According to Promise - Part Two

Extract
According to Promise – Part Two

7. Whose are the Promises?
8. The Promise a Free Gift
9. The Promise of God a Reality
10. The Peculiar Treasure of Believers
11. The Valuation of the Promises
12. The Lord’s Promise — the Rule of His Giving

C. H. Spurgeon

7. Whose are the Promises?
The Lord is ever just and good towards his creatures: it is his nature so to be. But there was no necessity either in his justice or in his goodness that he should make promises of grace to those who had rebelled against him.

Man has forfeited every form of claim upon his Maker, which he may have thought he had; for he has broken the pure and holy law which he was under bond to have obeyed. Nothing is now due to man but the reward of his sins. If God should now deal with man upon the ground of strict justice he must condemn and punish him. Anything in the way of favour to a guilty creature must proceed only from the undeserved mercy and sovereign goodness of God: it must spring spontaneously from the goodwill and pleasure of the Most High. The promises of grace flow from the boundless love of God, and from that alone. They could not have proceeded from any other source. No single one of the race of man has any natural right to promises of blessing, nor can the whole world of men deserve them. God has made promises to men of his own free will and good pleasure, from no motive but that love which lies within himself.

He has chosen to make his promises to elect persons, who in process of time are discovered by their exercising faith in him…