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The sermon teaches that all people are guilty before God and cannot establish righteousness through works, religious effort, or moral improvement. Christ acts as the substitute, bearing the sins of believers and providing His own righteousness; His resurrection demonstrates that the ransom was accepted. Justification is received freely by faith and brings peace with God and lasting assurance. Spurgeon also rejects antinomianism, insisting that true faith necessarily leads to repentance, holiness, and devoted service to Christ.
Theological center: God justifies guilty sinners by grace through Christ’s substitutionary atonement, with Christ’s righteousness imputed to believers and His resurrection confirming the Father’s acceptance of His sacrifice.
Applications: Trust Christ for justification · Confess your sins · Renounce sin and pursue holiness · Consider Christ’s completed redemption
Primary texts: Romans 3:24 · Romans 5:1 · 1 Timothy 1:15
“Being justified freely by his grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” Romans 3:24 THE hill of comfort is the hill of Calvary. The house of consolation is builded with the wood of the cross. The temple of heavenly cordials is founded upon the riven rock, riven by the spear which pierced its side. No scene in sacred history ever gladdens the soul like the scene on Calvary. “Is it not strange, the dark hour That ever dawn’d on sinful earth Should touch the heart with softer power For comfort, than an angel’s mirth? That to the cross the mourner’s eye should turn. Sooner than where the stars of Bethlehem burn?” Nowhere does the soul ever find such consolation as on that very spot where misery reigned, where woe triumphed, where agony reached its climax. There grace has dug a fountain, which ever gushes with waters pure as crystal, each drop capable of alleviating the woes and the agonies of mankind. You have had your seasons of woe, my brethren and sisters in Christ Jesus. And you will confess it was not at Olivet that you found comfort, not on the hill of Sinai, nor on Tabor. But Gethsemane, Gabbatha, and Golgotha have been a means of comfort to you. The bitter herbs of Gethsemane have often taken away the bitters of our life. The scourge of Gabbatha has often scourged away your cares and the groans of Calvary have put all other groans to flight. We have, this morning, then, a subject which I trust may be the means of comforting God’s saints, seeing it takes its rise at the cross, and thence runs on in a rich stream of perennial blessing to all believers. You note, we have in our text, first of all, the redemption of Christ Jesus. Secondly, the justification of sinners flowing from it. And then thirdly, the manner of the giving of this justification, “freely by his grace.” I. First, then, we have THE REDEMPTION THAT IS IN OR BY CHRIST JESUS. The figure of redemption is very simple and has been very frequently used in Scripture. When a prisoner has been taken captive and has been made a slave by some barbarous power, it has been usual, before he could be set free, that a ransom price should be paid. Now, we being, by the fall of Adam, prone to guiltiness, and indeed, virtually guilty, were by the irreproachable judgment of God given up to the vengeance of the law. We were given into the hands of justice—justice claimed us to be his bond slaves forever, unless we could pay a ransom, whereby our souls could be redeemed. We were, indeed, poor as owlets, we had nothing wherewith to bless ourselves. We were, as our hymn has worded it, “bankrupt…