Trinitarian Salvation (Charles H. Spurgeon, 1834-1892)

Matthew 3:16-17

16 And Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straightway out of the water: and, lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon him:

17 And lo a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.

LET us at once try to learn the first lesson from the text, which relates to the co-working of the Trinity in the matter of our salvation. 

There are some who seem to suppose that Jesus Christ is our Savior to the exclusion of God the Father and of God the Holy Ghost, but this is a most erroneous idea. It is true that we are saved by the precious blood of Christ, but it is equally true that God the Father and God the Holy Spirit have had their share in the great work of our salvation. In order that we might not fall into the error in which some have been entangled, it pleased God to give us, at the very beginning of Christ’s public ministry, a very distinct intimation that He did not come alone and that He did not undertake the work of our redemption apart from the other adorable persons of the ever-blessed Trinity. 

Try to picture to yourselves the scene that our text describes: there is Jesus Christ, Who has just been baptized in Jordan by John; and John bears witness that He is the Son of God because the sign from heaven for which he had been bidden to look had been given (Joh 1:33). As Jesus comes up out of the water, the Spirit of God descends upon Him in a visible shape, in appearance like a dove, and rests upon Him. John says that “it abode upon him” (Joh 1:32), as though the Spirit was thenceforth to be His continual Companion; and, truly, it was so. At the same time that the dove descended and lighted upon Christ, there was heard a voice from heaven, saying, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” This was the voice of God the Father, Who did not reveal Himself in a bodily shape, but uttered wondrous words such as mortal ears had never before heard. The Father revealed Himself, not to the eye as the Spirit did, but to the ear; and the words He spake clearly indicated that it was God the Father bearing witness to His beloved Son. So that the entrance of Christ upon His public ministry on earth was the chosen opportunity for the public manifestation of the intimate union between God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. 

Now, sinner, from this day forward, if you have never done so before, think humbly, reverently, and lovingly of all the three persons of the most blessed Trinity in unity. 

Bless the Son of God for becoming man in order that He might redeem us from destruction. He left His glory in heaven and was made in the likeness of men that He might suffer in our stead, as the Lamb of God’s Passover, and that we might shelter beneath His sprinkled blood, and so escape the sword of vengeance. Do you know that, when Christ was baptized, He gave, as it were, a picture of His great work of redemption? He said to John, “Thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness” (Mat 3:15), by which I understand, not that He fulfilled all righteousness by being baptized, but that His baptism was a picture or emblem of the fulfilment of all righteousness. 

What was done with Christ when He was baptized? Why, first, He was regarded as one Who was dead, and therefore He was buried beneath the waters of Jordan. He thus set forth by a most significant symbol the fact that He had come to earth to be obedient unto death, even the death of the cross, and that in due time He would actually die and be really buried, as now He was submerged beneath the yielding wave in a metaphorical burial. But baptism does not consist in merely plunging the person into the water: he must be lifted out again; otherwise he would be drowned, not baptized. So the Savior, when He rose up out of the water, set forth His own resurrection. By His baptism, He figuratively said, “I shall die for sinners, I shall rise again for sinners, and I shall go back to heaven to plead for sinners. My death will put away their offences, and my resurrection will complete their justification.” 

Go ye, who long for salvation, and by faith look to the Savior dying on the cross at Calvary: see Him buried in Joseph’s tomb, see Him rise the third day, and after forty days see Him ascend to heaven leading captivity captive. His dying, His burial, His rising, His ascension—these are the fulfilment of all righteousness, and it is by these that you must be saved. It is not your being baptized that can save you; it is Christ’s being baptized for you with that baptism of blood when He poured out His soul unto death that you might live forever. It is not your suffering, but His suffering that avails for your salvation; it is not your being or your doing that is the secret of blessing, but it is His being and His doing on which you must depend for everything. Trust in Jesus Christ, and you shall find salvation in Him. 

Now I want you to look with humbly grateful eyes to God the Holy Ghost. You remember how Jesus Christ applied to Himself the words He read in the synagogue at Nazareth: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, To preach the acceptable year of the Lord” (Luk 4:18-19). It was the Spirit of God Who gave success to Jesus Christ’s ministry; and if you, dear friend, would be saved, it is only the Holy Spirit Who can take away from you the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.  

I pray you to think with holy reverence of that mighty, mysterious Being Who works in human hearts and molds them according to the will of God. By nature, you are spiritually dead, and only the Spirit of God can give you spiritual life. By nature, you are spiritually blind, and only the Spirit of God can give you spiritual sight. Even the work of Christ on the cross does not avail for you until the Holy Spirit takes of the things of Christ and reveals them unto you. You must look to Christ, or He will not save you. You must trust in Christ, or His precious blood will not be applied to you. But you will never look to Him or trust in Him unless the Father, Who sent Him, shall draw you to do so by His Spirit effectually working in you. When we are thinking and speaking of the Holy Spirit, let us always feel as if we must put off our shoes from our feet; for the place whereon we stand is peculiarly holy. You remember how solemnly Christ warns us as to the consequences of even speaking against the Holy Ghost: “Whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come” (Mat 12:32). 

Whenever we mention the name of the Holy Spirit, let us do it with holy awe and reverence, remembering that it is the Spirit that quickeneth, it is the Spirit that instructeth, it is the Spirit that sanctifieth,1 it is the Spirit that preserveth, it is the Spirit that maketh us [fit] to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light. So, unto the ever-blessed Spirit of God as well as unto the well-beloved Son of God be glory and honor, praise and power, forever and ever. 

With equal reverence and with equal awe let us also think of God the Father. What does the Father here say concerning Christ? First, He calls Him His Son. There has been much disputing about how Christ can be equal with the Father and equally eternal, and yet be the Son of the Father. This is a great deep into which you and I, dear friends, will do well not to pry. We usually speak of Christ being the Son of the Father by what is called “eternal generation.”2 I confess that there is a mystery here that I can neither understand nor explain; but as the Father calls Him His Son, I unhesitatingly believe that He is what the Scripture constantly calls Him, “the Son of God.” In our text, we find that the Father not only calls Christ His Son, but He says, “This is my beloved Son.” What wondrous love there must be in the heart of each one of the divine persons in the sacred Trinity towards each of the others! How blessedly they must look upon one another with divine benignity3 and complacency! There never could be any diversity in their interests; for they are one in heart, one in purpose, one in every respect, even as Jesus said, “I and my Father are one.” 

Now, sinner, the point to which I want specially to direct your thoughts is this—that God not only calls Christ His Son, and His beloved Son, but that He says He is well pleased with Him; and this concerns you in that, if you are so united to Christ as to be one with Him, God will also be well pleased with you for His dear Son’s sake. But can a sinner ever be pleasing to God? Not in himself, apart from Christ, but all who are in Christ are “accepted in the Beloved” (Eph 1:6). His Father is so pleased with Him that all whom He represents are pleasing unto God for His sake. “But,” asks one, “how can I be in Christ?” My dear friend, if you are one of the Lord’s chosen, you are already in Christ in God’s eternal purpose; but the way in which you must experimentally get into Christ is by true faith in Him. To trust in Jesus is to be in Jesus. To rely upon the atoning sacrifice4 of Christ is to be one with Christ. Faith is the uniting bond that binds together the Christ in Whom we believe and those who believe in Him. If you are truly trusting in Christ, God looks upon you as a part of Christ’s mystical body, and He is well pleased with you for Christ’s sake. 

Thus, then, you have the Son suffering for you, the Spirit applying to you the merit of His atoning sacrifice, and the Father well pleased with you because you are trusting in His beloved Son. Or, to put the truth in another form, the Father gives the great gospel feast, the Son is the feast, and the Spirit not only brings the invitations, but He also gathers the guests around the table. Or, to use another metaphor, God the Father is the fountain of grace, God the Son is the channel of grace, and God the Holy Spirit is the cup from which we drink of the flowing stream. I wish that I could really make you see Jesus Christ standing by Jordan’s brink as He came up out of the water after He had been baptized by John, and the Spirit of God descending and lighting upon Him, and that I could make you hear the voice of the Father saying, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” If I could do this, all I should have to add would be John’s message: “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.” There is eternal life for everyone who truly looks unto Him by faith.

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1 sanctification – Sanctification is the work of God’s Spirit whereby we are renewed in the whole man after the image of God and are enabled more and more to die to sin, and live to righteousness. (Spurgeon’s Catechism, Q. 34) See FGB 215, Sanctification, available from CHAPEL LIBRARY. 

2 eternal generation – The relationship that exists between the first and second persons of the Trinity. God the Father is said to generate (or “beget”) the Son eternally. In other words, the Son’s identity as Son is defined eternally by His relationship to the Father. Likewise, the Father is eternally the Father by His relationship to the Son. The “generation” of the Son is not to be confused with physical conception or birth, whereby a human father begets a son who did not previously exist. In other words, the eternal generation of the Son does not speak about the origin of the Son but rather seeks to define the relationship of the Son to the Father. (Grenz, Guretzki, Nordling, Pocket Dictionary of the Theological Terms, 46-47)

3 benignity – kindness and gentleness. 

4 See FGB 227, Atonement, available from CHAPEL LIBRARY. 

From a sermon published on Thursday, April 18, 1912, at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington. 

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Charles H. Spurgeon (1834-1892): influential English Baptist preacher; born at Kelvedon, Essex, England. 

Beloved friends, here you have the Trinity, and there is no salvation apart from the Trinity. It must be the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. “All things that the Father hath are mine,” saith Christ, and the Father hath all things. They were always His; they are still His; they always will be His; and they cannot become ours until they change ownership, until Christ can say, “All things that the Father hath are mine”; for it is by virtue of the representative character of Christ standing as the surety of the covenant that the “all things” of the Father are passed over to the Son that they might be passed over to us. “It pleased the Father that in him should all fullness dwell; and of his fullness have all we received” (Col 1:19). But yet we are so dull that, though the conduit-pipe is laid on to the great fountain, we cannot get at it. We are lame; we cannot reach thereto; and in comes the third Person of the divine unity, even the Holy Spirit, and He receives of the things of Christ, and then delivers them over to us. So we do actually receive, through Jesus Christ, by the Spirit, what is in the Father…Give me a gospel with the Trinity, and the might of hell cannot prevail against it.
—Charles H. Spurgeon

Free Grace Broadcaster,  "The Triune God"

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