Page 9 - Spurgeon

The eternal Godhead and excellence of the Son of God was a constant
theme. To Spurgeon, the Lord Jesus Christ, the ‘Well-beloved’ as he used to
call Him, was the Son of God, co-equal and co-eternal with the Father,
possessed of omniscience and supernatural power. He was a strong opponent
of all Unitarians. He strenuously affirmed our Lord’s virgin, supernatural
birth, His sinless life, His unique knowledge of God and His will and truth,
and of the human heart and events. It was His being very God that gave
unique worth to His sacrificial death upon the Cross, and made it a divine
act of atonement for sinners.
This was an exceedingly precious doctrine to Spurgeon, and one strenuously
opposed by ‘Modernists’ then and now. He affirmed with all his strength
and eloquence that, for our redemption, Christ became the sinner’s Substitute
and Sin-bearer. Christ died in the sinner’s place and stead, the Just for the
unjust, the spotless One for the guilty one, laying down His life as the Good
Shepherd for and on behalf of His sheep. He was convinced that there was
no other meaning in Scripture to the death of Christ. That death was no
mere martyrdom, nor example of love and fortitude, but a transaction with
God on behalf of ruined, lost and guilty sinners, who were quite incapable of
saving themselves. His blood was shed as a ransom for many. His death paid
the price to set men free. He bore the wrath of God on account of sin for
His chosen, that they might never bear it. His death was a substitutionary
sacrifice. ‘By His stripes we are healed.’
“The doctrine of the atonement is very simple. It just consists in the
substitution of Christ in the place of the sinner; Christ being treated as if He
were the sinner, and then the transgressor being treated as if he were the
righteous one. It is a change of persons; Christ becomes the sinner; He
stands in the sinner’s place and stead, and is numbered with the transgressors;
the sinner becomes righteous, and he stands in Christ’s place and stead, and
is numbered with the righteous ones. Christ has no sin of His own, but He
takes human guilt, and is punished for human folly. We have no righteousness
of our own, but we take the divine righteousness; we are rewarded for it,
and stand accepted before God as though that righteousness had been wrought
out by ourselves.
“Faith looks back upon the pardoned past, and rests herself upon the

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