Works of John Bunyan: The Greatness of The Soul, And Unspeakableness of the Loss Thereof; Inferences From The Certainty of Benefit From Christ's Intercession, 239.

 

USE SECOND, As I would press you to an earnest study and search after this great truth, I would press you to diligently improve it for yourselves and others. To know the truth for knowledge sake is short of a gracious disposition of soul, and to communicate the truth out of a desire for praise and vain glory for so doing is also a swerving from godly simplicity, but to improve what I know for the good of myself and others is true Christianity. Now truths received may be improved concerning myself and others, and in several ways—

1. To myself, when I search for the power that belongs to those notions I have received of truth. There belongs to every true notion of truth a power; the notion is the shell—the power is the kernel and life. Without this last truth, I do no good, nor do those to whom I communicate it. Hence Paul said to the Corinthians, ‘When I come to you again, I will know not the speech of them that is puffed up, but the power. For the kingdom of God is not in word but in power.’ (1 Cor 4:19–20) Search, then, after the power of what thou knowest, for it is the power that will do thee good. Now this will not be got but by earnest prayer, and much attending to God; also, there must not be admitted by thee that thy heart be stuffed with cumbering cares of this world, for they are of a choking nature.

Take heed of slighting that little that thou hast; a good improvement of little is the way to make that little thrive, and the way to obtain additions to it: ‘He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much, and he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much.’ (Luke 16:10)

2. Improve them to others, and that, (1.) By laboring to instill them in their hearts with good and wholesome words, presenting all to them with the authority of the Scriptures. (2.) Labor to enforce those instilling on them by showing them by thy life the peace, the glorious effects that they have upon thy soul.

Lastly, let this doctrine give you the boldness to come to God. Shall Jesus Christ be interceding in heaven? Oh, then, be thou a praying man on earth; yea, take courage to pray. Think thus with thyself—I go to God, before whose throne the Lord Jesus is ready to hand my petitions to him; yea, ‘he ever lives to make intercession for me.’ This is a great encouragement to come to God through prayers and supplications for ourselves, and by intercessions for our families, our neighbors, and our enemies. Farewell.

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Works of John Bunyan: The Greatness of The Soul, And Unspeakableness of the Loss Thereof; Inferences From The Certainty of Benefit From Christ's Intercession, 238.

 

THE USE. I come now to make some use of this discourse; and,

USE FIRST, Let me exhort you to study this, as well as the other truths of our Lord Jesus Christ. The priestly office of Christ is the first and greatest thing that is presented to us in the gospel—namely, how he died for our sins, and gave himself to the cross, that the blessing of Abraham might come upon us through him. (1 Cor 15:1-6, Gal 3:13-16) But now that this priestly office of his is divided into two parts, and because one of them—to wit, this of his intercession—is to be accomplished for us within the veil, therefore, as we say among men, out of sight, out of mind, he is too much as to be forgotten by us. We satisfy ourselves with the slaying of the sacrifice; we look not enough after our Aaron as he goes into the holiest, there to sprinkle the mercy seat with blood upon our account. God forbid that the last syllable of what I say should be intended by me, or construed by others as if I sought to diminish the price paid by Christ for our redemption in this world. But since his dying is his laying down his price, and his intercession is the urging and managing of its worthiness in the presence of God against Satan, there is glory to be found therein, and we should look after him in the holy place. 

The second part of the work of the high priests under the law had great glory and sanctity put upon it; forasmuch as the holy garments were provided for him to officiate in within the veil, also it as there that the altar stood on which he offered incense; also there was the mercy-seat and the cherubims of glory, which were figures of the angels, that love to be continually looking and prying into the management of this second part of the priesthood of Christ in the presence of God; for although themselves are not the persons so immediately concerned therein as we, yet the management of it, I say, is with so much grace, and glory, and wisdom, and effectualness, that it is a heaven to the angels to see it. Oh! to enjoy the odorous scent and sweet memorial, the heart-refreshing perfumes, that ascend continually from the mercy seat to the ‘above’ where God is; and also to behold how effective

it is to the end for which it is designed, is glorious; and he that is not somewhat let into this by the grace of God, there is a great thing lacking in his faith, and he missed of many a sweet bit that he might otherwise enjoy. 

Therefore, I say, be exhorted to study this part of Christ’s work in managing our salvation for us. And the ceremonies of the law may be a great help to you as to this, for though they be out of use now as to practice, yet the signification of them is rich, and that from which many gospellers have got much. Wherefore I advise that you read the five books of Moses often; yea, read, and read again, and do not despair of help to understand something of the will and mind of God therein, though you think they are fast locked up from you. Neither trouble your heads though you do not commentaries and expositions; pray and read, and read and pray; for a little from God is better than a great deal from men. Also, what is from men is uncertain, and is often lost and tumbled over and over by men; but what is from God is fixed as a nail in a sure place. I know there are [peculiar] times of temptation, but I speak now as to the common course of Christianity.  There is nothing that so abides with us as what we receive from God; and the reason why Christians this day are at such a loss as to some things is that they are content with what comes from men’s mouths, without searching and kneeling before God, to know of him the truth of things. Things that we receive at God’s hand come to us as things from the minting house, though old in themselves, yet new to us. Old truths are always new to us if they come to us with the smell of heaven upon them. I speak not this because I would have people despise their ministers, but to show that there is nowadays so much idleness among professors that hinders them from a diligent search after things, and makes them take up short of that that is sealed by the Spirit of testimony to the conscience. Witness the great decays at this day among us, and that strange revolting from truth once professed by us.

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Works of John Bunyan: The Greatness of The Soul, And Unspeakableness of the Loss Thereof; Inferences From The Certainty of Benefit From Christ's Intercession, 237.

 

Oh, how unworthy are we of this love! How little do we think of it! But, most of all, the angels may be astonished to see how little we are affected by that which we pretend to know. But neither can this prevail with him to put us out of the scroll in which all the names of them are written for whom he doth make intercession to God. Let us cry, Grace, Grace unto it.

Fourth, Hence again I infer that they shall be saved that come to God by Christ, when the devil and sin have done what they can to hinder it. This is clear, for that the strife is now, who shall be lord of all, whether Satan, the prince of this world, or Christ Jesus, the Son of God; or which can lay the best claim to God’s elect, he that produces their sins against them, or he that laid down his heart’s blood as a price of redemption for them? Who, then, shall condemn when Christ has died, and doth also make intercession? Stand still, angels, and behold how the Father divided his Son ‘a portion with the great; and how he divided ‘the spoil with the strong: because he hath poured out his soul unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors, and bared the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.’ (Isa 53:12) The grace of God and the blood of Christ will, before the end of the world, make brave work among the sons of men! They shall come to a wonderment to God by Christ, and be saved by a wonderment for Christ’s sake—’Behold these shall come from far: and lo, these from the north and from the west, and these from the land of Sinim.’ (Isa 49:12)

Behold, these, and these, and these shall come, and lo, these, and these, and these from the land of Sinim! This is to denote the abundance that shall come into God by Christ towards the latter end of the world—namely when Antichrist is gone to bed in the sides of the pit’s mouth; then shall nations come in and be saved, and shall walk in the light of the Lord. But, I say, what encouragement would there be for sinners thus to do if the Lord Jesus, by his intercession, were not able to save ‘even to the uttermost’ them that come unto God by him.

Fifth, hence again, I infer that there is ground for confidence in those who come to God through Christ. Confidence to the end becomes us who have such a High Priest, such an Intercessor as Jesus Christ; who would dishonor such a Jesus by doubting that all the devils in hell cannot be discouraged by all their wiles? He is a tried stone, he is a sure foundation; a man may confidently venture his soul into his hand, and not fear, but he will bring him safely home. Ability, love for the person, and faithfulness to trust committed to him will do all; and all these are with infinite fullness in him. He has been a savior these four thousand years already—two thousand before the law, two thousand in the time of the law—besides the sixteen hundred years he has in his flesh continued to make intercession for them that come unto God by him. Yet the day is to come, yea, will never come, that he can be charged with any fault, or neglect of the salvation of any of them that at any time have come unto God by him. What ground, then, is here for confidence that Christ will make a good end with me since I come unto God by him, and since he ever lived to make intercession for me. Let me, then, honor him, I say, by setting on his head the crown of his undertakings for me, by the believing that he can save me ‘even to the uttermost, seeing he ever lived to make intercession for me.’

Sixth, Hence also I infer that Christ ought to bear and wear the glory of our salvation forever. He has done it, he has wrought it out. ‘Give unto the Lord, O ye kindreds of the people, give unto the Lord glory and strength.’ Do not sacrifice your own inventions, do not give glory to the work of your own hands. Your reformations, your works, your good deeds, and all the glory of your doing, cast them at the feet of this High Priest, and confess that glory belongs unto him—’Worthy is the Lamb that was slain, to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honor, and glory, and blessing.’ (Rev 5:12) ‘And they shall hang upon him all the glory of his Father’s house, and offspring and the issue, all vessels of small quantity, from the vessels of cups, even to all the vessels of flagons.’ (Isa 22:24) Oh! the work of our redemption by Christ is such as wanted, not provocation to us to bless, praise, and glorify Jesus Christ. Saints, set to the work and glorify him in your body and in your souls; him who has bought us with a price, and glorify God and the Father by him. (1 Cor 6:20)

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Works of John Bunyan: The Greatness of The Soul, And Unspeakableness of the Loss Thereof; Inferences From The Certainty of Benefit From Christ's Intercession, 236.

 

2. When he ascended to God, and so was out of his reach, yet how busily went he about to make war with his people? (Rev 12) Yea, what horrors and terrors, what troubles and temptations, has God’s church met with from that day till now! Nor is he content with persecutions and general troubles; but oh! how doth he haunt the spirits of the Christians with blasphemies and troubles, with darkness and frightful fears; sometimes to their distraction, and often to fill the church with outcries.

3. Yet his malice is in pursuit, and now his boldness will try what it can do with God, either to tempt him to reject his Son’s mediation or to reject them that come to God by him for mercy. And this is one cause among many why ‘he ever liveth to make intercession for them that come to God by him.’

4. And if he cannot overthrow, if he knows he cannot overthrow them, yet he cannot forbear but vex and perplex them, even as he did their Lord, from the day of their conversion to the day of their ascension to glory.

Third, Hence I infer that the love of Christ to his, is an unwearied love, and it must need to be so; an undaunted love, and it must needs be so. Who but Jesus Christ would have undertaken such a task as the salvation of the sinner is, if Jesus Christ had passed us by? It is true which is written of him, ‘He shall not fail, nor be discouraged, till he has set judgment in the earth,’ &c. If he had not set his ‘face like a flint,’ the greatness of this work would surely have daunted his mind. (Isa 42:1, 50:6-7)

For do but consider what sin is from which they must be saved; do but consider what the devil and the curse are from which they must be saved; and it will easily be concluded by you that it is he that full rightly deserves to have his name called Wonderful, and his love such as verily passed knowledge.

Consider, again, by what means these souls are saved, even with the loss of his life, and, together with it, the loss of the light of his Father’s face. I pass by here and forbear to speak of the matchless contradiction of sinners which he endured against himself, which could not but be a great grief, or, as himself doth word it, a breaking of heart unto him; but all this did not, could not, hinder.

Join to all this, his everlasting intercession for us, and the effectual management thereof with God for us; and, withal, the infinite number of times that we by sin provoke him to spew us out of his mouth, instead of interceding for us, and the many times also that his intercession is repeated by the repeating of our faults, and this love still passes knowledge, and is by us to be wondered at. What did, or what doth, the Lord Jesus see in us to be at all this care, and pains, and cost to save us? What will he get of us by the bargain but a small pittance of thanks and love? for so it is, and ever will be, when compared with his matchless and unspeakable love and kindness towards us.

Works of John Bunyan: The Greatness of The Soul, And Unspeakableness of the Loss Thereof; Inferences From The Certainty of Benefit From Christ's Intercession, 235.

 

I have now done what I intend on this subject, and I have drawn a few inferences from it as well.

First, then, I infer that the souls saved by Christ are themselves in a most deplorable condition. Oh, what ado, as I may say, is here before one sinner can be eternally saved! Christ must die, but that is not all; the Spirit of grace must be given to us; but that is not all; Christ must also ever live to make intercession for us. And as he doth this for all, so he doth it for each one. He interceded for me, before I was born, that I might, in time, at the set time, come into being. After that, he also made intercession for me, that I might be kept from hell in the time of my unregenerate state until the time of my call and conversion. Yet again, he then intercedes that the work now begun in my soul may be perfected, not only to the day of my dissolution but unto the day of Christ; that is until he comes to judgment. (Phil 1:6) So that, as he began to save me before I had been, he will go on to save me when

I am dead and gone, and he will never leave to save me until he has set me before his face forever.

But, I say, what a deplorable condition has our sin put us into, that there must be all this ado to save us. Oh, how hard is sin got out of the soul when once it is in! Blood takes away the guilt; inherent grace weakens the filth; but the grave is the place, at the mouth of which, sin, as to the being of sin, and the saved, must have a perfect and final parting. (Isa 38:10) Not that the grave of itself is of a sin-purging quality, but God will follow Satan home to his own door; for the grave is the door or gate of hell, and will there, where the devil thought to have swallowed us up, even there by the power of his mercy make us, at our coming thence, shine like the sun, and look like angels. Christ, all this while, ever lived to make intercession for us.

Second, Hence, also, I infer that as Satan thought he struck home at first, when he polluted our nature, and brought our souls to death, so he is marvelous loath to lose us and to suffer his lawful captives now to escape his hands. He is full of fire against us, full of the fire of malice, as is manifest 1. Not only by his first attempt upon our first parents but behold, when the Deliverer came into the world, how he roared. He sought his death while he was an infant; he hated him in his cradle; he persecuted him while he was but a bud and blossom. (Matt 2) When he was come to riper years, and began to manifest his glory, yet, lest the world should be taken with him, how politicly did this old serpent, called the Devil and Satan, work? He possessed people that he had a devil, and was mad, and a deceiver; that he wrought his miracles by magic art and by the devil; that the prophets spoke nothing of him, and that he sought to overthrow the government which was God’s ordinance. And, not being contented with all this, he pursued him to the death, and could never rest until he had spilled his blood upon the ground like water. Yea, so insatiable was his malice, that he set the soldiers to forge lies about him to the denial of his resurrection, and so managed that matter that what they said has become a stumbling block to the Jews to this very day. (John 10:20, 7:12, Matt 9:34, John 7:52, Luke 23:2, Matt 28:11-15).