The holiness that Spurgeon was after is one that is humble and happy and “wondrously attractive,” just like our Savior’s. This is what he sought to model for his students and this is what we should strive for in our lives.
For students of the Pastors’ College, their Friday meetings with C. H. Spurgeon were often a time of joy. But on one occasion, the meeting was marked by solemn heartache. Word had reached Spurgeon that “a minister in whom he had placed great confidence, and who had gone from the college, had greatly fallen.” The students knew that Spurgeon always took matters of personal purity with terrible earnestness. Now, having heard the news, he stood to address his students.
Rolling up his coat-sleeve, and placing his bare wrist on the platform rail, he said, in tones solemn and awful, “Brethren, I would sooner have had this right hand severed from my body than that this should have happened.”
Spurgeon knew that the fall of a minister brought great shame to the church and the witness of the gospel. He would rather be maimed than to see such spiritual harm brought to God’s people. So even as he devoted himself to training pastors, Spurgeon urged his students again and again: Fight for personal holiness.
A Higher Standard of Holiness
If you’ve been in ministry for any period of time, you know that there are particular temptations that come from being in that position. Listen to Spurgeon on this:
Upon the whole, no place is so assailed with temptation as the ministry. Despite the popular idea that ours is a snug retreat from temptation, it is no less true that our dangers are more numerous and more insidious than those of ordinary Christians. Ours may be a vantage-ground for height, but that height is perilous, and to many the ministry has proved a Tarpeian rock. If you ask what these temptations are, time might fail us to particularize them; … your own observation will soon reveal to you a thousand snares, unless indeed your eyes are blinded.
In the face of temptations, whether in public or in private, pastors must fight for holiness. They have to maintain a clear conscience before God in all that they do. And yet the call here is not for ordinary holiness, which we would want for all the members of our churches. Instead, there is a higher level of holiness that all ministers should aspire to and attain. Spurgeon writes,
The highest moral character must be sedulously maintained. Many are disqualified for office in the church who are well enough as simple members… Holiness in a minister is at once his chief necessity and his goodliest ornament. Mere moral excellence is not enough, there must be the higher virtue.
To be sure, it’s a wonderful gift to be simply a member of a church in good standing. But just because you are a church member, that doesn’t mean qualify you to lead the church. Rather, pastors are to be an example to the flock, as Peter writes, and this includes your character and spiritual life. You must be an example in your holiness.
The Pastor’s Many Temptations
So what does this look like? Well, you’ll notice in the previous quote, Spurgeon didn’t want to list out all the temptations in the ministry, because there are thousands of them, I’m sure. But in one of his lectures, Spurgeon does give his students a list of things to watch out for, even seemingly “small sins.”
