Spurgeon at the Metropolitan Tabernacle: 365 Sermons
The Gospel’s power in a Christian’s life
‘Only let your conversation be as it becometh the gospel of Christ.’ Philippians 1:27
Suggested Further Reading: Titus 3:1–8
The word ‘conversation’ does not merely mean our talk and converse one with another, but the whole course of our life and behaviour in the world. The Greek word signifies the actions and the privileges of citizenship, and we are to let our whole citizenship, our actions as citizens of the new Jerusalem, be such as ‘becometh the gospel of Christ.’ Observe, dear friends, the difference between the exhortations of the legalists and those of the gospel. He who would have you perfect in the flesh, exhorts you to work that you may be saved, that you may accomplish a meritorious righteousness of your own, and so may be accepted before God. But he who is taught in the doctrines of grace, urges you to holiness for quite another reason. He believes that you are saved, since you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and he speaks to as many as are saved in Jesus, and then he asks them to make their actions conformable to their position; he only seeks what he may reasonably expect to receive; ‘Let your conversation be such as becometh the gospel of Christ. You have been saved by it, you profess to glory in it, you desire to extend it; let then your conversation be such as becometh it.’ The one, you perceive, bids you to work that you may enter heaven by your working; the other exhorts you to labour because heaven is yours as the gift of divine grace, and he would have you act as one who is ‘made meet to be a partaker of the inheritance of the saints in light.’
For meditation: If you call the Lord Jesus Christ your Lord and Saviour and God your Father, does your lifestyle fit in with his character (1 Peter 1:14–17)? Would any aspects of your life be more appropriate for an atheist or for somebody following a false god?
Sermon no. 640
23 January (Undated Sermon)