Official Product Overview
Benefit from the incredible wisdom of Charles Spurgeon, passage by passage. Spurgeon’s writings on the Bible fill dozens of volumes; his thoughts on particular passages are scattered across numerous books and sermons. This volume collects his thoughts on Galatians in a commentary format, with illustrations and applications culled from his sermons and writings.
Use Spurgeon’s application-oriented content in your sermons—it’s clearly labeled. Find great illustrations with this hand-edited and hand-curated Logos Bible Software edition, which tags illustrations with preaching themes to make them searchable in Logos’ Sermon Starter Guide. Take advantage of Charles Spurgeon’s in-depth research to better understand, apply, and illustrate the Bible.
What This Commentary Offers
The Spurgeon Commentary: Galatians makes Spurgeon’s content accessible—there’s no longer a need to comb through many volumes looking for one nugget of wisdom. Spurgeon’s writings are now curated in a format that is tied directly to the biblical text.
The commentary directs you to places where Spurgeon explicitly cites or alludes to a verse, using specialized, technology-based research to offer you the best of Spurgeon. It highlights illustration content: illustrations accompany the commentary and are tagged with preaching themes, so the preacher looking for an illustration relating to either a topic or a verse will be able to find one easily. It highlights application content: each section of Scripture includes at least one application from Spurgeon based on those verses. It saves time: reading Spurgeon for pleasure is wonderful, but preachers and teachers working under deadlines need ways to streamline their sermon preparation process. This commentary does all this by trimming the excess out of Spurgeon’s sermon archive and increasing functionality, usability, and readability. Outdated language has even been updated, making Spurgeon’s writing easier than ever to understand.
Key Features
Read Spurgeon’s writings in Bible commentary format
Explore Spurgeon’s writing according to classification: exposition, illustration, and application
Leverage additional theme tagging for illustrations, making them easy to access in the Sermon Starter Guide in Logos Bible Software
Foreword by Phil Johnson, curator of The Spurgeon Archive
Product Details
Title: Spurgeon Commentary: Galatians
Author: Charles Spurgeon
Editor: Elliot Ritzema
Series: Spurgeon Commentary Series
Publisher: Logos Bible Software
Publication Date: 2013
Pages: 120
About Charles Spurgeon
Charles Haddon Spurgeon was born in Kelvedon, Essex, England on June 19, 1834. He converted to Christianity in 1850 at a small Methodist chapel, to which he detoured during a snowstorm. While there, he heard a sermon on Isaiah 45:22 and was saved—“Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth, for I am God, and there is none else.” He began his own ministry of preaching and teaching immediately, and preached more than 500 sermons by the age of 20.
In 1854, at 19 years of age, Spurgeon began preaching at the New Park Street Chapel in London. He was appointed to a six-month trial position, which he requested be cut to three months should the congregation dislike his preaching. He gained instant fame, however, and the church grew from 232 members to more than 5,000 by the end of his pastorate. Throughout his ministry, Spurgeon estimated that he preached to more than 10,000,000 people. Dwight L. Moody was deeply influenced by Spurgeon’s preaching, and founded the Moody Bible Institute after seeing Spurgeon’s work at the Pastor’s College in London.
Spurgeon read six books per week during his adult life, and read Pilgrim’s Progress more than 100 times. In addition to his studying and preaching, Spurgeon also founded the Pastor’s College (now Spurgeon’s College), various orphanages and schools, mission chapels, and numerous other social institutions. Charles Spurgeon suffered from poor health throughout his life. He died on January 31, 1892, and was buried in London.
My Feedback
With such a large amount of material spoken by Spurgeon and so little written, it can be very difficult to discover insights on particular passages or topics from this great pastor theologian. Much of what we profess today was in some way influenced by the beliefs and convictions of this man who spent hours upon hours, day after day dedicated to the Word of the Lord. He desired for himself and all those around him to be mastered by the Master and his gift to others in making that happen was the exposition of God’s Word.
This commentary is unique. It is Spurgeon’s commentary on the book of Galatians but Spurgeon himself did not compose or “author” the text in the traditional sense. Unless I’m wrong, Spurgeon only wrote two commentaries on Scripture – and Galatians isn’t one of them. This commentary I’m surveying is a collection of either allusions or direct quotations attributed to passages found in the book of Galatians (the same for other New Testament books in the Spurgeon commentary collection). What that means is that Ritzema and his team at Logos Bible Software combed through Spurgeon’s 3,500+ sermons for direct allusions or quotations of the book of Galatians and compiled this commentary accordingly all so that we can easily get to Spurgeon’s insight on a particular passage. I wanted to highlight that process because some people have asked, “Well, I have (some of) Spurgeon’s sermons, can’t I just do a search in Logos and get the same results without having to buy new resources?” The answer, “Maybe, but I highly doubt it!” The team who completed this project are deeply soaked in the words and life of Spurgeon and are able to make much more sound judgements when it comes to what Spurgeon is referencing — I would side with this project if I was looking for an organized compilation of Spurgeon’s thoughts on a text.
I will provide an image of the commentary for you to get an idea of its layout. For anyone who understands the multiple layers that we are to go through in order to derive the meaning of a passage, I highly recommend this commentary as a reference piece (though certainly not an end in and of itself). I appreciate Spurgeon’s insight and this allows me to easily pull Scripture up alongside the thoughts of Charles Spurgeon.
