme. You, perhaps, know what that means—compel them to blaspheme. The Roman way of doing it was to say, “Curse Christ.” Often did the Roman Emperor command the martyrs to curse Christ, and you remember Polycarp’s answer?—“How can I curse Him? Sixty years have I known Him; He never did me a displeasure, and I cannot and I will not curse Him.” Then the whip was applied, or the hand was held over burning coals, or the flesh was pinched with hot irons, and then the question was put again— “Will you curse Christ now?” Paul says that he, though probably using milder means, compelled the professors of Christ’s faith to blaspheme. And there may be some such here—the husband who persecutes his wife for Christ’s sake; the father who charges his child, upon his obedience, never to go to the sanctuary of the Lord again; the employer who plagues his employees, mocks and jeers, and can never be content except when he is saying hard things against them. Have I not many here who still practice the device of cruel mocking? You abhor Christ and His people; you fight against God in His little ones. Beware! Beware! For this is a high sin! Nothing puts a man on his mettle like meddling with his children, “Touch me, if you will,” the father says, “if you are a man, and smite me if you dare.” But touch his children, and the blood is in his cheeks, and the mettle is up, and there is no knowing what a man will do when he sees the offspring of his own heart ill-treated! So God will avenge His own elect that cry day and night unto Him, though He bears long with them. To you who thus rank with the chiefs of sinners, I say that Paul the persecutor “obtained mercy,” and so may you! “This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom” persecutors rank among the chief!
There is another group whom you will all acknowledge to be of the chiefs of sinners—those who have sinned foully in the world’s esteem—violating the instincts of nature, and outraging the common sense of morality and decency! It scarcely needs that I should mention the harlot who infests the streets, and pollutes society; or that worse wretch, the whoremonger, who first leads her astray! I speak plain words, such as I find in Scripture. Such God shall judge when He comes at the last day, for this temptation is a deep ditch, and the abhorred of the Lord shall fall into it. This crying sin of our land needs to be sternly rebuked! Other sins are outside the body, but this pollutes both body and soul, and often sends down to generations yet unborn a horrid curse—at the very thought of which the soul is sick! Of all sins, young man, young woman, take care that you stand aloof from this! Pass not by the house of the strange woman if you love your life, for her gates lead down to death, even to the chambers of the damned! Yet, glory be to divine grace! There is mercy, mercy for such—and multitudes of these chiefs of sinners have become as the very brightest stars in heaven—snatched by the strong arm of Jesus from the miry clay, and out of that horrible pit of hell! They are now clothed, and in their right mind, they have gone to sit at the feet of Jesus, to sing of redeeming love. There was that Mary, that Mary whom Jesus had forgiven. Well might she love much! And many a loving spirit do I know, and there are some very dear to God’s Church here, who love their Lord, and often shame some of us who stand more prominent than they who once drank deep of that bitter cup, and once went to the very depths of that sin. Publish it in your streets! Tell it wherever you meet with the most loathsome and most defiled! Jesus is able to save to the uttermost! He was the friend of publicans and sinners. “This man receives sinners,” is Jesus Christ’s motto! Other men reject the sinner; they turn aside from her—woe unto her if she comes between the wind and their nobility! But, “This man receives sinners”—receives them to His heart, and to His bosom—to His kingdom, and to His throne! You chiefs of sinners, rejoice that if you believe in Jesus there is mercy for you!
II. WHY THE CHIEFS OF SINNERS ARE FREQUENTLY SAVED
One reason is to illustrate divine sovereignty. There is no jewel of His crown of which God is more jealous than His sovereignty. “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.” Now, when He saves the harlot, when He calls the persecutor by sovereign grace, then all men see that this is the finger of God, and that He dispenses His love and kindness according to the purposes of His own absolute and uncontrollable Will. He chooses the chief of sinners that He may show to all men that He will take the base things of the world, and the things which are not, and things which are despised, to bring to nothing the things that are—that no flesh may glory in His presence!
Another reason is that He may show His great power. Oh, how hell is made angry when some great champion falls! When their Goliaths are brought down, how the Philistines take to their heels! How heaven rings with songs when some chief of sinners becomes a trophy of the divine power! And how men talk, with glib tongues, of the great and mighty deeds of God, when the drunkard and the swearer, and the prostitute are washed, and made saints! What a noise it made at Elstow, when they said at the public-house on the green—“You know John Bunyan?” “Oh, yes, we know him! You mean the fellow who was always first at a game of tip-cat—he who could always drink the longest! Oh, yes, we know him.” “Well, do you know, he was preaching over at Bedford yesterday?” “What?” said one, “preaching at Bedford? I would as soon have thought of the devil preaching as John Bunyan! What a wonderful thing the gospel must be, to change such a man as that!” And yet it was true! John Bunyan, who frequented the ale-house; who knew more about the county jail, and more about the Celestial City that is on the other side the flood, than most men of his times. It shows the power and the sovereignty of God when such men are saved. And next, how it shows His grace! When I have sometimes sat to see inquirers, I have seen a number come in one after the other who have been born and brought up in the midst of piety, and I have blessed God for them. But, by-and-by there has come in one whose tale has been terrible to tell, and it was not easily told—except with many sighs, and sobs, and tears, yet, when it was disclosed, there have sat two weeping together—I scarcely know which wept more—he who wept because of divine grace illustrated in him, or the other because he saw in another the divine grace which he had tasted for himself! Oh, when great sinners tell out their tales, they are so straightforward, so explicit! There is no muddle about it, no questions about when they were converted, or how, but there they are. They say—“Ah, sir, it must be divine! Such a change has been worked in me that nothing could have thus turned the lion to a lamb, the raven to a dove, but the grace of God.” In great sinners, then, the grace of God is made conspicuous!
Again—great sinners are very frequently called by God for the purpose of attracting others. You know that when some great transgressor finds mercy, straightway many hearts say—“Ah, then there is mercy for me.” I am glad, I am very glad that there was a Manasseh, that there was David, that there was a Saul of Tarsus, and I am glad they are in the Bible. The wicked cut the stories out, and they laugh at us and say, “These are your saints?” Ah, we can bear that, while we can say—“No, this is what they were by nature, but they were saved, for all that, by the distinguishing grace of God, who saves men through faith, and not by their works.” Now, I believe that that case of David has been a solace to thousands, if not to millions. The hurt he did in his lifetime was certainly very great—but the immeasurable benefit which has flown to the universal Church from the penitential Psalms—puts altogether into the shade the damage which the fall of David did to the Church in his own time! Not that there is less shame to the sinner, but that there is more glory to the Savior where sin abounded in the first instance, and divine grace did much more abound in the sequel! We can well bear this spot, for the sake of the light of God which comes from the sun. Sinners! All of you! If you would put yourselves among the little ones, if your lives have never been grossly vile (I am glad if they have not)—let the fact that the great sinner enters, and is washed, attract you! I have heard it said of the elephant, that sometimes before he crosses a bridge, he puts his trunk and perhaps one foot, upon it. He needs to know if it is quite safe, for he is not going to trust his bulky body to things that were built only for horses and men. Well, after he has tried it, if he finds it strong enough, away he goes, and his great carcass is carried right across the stream. Now, suppose you and I sat on the other side, and said we were afraid the bridge would not bear us? Why, how absurd our unbelief would be! So when you see a great elephantine sinner, like the apostle Paul, go lumbering over the bridge of mercy, and not a timber creaks, and the bridge does not even strain under the load—why then, I think you may come rushing in a crowd and say—“It will bear us, if it will bear him; it will carry us across, if it can take the chief of sinners to heaven!”
And then, dear friends, the saving of the chiefs of sinners is useful, because, when they are saved they generally make the fieriest zealots against sin. Have we not a proverb that, “The burnt child dreads the fire”? I noticed my host, on one preaching excursion, particularly anxious about my candle. Now, as everybody ought to know how careful I am, I was a little surprised, and I put the question to him why he should be so particular. “I had my house burned down once, sir,” he said. That explained it all. No man is so much afraid of fire as he, and they who have been in sin, and know the mischief of it, protest against it the most loudly. They can speak experientially! They talk of what they have tasted and handled to their own smart and ruin! Oh, what revenge there seems to be in the apostle’s heart against his sin! He seems to bring out the great battle-axes and weapons of war against it—and wherever he can see sin, he smites right and left—anywhere! Persecution, death, martyrdom—all these are nothing to him if he can but get a blow at sin! He always seems to have the gun charged to the muzzle, and no devil comes in his way but what he has a shot at him! There are no ramparts or hellish bulwarks but what Paul thinks he must take them, whether they are in Asia, or Italy, or Spain! This great knight-errant of the cross is everywhere the great antagonist of sin, and so must those always be who are saved out of great iniquity!
And then, again, they always make the most zealous saints. I have said and it will come true, though I am no prophet nor the son of a prophet—I have said that the Lord will deliver this city, and deliver this age, not by ministers from colleges—not by the sons of gentlemen or the inheritors of titles; but He will yet shake London, and bring about a religious revival with the men who will come from St. Giles’s, and from Whitechapel—from the slums, and from the dens and familiarities of infamy! God will take such men by-and-by, and He is beginning to work it already! There are one or two names that will come to your recollection—illustrious names in connection with the preaching in theatres—God will raise up more such, and you shall see that when human wisdom and creature devices have done their utmost to make the Church of God the dull lethargic thing it now is, God, in the plenitude of His might, will raise up some who have tasted that He is gracious, and have drunk deeply of the cup of His love who will turn the world upside down! It is all an idle and a wicked tale, that our places of worship in the City of London cannot be supported. I see them building new places in the suburbs, and leaving the City itself destitute of the means of divine grace. Were the right men found, the churches in the City of London might be as crowded as those in the suburbs! Only put into their pulpits men who know the guilt of sin, and who know that gospel in which is revealed the righteousness of God—men who know and preach Christ—then the effect would be tangible! Give us the men who do not talk as botanists might do upon botany, when they had not seen a flower, or as some might speak of various lands who have never traveled a league; but give us men who know experientially those things that they labor to teach, and let their tongues be set on fire by the Holy Spirit, and you shall then see London as full of the glory of the Lord as was Jerusalem of old! May this come to pass! May it begin to come to pass tonight! May the Lord find out, as He moves among this mass, some stray, strange being who has given himself up to desperation, to work mischief with both his hands—and may He say to him tonight, “I have need of you, and I will have you.” Oh, mighty grace, do it tonight! He will have you, man! Your will must be subdued! Your pride must come down! That proud temper of yours shall yield! “I am your Master; I made you; I bought you with My blood, and do you think I will lose you? I am mighty to save; do you think that you can overcome Me? I came forth on purpose to redeem you! Saul, Saul, why do you persecute Me?” O that the Lord would speak thus personally to some individual now! And now I have done when I have just put this before you. My hearers, here is life and death. If you despise Christ, there is death for you; if you turn aside from the love and mercy which streams from the wounds of Jesus, the angry God shall find you in your sin, and cut you in pieces, and there is none who can deliver you. If you go on in your sin, you will soon meet with death. But a few Sundays ago, we had to mark how sudden death thinned our ranks. Sometimes it is a working man. There was one, you know, some weeks ago, who lost his life in building the great bridge at Blackfriars, who was often a hearer here; and there is scarcely a day passes but we hear of someone gone out of this great assembly. We are going one after another; and the pastor may go soon, but perhaps before he goes he may see many of you carried to your graves—he cannot tell. But, oh, why will you remain without God, and without Christ? If you had a lease of your lives, you might go on in sin until the lease was out; but even then, you would be foolish to be enemies to God and enemies to yourselves so long. But as you may die today, God help you to repent tonight! On the other hand, I set mercy before you—no man can say he has not been invited—no soul can say that I did not set the gate open wide enough! You are without excuse in the day of judgment. When the trumpet peals through heaven and Earth, and awakes the slumbering dead—when Christ shall come in the clouds to judge the earth, I must give an account of the gospel I have preached to you tonight! I would to God I could preach it better, but I cannot. You know what it is. You are without excuse. You have been invited; you have been entreated; you have been bid to come to the marriage supper. All things are ready; the oxen and the fatlings are killed—come to the supper! You who are in the highways and hedges, we compel you to come in, that God’s house may be filled! Come! “The Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him who hears say, Come. And let him that is thirsty, come. And whoever will, let him take the water of life freely.” But if you come not, I must be a swift witness against you at the last. I am clear of your blood; I am clear of the blood of you all! God save you, for Christ’s sake. Amen.
Charles Spurgeon