Works of John Bunyan: LIGHT FOR THEM THAT SIT IN DARKNESS. 406

 

Quest. But might Christ not die for our sins, but he must bear their guilt or burden?

Answ. He who can sever sin and guilt, sin and the burden, each from the other, laying sin and no shame, sin and no burden on the person who dies for sin must do it only in his imaginative head. No scripture, reason, sense, understanding, or feeling sin when charged without its guilt and burden.

Here, we must distinguish between sin charged and sin forgiven. Sin forgiven may be seen without guilt or burden, though I think not without shame in this world. Still, sin charged, and that by the justice of God—for so it was upon Christ—this cannot be but guilt and the burden, as inseparable companions, must unavoidably lie on that person. Poor sinner, be advised to take heed of such deluded preachers who, with their tongues smoother than oil, would rob thee of that excellent doctrine, 'God hath made him be sin for us'; for such, as I said, do not only present thee with a feigned deliverance and forgiveness, with feigned heaven and happiness but charge God and the Lord Jesus as mere impostors, who, while they tell us that Christ was made of God to be sin for us, affirm that it was not so really, suggesting this sophistical reason, 'No wrong judgment comes from the Lord.' I say again, this wicked doctrine is the following way to turn the gospel in thy thoughts to no more than a cunningly devised fable (2 Peter 1:16) and to make Jesus Christ, in his dying for our sins, as brutish as the paschal lamb in Moses' law.

Wherefore, distressed sinner, when thou find it recorded in the Word of truth that Christ died for our sins, and that God hath made him to be sin for us, then do thou consider of sin as it is a transgression against the law of God, and that as such it procure the judgment of God, torments and afflicts the mind with guilt, and bind over the soul to answer it. Sever not sin and guilt asunder, lest thou be a hypocrite like these wicked men and rob Christ of his true sufferings. Besides, to see sin upon Christ, but not its guilt; to see sin upon Christ, but not the legal punishment, what is this but to conclude that there is no guilt and punishment in sin, or that Christ bares our sin, but we the punishment? The punishment must be borne because the sentence has gone out from the mouth of God against sin.

Do thou therefore, as I have said, consider sin a transgression of the law (1 John 3:4) and a provoker of God's justice; which done, turn thine eye to the cross, and behold those sins, in their guilt and punishment, sticking in the flesh of Christ. 'God condemned sin in the flesh' of Christ (Rom 8:3). He 'bare our sins in his own body on the tree' (1 Peter 2:24).

I would only give thee this caution—Not sin like sin—sin was not so in the flesh of Christ, but sin in the natural punishment of it—to wit, guilt, and the chastising hand of justice. 'He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed' (Isa 53:5). Look, then, upon Christ crucified to be as the sin of the world, as if he only had broken the law; which done, behold him perfectly innocent in himself, and so conclude that for the transgression of God's people, he was stricken; that when the Lord made him be sin, he made him be sin for us.