The Works of John Bunyan, vol 1 - John Bunyan (best self help books to read TXT) 📗

Wherefore the rather, brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure: for if you do these things, ye shall never fall: for so an entrance shall be ministered unto you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ’ (2

Peter 1:5-11).

The greatest part of professors now-a-days take up their time in contracting of guilt, and asking for pardon, and yet are not much the better. Whereas, if they had but the grace to add to their faith, virtue, &c., they might have more peace, live better lives, and not have their heads so often in a bag as they have. ‘To him that ordereth his conversation aright, will I show the salvation of God’ (Psa 50:23). To him that disposeth his way aright; now this cannot be done without a constant supplicating at the throne of grace for more grace. This then is the reason why every new temptation that comes upon thee, so foils, so overcomes thee, that thou wilt need a new conversion to be recovered from under the power and guilt that cleaves to thee by its overshadowing of thee. A new temptation, a sudden temptation, an unexpected temptation, usually foils those that are not upon their watch; and that have not been before with God to be inlaid with grace proportionable to what may come upon them.

‘That ye may find grace to help in time of need’! There is grace to be found at the throne of grace that will help us under the greatest straits. ‘Seek and ye shall find’; it is there, and it is to be found there; it is to be found there of the seeking soul, of the soul that seeketh him. Wherefore I will conclude as I did begin; ‘Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.’

[CONCLUSION. Some lessons to be learned from this text.]

We will now speak something by way of conclusion, and so wind up the whole.

First. You must remember that we have been hitherto speaking of the throne of grace, and showing what it is. That we have also been speaking of Christ’s sacrifice, and how he manages his high priest’s office before the throne of grace. We have also here, as you see, been speaking of the mercy and grace that is to be obtained and found at this throne of grace, and of what advantage it is to us in this our pilgrimage. Now, from all this it follows, that sin is a fearful thing: for all this ado is, that men might be saved from sin! What a devil then is sin? it is the worst of devils; it is worse than all devils; those that are devils sin hath made them so; nor could anything else have made them devils but sin. Now, I pray, what is it to be a devil, but to be under, for ever, the power and dominion of sin, an implacable spirit against God? Such an one, from which implacableness all the power in heaven and earth cannot release them, because God of his justice has bound them over to judgment. These spirits are by sin carried quite away from themselves, as well as from God that made them; they cannot design their own good; they cannot leave that which yet they know will be everlasting mischievous to themselves. Sin has bound them to itself so fast, that there can be no deliverance for them, but by the Son of God, who also has refused them, and left them to themselves, and to the judgment which they have deserved. Sin also has got a victory over man, has made him an enemy to God and to his own salvation; has caught him, captivated him, carried away his mind, and will, and heart, from God; and made him choose to be vain, and to run the hazard of eternal damnation, with rejoicing and delight.

But God left not man where he left those wicked spirits, to wit, under the everlasting chains of darkness, reserved unto judgment; but devised means for their ransom and reconciliation to himself; which is the thing that has been discoursed of in the foregoing part of this book (2 Sam 15:15). But, I say, what a thing is sin, what a devil and master of devils is it, that it should, where it takes hold, so hang that nothing can unclinch its hold but the mercy of God and the heart-blood of his dear Son! O the fretting, eating, infecting, defiling, and poisonous nature of sin, that it should so eat into our flesh and spirit, body and soul, and so stain us with its vile and stinking nature: yea, it has almost turned man into the nature of itself; insomuch as that sometimes, when nature is mentioned, sin is meant; and when sin is mentioned, nature is meant (Eph 2:3, 5:8). Wherefore sin is a fearful thing; a thing to be lamented, a thing to be abhorred, a thing to be fled from with more astonishment and trembling than one would fly from any devil, because it is the worst of things; and that without which nothing can be bad, and because where it takes hold it so fasteneth that nothing, as I have said, can release whom it has made a captive, but the mercy of God and the heart-blood of his dear Son. O what a thing is sin!

Second. As by what hath been said sin appears to be exceeding sinful; so, from hence it also follows, that the soul is a precious thing.

For you must know all this is for the redemption of the soul. The redemption of the soul is precious (Psa 49:8,20). I say, it is for the redemption of the soul; it was for this that Christ was made a priest, a sacrifice, an altar, a throne of grace; yea, sin, a curse, and what not, that was necessary for our deliverance from sin, and death, and everlasting damnation. He that would know what a soul is, let him read in letters of blood the price and purchase of the soul. It was not for a light, a little, an inconsiderable thing, that Christ Jesus underwent what he suffered when he was in the world, and gave himself a ransom for souls. No, no! The soul is a great, a vast great thing, notwithstanding it is so little set by of some. Some prefer anything that they fancy, above the soul; a slut, a lie, a pot, an act of fraudulency, the swing of a prevailing passion, anything shall be preferred when the occasion offereth itself.[40] If Christ had set as little by souls as some men do, he had never left his Father’s bosom, and the glory that he had with him; he had never so humbled himself, so gave himself to punishment, affliction, and sorrow; and made himself so the object of scorn, and contempt, and reproach, as he did, and all that the souls of sinners might live a life in glory with him.

But methinks this is the mystery of all as to this, that the soul should take that pains, contrive such ways, and take such advantages against itself! For it is the soul that sins, that the soul might die! O! sin, what art thou? What hast thou done? and what still wilt thou further do, if mercy, and blood and grace doth not prevent thee? O silly soul! what a fool has sin made of thee? what an ass art thou become to sin? that ever an immortal soul, at first made in the image of God, for God, and for his delight, should so degenerate from its first station, and so abase itself that it might serve sin, as to become the devil’s ape, and to play like a Jack Pudding for him upon any stage or theatre in the world! But I recall myself; for if sin can make one who was sometimes a glorious angel in heaven, now so to abuse himself as to become, to appearance, as a filthy frog, a toad, a rat, a cat, a fly, a mouse, a dog, or bitch’s whelp,[41] to serve its ends upon a poor mortal, that it might gull them of everlasting life, no marvel if the soul is so beguiled as to sell itself from God, and all good, for so poor a nothing as a momentary pleasure is. But, Third. If sin and the soul are such great things, then behold the love and care of God; the love to souls, the care he hath taken to deliver them from sin. Sin, as I have said, is such a thing as from which no man can deliver himself; the soul is such a thing, so rich and valuable in the nature of it, that scarce one in twenty thousand counts of it as they should. But God, the lover of mankind, and the greatest enemy to sin, has provided means effectually to overthrow the one, and to save and secure the other. Behold, therefore, the love of God, the care of God for us; for when we neither loved nor cared for ourselves, God both loved us and cared for us. God commended his love towards us in sending his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

Let it be then concluded that ‘GOD IS LOVE,’ and that the love that God hath to us is such as we never had for ourselves. We have been often tried about our own love to ourselves, and it has been proved over, and over, and over, that sometimes even we that are Christians could, and would, had it been possible, have pawned ourselves, our souls, and our interest in Christ, for a foul and beastly lust. But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, would not suffer it so to be. Now, if we are so fickle and uncertain in our love to ourselves, as to value our salvation at so low and so base a rate, can it be imagined that ever we should, had it been left to our choice, have given the best of what we have for the salvation of our souls? Yet God gave his Son to be the Saviour of the world. I say again, if our love is so slender to our own souls, can any think that it should be more full to the souls of others? And yet God had such love to us, as to give his only begotten Son for our sins. Yet again, how should it be that we, who are usually so affected with the conceit of our own happiness, since we care no more for our own souls, do our best to secure the souls of others? and yet God, who is infinitely above all creatures, has so condescended, as to concern himself, and to give the best of his flock, even his only beloved Son, for very dust and ashes.

Wherefore, ‘Herein is love, not that we loved God,’ or our neighbour, ‘but that God loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins’ (1 John 4:10).

Fourth. Is sin so vile a thing? is the soul so precious a thing?

and is God’s love and care of the salvation of the souls of sinners infinitely greater than is their own care for their own souls?

Then this should teach those concerned to blush, to blush, I say, and to cover their faces with shame. There is nothing, as I know of, that more becomes a sinner, than blushing and shame doth; for he is the harbourer, the nurse, and the nourisher of that vile thing called sin; that so great an enemy of God, and that so great an enemy to