Spurgeon: God Devised the Plan of Salvation

In the belly of a great fish, Jonah learned this great little bit of theology:

“Salvation is of the Lord.”
(Jonah 2:9)

On this verse, Charles Spurgeon expounds:

The plan of salvation is entirely of God. No human intellect and no created intelligence assisted God in the planning of salvation. He contrived the way, even as He Himself carried it out. The plan of salvation was devised before the existence of angels.

Before the day-star flung its ray across the darkness, when as yet the unnavigated ether had not been fanned by the wing of seraph, and when the solemnity of silence had never been disturbed by the song of angel, God had devised a way whereby He might save man, whom He foresaw would fall.

He did not create angels to consult with them. No, of Himself He did it.

We might truly ask the question, “With whom took He counsel? Who instructed Him, when He planned the great architecture of the temple of mercy? With whom took He counsel when He dug the deeps of love, that out of them there might well up springs of salvation? Who aided Him?”

None. He himself, alone, did it.

In fact, if angels had then been in existence, they could not have assisted God. For I can well suppose that if a solemn conclave of those spirits had been held, if God had put to them this question: “Man will rebel. I declare I will punish. My justice, inflexible and severe, demands that I should do so. But yet I intend to have mercy.”

If He had put the question to the celestial squadrons of mighty ones, ‘How can those things be? How can justice have its demands fulfilled, and how can mercy reign?’ the angels would have sat in silence until now. They could not have dictated the plan. It would have surpassed angelic intellect to have conceived the way whereby righteousness and peace should meet together, and judgment and mercy should kiss each other. God devised it, because without God it could not have been devised.

It is a plan too splendid to have been the product of any mind except of that mind which afterward carried it out. “Salvation” is older than creation. It is “of the Lord.”

Adapted from Charles Spurgeon’s sermon “Salvation of the Lord,” delivered on May 10, 1857. You can read this sermon and many others at Blue Letter Bible.