Works, Impossibility of Salvation by – Charles Spurgeon

A POOR and wretched man dreamed that he was counting out gold. There it stood upon the table before him in great bags, and, as he untied string after string, he found himself wealthy beyond a Croesus’ treasures. He was lying upon a bed of straw, in the midst of filth and squalor, a mass of rags and wretchedness; but he dreamed of riches. A charitable friend who had brought him help stood at the sleeper’s side, and said, “I have brought you help, for I know your urgent need.” Now the man was in a deep sleep, and the voice mingled with his dream as though it were part of it: he replied, therefore, with scornful indignation, “Get you gone, I need no miserable charity from you; I am possessor of heaps of gold. Can you not see them? I will open a bag and pour out a heap that shall glitter before your eyes.” Thus foolishly he talked on, babbling of a treasure which existed only in his dream, until he who came to help him accepted his repulse and departed mournfully. When the man awakened, he had no comfort from his dream, but found that he had been duped by it into rejecting his only friend. Such is the position of every person who is hoping to be saved by his good works. You have no good works except in your dream. Those things which you supposed to be excellent are really defiled with sin and spoiled with impurity. Jesus stands this morning by you, and cries, “Soul, I have come from Heaven to redeem you. If you had any good works, there had been no need for me to come to save you; but, inasmuch as you are naked, and poor, and miserable, I came to earth, and this face was bedewed with sweat of blood, and these hands were pierced, and this side was opened, to work out your salvation. Take it; I freely present it to you.” Will you, in your sleep this morning, make that sad reply, “Jesus, we are rich and increased in goods, and have need of nothing. We have neither cursed your Father’s name, nor broken your Sabbath, nor done anything amiss”? If so, dear friends, you are resting upon a delusion, and will find it so when it is too late.