As Christian crests the Hill Difficulty, he meets Timorous and Mistrust, running in the wrong direction. Unlike Simple, Sloth and Presumption, whose sin was simply to stay where they were and not make progress in their pilgrimage and faith; and unlike Formalist and Hypocrisy, who were intent on finding an easier way, these two are determined to make a rapid retreat! Mistrust explains their hasty withdrawal: ‘…just before us lie a couple of lions in the way, whether waking or sleeping we know not, and we could not think, if we came within reach, but they would presently pull us to pieces’. The further they went in their pilgrimage, the more danger they found they had to navigate.
In his spiritually weakened state, having lost the joy and confidence of the Lord’s presence and preserving grace, Christian feels the pull of fear in his own heart. He feels caught: if he goes back to the City of Destruction, there ‘is nothing but death, but; to go forward is fear of death’. The difference Christian perceives even in his fearful condition, is that if he goes forward there is sfatey and life everlasting in the Celestial City beyond death. And so he resolves, ‘I will yet go forward’.
But he has lost much of the day because of his sleeping in the midst of Difficulty, and as the darkness falls he comes to a ‘very narrow passage’. It leads to the Beautiful Palace, but lying in the way Christian sees for himself the lions that had caused such distress to Timorous and Mistrust. His fear is exacerbated as he realises that ‘These beasts range in the night for their prey’. He realises that if he had come earlier in the day, the lions would have been sleeping (as they were when Faithful passes by the same way), and his journey would have been considerably less stressful!
Bunyan shows us something that Christian cannot see in the failing light: the lions were chained. This not an insignificant point. We face enemies in our path; ‘Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour’ (I Pet.5:8). But - and this is crucial - he is on a leash. Even in his fury against the Church, he can go no further that he is permitted (see Job 1-2 for a graphic exploration of this).
But Christian’s earlier failure comes back to bite. He isn’t able to discern the Sovereignty of God in his suffering and trial, and in the enemies he faces. The result: ‘he was afraid, and thought also himself to go back after [Timorous and Mistrust], for he thought nothing but death was before him’. Again we witness the same temptations in Christian that others have faced. And we see him deal with them so very differently: Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. (Jas.4:7). Feeling the same fear as Timorous, Christian meets it with faltering courage born out of confidence in God. Feeling the same faithlessness as Mistrust, Christian meets it with a resolve to rely on the promise of the New Creation (II Cor.4:16-18).
That resolve is strengthened in fellowship. The Porter, Watchful, explains the situation, and ‘trembling for fear of the lions, he went on … taking good heed to the directions of the Porter’.
‘He heard them roar, but he came to no harm’. Again, Jesus’ prayer is answered: ‘My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one’ (Jn.17:15). I wonder how often that prayer has been answered in our own lives, when we barely had the wit to pray for ourselves? Such is the grace of Jesus, that Christian makes it safely to the Beautiful Palace.
Questions to ponder:
Can you trace similar dynamics in your own experience of pilgrimage… times in your life when your sin has made life more difficult than it needed to be?
Can you trace the patterns of grace even in such times?
