C. H. Spurgeon said, “Whenever anybody says to me, ‘Your view of the atonement, you know, is very old-fashioned; the doctrine of substitution is quite out-of-date.’ I am not at all shaken in my belief. Those of the modern-thought school do not like that glorious doctrine of substitution. They think that the atonement is a something or other, that in some way or other, somehow or other, has something or other to do with the salvation of men; but I tell them that their cloudy gospel might have surrounded me till my hair grew gray, but I should never have been any the better for it. I should never have found peace with God nor come to love the Lord at all if it had not been that I distinctly saw that He, who knew no sin, was made sin for me, that I might be made the righteousness of God in Him. When I realized that although I had gone astray from God and broken His righteous law, He had laid on Christ my iniquity and punished Him in my stead, my soul found rest at once; and to this day it cannot rest under any other explanation of the atonement of Christ.” I heartily concur, and I believe I can truthfully say with Mr. Spurgeon that my faith has “not been shaken.” Not only my faith in the substitutionary sacrifice of Christ my Redeemer, but also the entire system of the Gospel nicknamed Calvinism. Substitution being its heart, it forms an unshakable foundation for one to rest his soul upon. I remember during the time the Gospel was being formed in my soul that there were occasions when attempts were made to shake my faith. I was attending a Baptist College (1967-1969) where God in His Sovereign Providence had placed me under the teaching of a lone voice of The Calvinistic Faith. As he taught evening after evening the faith of the glorifying Gospel of Christ was formed in my soul. I remember there were also those who vehemently objected to this faith. One of the men rejected the professor’s teaching to me personally labeling him “a hyper-Calvinist.” I was ignorant of the meaning of his accusation and responded, “I don’t know what you mean my dear brother, by hyper-Calvinism, but I do know this, that what he is teaching I’ve been reading in the scriptures for years.” For that reason alone my faith has not been shaken. The Holy Scriptures form the foundation of our faith. It is not a pick and choose matter; it’s an entire system of truth, an unbreakable chain from Genesis one through Revelation twenty-two. We find its golden thread running through the entire Bible, weaving together every page, and forming the truth of the one Christ exalting, God glorifying Gospel of substitutionary redemption. Anything else is, as Paul labeled it in Galatians 1:6-9, “another gospel,” and should be treated as a curse.
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