A man in Christ is not the old man purified, nor the old man improved, nor the old man in a better humor, nor the old man with additions and subtractions, nor the old man dressed in gorgeous robes. No, he is a new creature altogether. As for the old man, what is to be done with him? Can he not be sobered, reformed, and made to do us useful service? No, he is crucified with Christ, and bound to die by a lingering but certain death. The capital sentence is passed upon him, for he cannot be mended and therefore must be ended. “The carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.”
You cannot change the old nature, it is immutably bad, and the sooner it is put away as a filthy and unclean thing the better for us. The believer, so far as he is in Christ, is a new creation: not the old stuff put into a new fashion, and the old material worked up into an improved form, but absolutely a new creation.
From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "Christ The Maker Of All Things New," delivered December 10, 1876.
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He was converted to Christ at the age of 16 and immediately began preaching. He preached in the streets and in the fields before he was 21. In his first church, he began with 100 members. It grew until he was preaching to 10,000 people in the Surrey Music Hall. His church, the Metropolitan Tabernacle, seated 6,000 people. He withdrew from every movement among English Baptists which tended to criticize the Authorized Version 1611 in any way.
Before his death, he published more than 2,000 sermons and 49 volumes of commentaries, sayings, anecdotes, illustrations, and devotions.