Faultless

Your weekly dose of Spurgeon

The PyroManiacs devote some space each weekend to highlights from the lifetime of works from the Prince of Preachers, Charles Haddon Spurgeon.  The following excerpt is from The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, volume 54, sermon number 3,074, "Danger. Safety. Gratitude."

"It will indeed be exceeding joy to be kept from falling, and to be presented faultless at the end."

We have this word “present” several times in the New Testament. Paul wrote to the saints in Rome, “I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.” He also wrote to the Christians in Corinth concerning his desire to present them “as a chaste virgin to Christ.”

To the Ephesians, he wrote that “Christ, also loved the church, and gave himself for it,... that he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing;” and here Jude writes concerning Christ presenting his people “faultless before the presence of his glory,”—not presenting them unfallen, but “faultless.”

I suppose there are some brethren, who have grown so familiar with the idea of their own perfection, that they can quite understand what it is to feel perfect; but I am so familiar with the sense of my own imperfections that it takes me a long while to grasp the fact that I shall one day be “without fault before the throne of God.”

I can sit down, sometimes, with an aching head, and believe that it will wear a crown by-and-by. I can look at these hands, and believe that I shall one day wave a palm-branch of victory. I can and do fully expect to wear the white robe, and to sing the everlasting song in glory.

But it will be more than all this to be absolutely perfect, with never a risk of a hasty temper rising, or the fear of men checking one’s lips from saying what is right. There will be no undue haste; and, at the same time, there will to no sloth; there will be no preponderance of any grace so as to cause it to grow into a fault, and no deficiency in any point of character.

To be faultless before men is a great thing. To be faultless before the devil, so that even he cannot find any fault in us, is greatly to be desired. But the most wonderful thing of all must be to be presented by Christ “faultless before the presence of his glory.” That is, where the light is brightest, no speck of sin is to be seen; the saints shall be so perfectly purified by the omnipotent grace of God the Holy Spirit that even the Lord himself, in whose sight the heavens are not pure, and who charges his angels with folly, shall look upon his redeemed people, and declare that they are faultless, holy and unblamable and unreprovable in his sight.

Oh, blessed portion, glorious hope! This is something that is worth struggling for; so, brethren and sisters in Christ, let us fight more valiantly than ever against our sins and corruptions. Armed with the two-edged sword of the Spirit, we shall win the day. He who is able to keep us from falling will not be satisfied with acting on the defensive for us, and protecting us from our enemies, but he will enable us to carry the war into the enemy’s country, and we shall be “more than conquerors through him that loved us;” and we shall have this resplendent character at last, that we shall be “without fault before the throne of God.”

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