Soul-winning is the chief business of every
Christian minister;
indeed it should be the main pursuit of every true
believer.
-Charles Spurgeon
A Biographical
Sketch[1]
Charles Haddon
Spurgeon stands today as one of the greatest preachers and evangelists this
world has seen. His gospel-influence in the 19th century still
thunders today through his influence. He preached the central truth of God’s free
grace for sinners in Jesus Christ for decades and did so with a burden and fire
in his soul not for intellectual pursuit but for the salvation of the lost.
Hughes Oliphant Old famously stated “There was no voice in the Victorian pulpit
as resonant, no preacher as beloved by the people, no orator as prodigious as
Charles Haddon Spurgeon.”[2] He is
perhaps known most famously as the “Prince of Preachers.”[3] He found
himself bitten by the gracious and unwarranted love of God and did all in his
power to make it known by his life. We would do well to learn from this leader
in the Christian faith.
Spurgeon was born on
June 19, 1834 in Essex, England. He grew up in a devout Christian home with his
father as a minister. He was the oldest of seventeen children. However he found
himself growing up as one unconverted, even as he was exposed his entire
childhood to the truths of the Christian faith growing up with his father as a
minister. He stated later in life, “The light was there, but I was blind.”[4]
However God has a way
of giving sight to the blind. At fifteen years of Age, on January 6, 1850,
Spurgeon found his life utterly transformed. It was a Sunday morning and
Spurgeon found himself walking in the midst of a raging snowstorm. To get out
of the driving cold, Spurgeon took shelter in a local church in Colchester
which was currently holding their Sabbath worship service. He sat in the pew
and listened to the lay-preacher expound on Isaiah 45:22, “Look unto Me, and be
saved, all the ends of the earth.”
“Fixing
his eyes on young Spurgeon, he urged: ‘Young man, look to Jesus Christ. Look!
Look! Look! You have nothing to do but to look and live.’ Like an arrow from
heaven’s bow, the gospel hit its intended target. Spurgeon wrote: ‘I saw at
once the way of salvation. Like as a brazen serpent was lifted up, the people
only looked and were healed, so it was with me.’ Gazing by faith on Christ, he
was dramatically converted.”[5]
A year later, age
sixteen, Spurgeon preached his first sermon and at age seventeen he was called
as minister to a Baptist church in Waterbeach. It was here in Spurgeon’s early
life that his tremendous gift of preaching was recognized. At age nineteen
Spurgeon was called again, this time to pastor New Park Street Chapel in
London, a historic church, once of profound prominence. He would shepherd these
individuals for the remainder of his life.
Spurgeon’s preaching
here transformed the lives of thousands. The attendance went from 200 to 1,500
just after a year which in turn forced the sanctuary to be enlarged. The
continued increase of those coming to hear the master preacher forced them to
leave the restricted space of New Park Street Chapel and worship in Exeter Hall
which would hold near 5,000. However even this new space could not keep up with
the growing crowd. They were forced to build a new place for worship that would
accommodate the growing crowds, the Metropolitan Tabernacle, which was “the
largest Protestant house of worship in the world.”[6] In 1861
the Metropolitan Tabernacle was opened and could sit more than 6,000.
Throughout Spurgeon’s
adult life he was vehemently zealous for the truth of the Gospel and the
preservation of its essential doctrines. This embattled him in many
controversies, similar to Luther in his zeal for the Gospel. One such
controversy near the end of his life forced his resignation as pastor. Fed up
with the growing devaluation of the Scriptures in his time, particularly in the
Baptist Union, Spurgeon passionately pled for a return to a posture of
reverence toward the Scriptures as God’s word. However others did not share his
opinion and he resigned and in the ensuing turmoil passed away prematurely, on
January 31, 1892, at fifty-seven years old.
“During
his thirty-eight year London ministry, Spurgeon witnessed his congregation grow
from two hundred to almost six thousand members. Over this time, he took 14,692
new members into the church…it has been estimated that Spurgeon personally
addressed nearly ten million people.”[7]
Spurgeon was a
faithful evangelist, preacher, theologian, and leader of the church in England.
His wake can be felt today. Here are three examples of his faith for us to take
to heart and incorporate into our lives:
The Primacy of the
Scriptures
It was the end of
Spurgeon’s vocation as Pastor that was defined by his defense of the primacy of
the Scriptures as the authoritative revealed will of God for the life of the
believer, though he never failed to preach this throughout his years as a
minister. Upon the Scriptures rested all of Spurgeon’s efforts:
“For
Spurgeon, the Bible was just that, the very Word of God to break the heart and
bring the soul before the throne of God, thus bringing them to a redemptive
knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. Upon this foundation Spurgeon built his
entire theology and ministry.”[8]
The Gospel was central
to Spurgeon’s ministry; he was a herald of the good news, and central to the
Gospel is its revelation in the Scriptures. They were to Spurgeon an invaluable
gift.
And so Spurgeon’s call
on his audience was to truly trust and believe in the word of God. As a
preacher, he knew that “No man [would] preach the gospel aright who does not
wholly believe it.”[9]
His aim therefore was to so order the minds of his listeners to see and believe
in the capital-A Authorship of the Scriptures.
“This
volume is the writing of the living God; each letter was penned with an
Almighty finger; each word in it dropped from the everlasting lips…Albeit, that
Moses was employed to write his histories with fiery pen, God guided that
pen…if I turn to the smooth page of John…the fiery chapters of Peter…if I turn
to Jude, who launches forth anathemas upon the foes of God, everywhere I find
God speaking; it is god’s voice, not man’s.”[10]
Spurgeon’s resolve for
the primacy of the Scriptures in our lives is a call for us to see them as the
very word of God and therefore as the greatest instruction, the greatest
exhortation, the greatest balm, the greatest knowledge of love that we could
ever know. It is worthy then of our time and study. Or in the famous words of
Spurgeon himself: “It is blessed to eat into the very soul of the Bible until, at last,
your blood is bibline and the very essence of the Bible flows from
you.”[11]
The Call to
Evangelism
The second thing we
ought to have impressed upon us from the life of Spurgeon is his obedience to
the Scriptures in his resolve to show lost souls that their only hope was in
the free grace of Jesus; Spurgeon was a gifted evangelist. He stated that,
“Soul-winning is the chief business of the Christian minister; indeed, it
should be the main pursuit of every true believer.”[12]
Spurgeon therefore
included an appeal to the hope of the Gospel in every sermon he preached. The
lost soul was his target as he spoke from the pulpit, the Gospel the arrow, and
his voice the bow. He longed for those who did not know Christ to know the joy
that he experienced in that Methodist church in Colchester, when the darkness
dissipated and light of God’s love in Christ was shed in his heart. His appeal
sprang both from a passionate desire for the lost to know Christ and his peace and
from a desire to be faithful to God’s call on his life—to proclaim the fullness
of the Gospel without reservation.
Spurgeon then “felt
that preaching that did not lead to conversions was pointless.”[13] His
resolve as an evangelist should lay heavy on our hearts, in a day where
evangelism can be avoided and the lost disregarded. Spurgeon’s own conscience
spurs us to value those who do not know Christ, to save them from eternal
peril.
“I
should be destitute of all humanity if I should see a person about to poison
himself, and did not dash away the cup; or if I saw another about to plunge
from the London bridge, if I did not assist in preventing him from doing so;
and I should be worse than a fiend if I did not now, with all love, and
kindness, and earnestness, beseech you to lay hold on eternal life.”[14]
The Christian’s
Witness
Lastly, Spurgeon’s
example would impress upon us the importance of our witness to each other and
the world as we represent the name of Christ in our life. We are all—whether
pastor, accountant, student, athlete, librarian, teacher, chef, mom—ambassadors
for the Gospel if we claim the name Christian. We act not on our own behalf,
but upon and for Another.
In Spurgeon’s lasting Lectures to My Students, he addresses
those who are discerning and being equipped for pastoral ministry. He says at
the outgo that this is their beginning, “True and genuine piety is necessary as
the first indispensable requisite; whatever ‘call’ a man may pretend to have,
if he has not been called to holiness, he certainly has not been called to the
ministry.”[15]
While he is addressing students, this foundational exhortation ought to be
given to any who claims the name of Christ for all of the Christian’s life is
that of ministry. When a Christian opens a door for someone, they do so in the
love of Christ. When a Christian serves the poor and homeless, they do so in
the name of Christ. But so too when a Christian exhibits road rage, is caught
in a lie, or sleeps around, they do so in the name of Christ.
“Take
heed, therefore, to yourselves first, that you be that which you persuade others
to be, and believe that which you persuade them daily to believe, and have
heartily entertained that Christ and Spirit which you offer unto others.”[16]
And so from Spurgeon’s
own example as one faithful to the word of God, as one faithful to the call to share
the good news with the lost, and as one faithful in living a life above
reproach, we have much to remember and imitate from this great man of God.
[1] The bulk of Spurgeon’s “A
Biographical Sketch” has been referenced from Steven J. Lawson, The Gospel Focus of Charles Spurgeon
(Sanford, FL.: Reformation Trust Publishing, 2012).
[2] Hughes Oliphant Old, The Reading and Preaching of the Scriptures
in the Worship of the Christian Church, Vol. 6: The Modern Age (Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), 422.
[3] Lewis Drummond, Spurgeon: Prince of Preachers (Grand
Rapids: Kregel, 1992), 277.
[4] Charles H. Spurgeon, C.H. Spurgeon’s Autobiography, Vol.
I:1834-1854 (London: Passmore and Alabaster, 1899), 98.
[5] Steven J. Lawson, The Gospel Focus of Charles Spurgeon, 5.
[6] Ibid., 8.
[7] Ibid., 17.
[8] Drummond, Spurgeon: Prince of Preachers, 624.
[9] Ian H. Murray, Heroes (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth,
2009), 282.
[10] Charles H. Spurgeon, The New Park Street Pulpit, Vol. I
(Pasadena, Texas: Pilgrim Publications, 1981), 110.
[11] Charles H. Spurgeon, C.H. Spurgeon’s Autobiography, Vol. IV:1878-1892
(London: Passmore and Alabaster, 1900), 268.
[12] Charles Spurgeon, The Soul-Winner: How to Lead Sinners to the
Savior (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1963), 15.
[13] Steven J. Lawson, The Gospel Focus of Charles Spurgeon, 84.
[14] Charles H. Spurgeon, The New Park Street Pulpit, Vol. V (Pasadena,
Texas: Pilgrim Publications, 1981), 21-22.
[15] Charles H. Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students (Peabody, MA:
Hendrickson Publishers, 2010), 9.
[16] Ibid., 13.
