All of grace - Spurgeon - X - Chapter 16 and 17

Required reading
All of grace by C. H. Spurgeon (available from Amazon or free on the internet, here for example) - Read Chapters 16 and 17.

My summary
In Chapter Sixteen Spurgeon makes clear the repentance is a gift from God.

In Chapter Seventeen Spurgeon deals with the fear that a Christian may not persevere to the end.  Spurgeon's answer is that you will only fall if you start out trusting in yourself for part of your salvation: 'I believe that this fear is often the father of the fact - that some who have been afraid to trust Christ for all time and eternity have failed because they had a temporary faith which never went far enough to save them.  They set out trusting Jesus in a measure, but looking to themselves for continuance and perseverance in the heavenward way...If we trust in ourselves for our holding on we will not hold on.'

What grabbed me
I thought Spurgeon made a bit of an unusual statement at the beginning of Chapter Sixteen.  'The work which our Lord Jesus has done has made repentance possible, available, and acceptable.  The Old Testament makes no mention of repentance, but says plainly, "The soul that sinneth, it shall die" (Ezekiel 18:20).' 

Now I know what Spurgeon is getting at, that without Jesus' death repentance would not achieve anything.  But I think his statement about the Old Testament was a bit sweeping or at least lacked some clarification.  There was repentance in the Old Testament and it was effective - you only need to look at David in the histories and in the Psalms to know this.  Now of course David's repentance is only effective because it look ahead to Christ, but it was effective repentance in the Old Testament.  Maybe I'm being pedantic, but it is unusual for Spurgeon to lack clarity and allow misunderstanding, particularly in a book aimed at unbelievers.  What do you think? 

Now it's your turn

Please post your own notes and thoughts in the comments section below.