THE MARVELOUS MAGNET – Charles Spurgeon
THE MARVELOUS MAGNET
“I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Me. This He said, signifying what death He should die.” – John 12:32, 33
Jesus is the spokesman here. He tells of His own death by crucifixion, and of the result which will follow. It appears, then, that our Lord’s power to draw all men to Himself lies mainly in His death. By being lifted up from the earth upon the cross He was made to die, and He also was made to draw all men unto Himself. There is an attractive power about our Lord’s person, and about His life, and about His teaching. But still, the main attractive force lies in His death upon the cross. Most certainly, this is rare and strange, for when a great religious leader dies, a large measure of his personal power is gone. The charm of the man’s manner, the impressiveness of his personal conviction, the lofty tone of his daily enthusiasm—these are immense helps to a cause while they are with us. To lose them is a fearful drawback, such as makes it perilous for a religious leader to die. Men may remember a leader’s life for a time after his death. They will do so most emphatically if he has been eminently good. We say of the righteous, “Even in their ashes live their usual fires.” From many a tomb there rises a silent voice more eloquent than the choicest speech, “He being dead yet speaks.” But there is a measure and boundary to the influence of a mere memory. How often it is the case that, after a little while, the leader having gone, the feebler folk gradually drop away, the hypocritical openly desert, the lukewarm wander, and so the cause dies out. The man’s successors desert his principles, or maintain them with but little life and energy, and therefore, what was once a hopeful effort expires like a dying taper. For a man’s work to prosper, it is not desirable that he should die. Is it not strange that what is so often fatal to the influence of other men is a gain to our Lord Jesus Christ? For it is by His death that He possesses His most powerful influence over the sons of men. Because Jesus died, He is this day the mightiest ruler of human minds, the great center to which all hearts are being drawn.
Remember, too, that our Lord Jesus Christ died by a most shameful death. We have come to use the cross as an ornament, and by some, it is regarded as an object of reverence. But the cross, to speak very plainly, was to the ancients what the gallows are to us—an odious instrument of death for felons—exactly that and no more. The death on a cross was one never allotted to a Roman citizen except for certain heinous crimes. It was regarded as the death penalty of a slave. It was not only painful, it was disgraceful and shameful. And to say that a man was crucified was, in our Lord’s time, exactly tantamount to saying in our speech today that he was hanged. It means just that, and you must accept the death of the cross with all the shame that can be connected with the gallows and the tree of death, or else you will not understand what it meant to Jesus and His disciples. Now, surely, if a man is hanged there is an end to his influence among men. When I was looking through all the Bible commentaries in the English language, I found one with a title page attributing it to Dr. Coke. But on further examination, I perceived that it was the commentary of Dr. Dodd, who was executed for forgery. After he had been hanged, of course, the publishers could not sell a commentary under his name, and so they engaged another learned doctor to take it under his wing. The man was hanged, and therefore, people would not read his book, and you are not at all surprised that it should be so. But here is an amazing thing. The Lord Jesus has lost no influence by having been hanged upon the cross. No, rather it is because of His shameful death that He is able to draw all men unto Himself. His glory rises from His humiliation, His adorable conquest from His shameful death. When He “became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross,” shame cast no shame upon His cause, but gilded it with glory. Christ’s death of weakness threw no weakness into Christianity. Say rather that it is the right arm of her power. By the sign of suffering unto death, the church has conquered and will conquer still. By a love which is strong as death, she has always been victorious, and must forever remain so. When she has not been ashamed to put the cross in the forefront, she has never had to be ashamed, for God has been with her, and Jesus has drawn all men to Himself.
The crucified Christ has irresistible attractions. When He stoops into the utmost suffering and scorn even the brutal must relent. A living Savior, men may love, but a crucified Savior they must love. If they perceive that He loved them, and gave Himself for them, their hearts are stolen away. The city of Mansoul is captured before the siege begins, when the Prince Emanuel uncovers the beauties of His dying love before the eyes of the rebellious ones. Let us never be ashamed, dear friends, to preach Christ crucified—the Son of God lifted up to die among the condemned. Let those of us who teach in the Sunday school, or preach at the street corner, or in any other manner try to set forth the gospel, always keep a dying Christ to the front. Christ without the cross is no Christ at all. Never forget that He is the eternal God, but bind with that truth the fact that He was nailed to a Roman cross. It is on the tree He triumphed over Satan, and it is by the cross that He must triumph over the world. “I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Me. This He said, signifying what death He should die.”
The Attractive Force Which Lies in a Crucified Savior
I shall try to speak first upon the Attractive Force Which Lies in a Crucified Savior. You will observe that it is briefly summed up in these words—Himself to Himself. “I will draw all men unto Me.” It is not written that Christ will draw all men to the visible church, for the universal profession of our holy faith is slow enough in coming. Certainly, the Lord Jesus Christ will not lend Himself out to draw men to your sect or to mine. He will draw always towards truth and righteousness, but not to dead forms or meaningless distinctions, nor to the memories of former wrongs or party victories. If the Lord should draw men to the Cathedral or the Tabernacle, the Abbey or the Chapel, it would be of little service to them, unless in each case they found Him. The main thing that is needed is that they be drawn to Him, and none can draw them to Him but Him. Himself drawing them to Himself—this is the soul of the text.
I dare say that you have heard the oft-recounted story of the missionaries among the Greenlanders. Our Moravian brethren, full of fire and zeal and self-denial, went right away among the ignorant folk of Greenland, as those people then were, longing to convert them. Using large prudence, they thought, “These people are so unenlightened that it cannot be of any use to preach Jesus Christ to them at first. They do not even know that there is a God, so let us begin by teaching them the nature of the Deity, showing them right and wrong, proving to them the need of atonement for sin, and setting before them the rewards of the righteous and the penalties of the wicked.”
This was judged to be most fit preparatory work. Watch for the result! They went on for years, but had no converts. What was there in all that fine preparatory teaching that could convert anybody? Jesus was being locked out of the Greenlanders’ hearts by those who wanted Him to enter. But one day one of the missionaries happened to read to a poor Greenlander the story of Jesus bleeding on the cross and how God had sent His Son to die, “that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” And the Greenlander said, “Would you read me that again? What wonderful words! Did the Son of God die for us poor Greenlanders that we may live?” The missionary answered that it was even so, and clapping his hands, the simple native cried, “Why did you not tell us that before?” Ah, just so! Why not tell them this at once, and leave it to clear its own path? That is the point to begin with. Let us start with the Lamb of God which takes away the sin of the world. “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” To my mind that is the point to begin with and the point to go on with, yes that is the truth to conclude with, if there can ever be any conclusion to the grand old story of the incarnate God who loved His enemies, and gave Himself to die in their place, that they might live through Him. The gospel is Jesus drawing sinners to Himself that they might live through Him. Dear hearers, do you know what this means? I know that many of you do, and you are happy, for in this knowledge there is life. Would to God, that all knew this power of love in Christ; knew it so as to be drawn by almighty love to return that love with all their heart, and soul, and strength.
The best thing that can happen to any of us is to feel Christ drawing him to Christ, and to find himself sweetly yielding to the gentle drawing of the Savior’s love. The text says that Jesus Christ will draw all men unto Himself. Now, all men who hear of Jesus Christ at all are drawn, but they do not all yield. Some of them pull back, and the most awful thing that ever happens to a man is when he pulls back till Jesus lets him go. What a fall is that, when the drawing power is taken away, and the man fails backward into destruction which he himself has chosen, having refused eternal life, and resisted the Savior’s power! Unhappy is the wretch who strives against his own salvation.
Every man that hears the gospel feels some measure of its drawing power. I appeal to any one of you who has been accustomed to hear it. Does not Jesus sometimes tug hard at your conscience, and though you have pulled back, yet has He not drawn and drawn again? I remember how He drew me as a child, and though I drew back from Him, yet He never let me go till He drew me over the border line. Some of you must well remember how you were drawn by a mother’s gentle words—by a teacher’s earnest pleadings—by a father’s admonitions—by a sister’s tears—by a pastor’s entreaties. Permit your memories to aid me. Bring up before your mind’s eye the many dear ones who have broken their hearts to win you for Jesus. Yes, you have been drawn. I suppose that all of you have felt a measure of that drawing.
How This Force Is Exercised
The force of Christ’s love is sometimes shown to men by those who already love Him. One Christian makes many. One believer leads others to faith. To come back to my metaphor of a magnet, you have sometimes seen a battery attached to a coil, and then, if you take a nail and put it on the coil, the nail has become a strong magnet. You notice that the nail turns into a magnet, for you take another nail, and you put it on the end of it and it holds the second nail fast. Now number two is turned into a magnet. Try it. Put a third nail upon it. See, it is held fast! Number three has become a magnet. Try the next nail, it holds on to it like grim death, and now number four has become a magnet. Bring another nail within the influence. Number five has become a magnet. And so it continues. On and on and on, the magnetism goes, from one nail to another. But now just go to your battery, and detach one of your wires, and the nails drop off directly, for the coil has ceased to be a magnet, and the nails have ceased to be magnets too. All the magnetism comes from the first place from which it started, and when it ceases at the fountainhead there is an end of it altogether. Indeed, Jesus Christ is the great attractive magnet, and all must begin and end with Him. When Jesus lays hold upon us we get hold of a brother, and before long he turns into a magnet also. Thus from one to another the mystic influence proceeds, but the whole of the force abides in Jesus. More and more the kingdom grows, “ever mighty to prevail,” but all the growing and the prevailing come out of Him. So it is that Jesus works—first by Himself, and then by all who are in Him. May the Lord make us all magnets for Himself.
Jesus says, “I, if I am lifted up, will draw all men unto Me,” but He leaves room in His figure for the co-working of all grateful hearts. Jesus draws men gradually. Some are brought to Christ in a moment, but many are drawn by slow degrees. The sun in some parts of the world rises above the horizon in a single instant. But in our own country, at this season of the year, it is beautiful to watch the dawn, from the first gray light to the actual break of day. Is it dark, or is it light? Well, it is not quite dark, it is visible darkness. By-and-by there is light. No sun is up as yet, but yet the light increases till the East begins to glow, and the West reflects the radiance. Then, by-and-by, up rises the great king of day. So does the Lord bring many to Himself by gentle degrees. They cannot tell when they were converted, but they are converted, for they have come to Christ.
What Does All This Imply?
I shall conclude by drawing one or two lessons. Then I have done. What does all this imply? “I, if I am lifted up, will draw all men unto Me.” Well, it means this first—that men, by nature, are a long way off from Christ. You were not born converted. Of that I am sure. Nor were you born a Christian either, and though they took you to the font, and said that they made you a “member of Christ, a child of God, and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven,” there was not a word of truth in it, for you were such a child of God that you loved sin, and such a member of Christ that you knew nothing of Him, and such an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven that, unless God saves you, you will never get there.
I may say of Christians who are made in that way, “Eyes have they, but they see not. Mouths have they, but they speak not, neither speak they through their throats.” And I fear that I must add, “They that make them are like unto them: so is everyone that trusts in them.” It is a poor Christianity that is created by such monstrous folly. “You must be born again,” and you must be born again of the Spirit of God, or you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. Man is a long way off from Christ, and Christ must draw him. Friend, ask Him to draw you.
I gather another lesson—that men will not come to Christ unless He draws them. Sometimes, when I am trying to prepare a sermon to preach, I say to myself, “Why must I take all this trouble?” If men were in their senses they would run to Christ without calling. Why must we put this business so temptingly? Why must we plead? Why must we be so earnest? Because men do not want to come, not even to their own Savior; they do not wish to have their sins forgiven; they do not wish to be renewed in heart. And they never will come—no, not one mother’s son of them—unless He that sent Christ to them shall draw them to Christ. A work of grace in the heart is absolutely necessary before the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus will be accepted by any one of us.
Jesus said, “You will not come to Me that you might have life.” What our Lord said is true to this hour, man has not improved an atom. But, then, learn another lesson. If there is any man here that Christ is drawing, he need not ask, “May I come?” Of course you may, if you feel drawn to come. Are you coming? Come, and welcome. Christ never yet turned away a soul that came to Him—not one. “Him that comes to Me, I will in no wise cast out.” If He is drawing you, run, for you have Scriptural warrant for so doing. “Draw us: we will run after You.” If tonight you feel any kind of tugging at your heartstrings, do not hesitate a moment. Come along with you. When God draws, then, is your time to move. What do the sailors say? “There’s a breeze, Jack. Aye, aye, boys, up with the anchor, now for every stitch of canvas, we can make headway now.” Do you feel any kind of breeze? Is the breath of the Holy Spirit moving upon you in any degree? Do you feel inclined to say, “I will go to Jesus”? Then, fly away with you, like a full-sailed ship before a fair wind. And by God’s help may you soon make the port of everlasting salvation.
Let us finish up by saying that, if Christ has said that He will draw, then, He will draw tonight. The attractions of the Lord Jesus are continual. He draws, and He will always draw. He is drawing now. Do not pull back, lest His drawing should cease, and you should perish, but rather let your heart sing— “He drew me, and I followed on, Charmed to confess the force divine.”
Oh Spirit of God, draw men to Jesus. This is the way of salvation, trust Christ and you are saved. Rely wholly upon what Christ is, and what He has done, and you are saved. In that very act, there is a change effected within you which will show itself forever in your character, for he that believes in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is born again. The faith which looks to Jesus and the life which lives upon Jesus come together. I cannot tell you which is first—the new birth, or faith. Can you tell me which spoke of a wheel moves first? No. And these are spokes of one and the same wheel. “He that believes in Him has everlasting life.” Oh, believe Him! Trust Him. Lay hold upon Him. Accept Him and go your way, and the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. Amen. So let it be!