Blessed Assurance

Christian has already found support and encouragement in his journey in other Christians: Evangelist; Interpreter; and Help (at the Slough of Despond). He’s met his fair share of hindrances as well… and as he presses on he meets three more: Simple, Sloth and Presumption. As soon as he has experienced the power of the Cross, Christian seeks to share this good news with others… but each awakens and speaks only long enough to warn us of the dangers they personify, and then they lie down again to sleep. Christian continues on, albeit ‘troubled’ by the idea of those who ‘so little esteem the kindness of him that so freely offered to help them’. Tragically, we’ve undoubtedly had similar encounters. Watch out for these three characters when they re-appear in Part 2.

We may think that with his experience at the Cross so fresh in his mind, Christian would be fairly immune to distraction. But then he meets Formalist and Hypocrisy on their way from '‘the land of Vainglory’ and ostensibly on their way to ‘praise on mount Zion’. Christian is confused: ‘Why came you not in at the gate?’. It is always a shock to the system to meet those involved in the life of the Church who aren’t actually born again. And as in Bunyan’s dream, they often sound so sure of themselves, so confident of their own legitimacy, and so dismissive of our own perspective and convictions. It’s hard not to be intimidated, and easy to doubt yourself. It may take some patience, and we do well to follow Christian’s example of ‘often reading in the scroll’, but eventually Difficulty exposes their true nature and their true destinies.

Mind you Christian doesn’t navigate the Hill without some problems of his own. Wearied from his exertions, he stops - legitimately, for ‘the resting place was made by the Lord of the Hill for the refreshment of weary travellers’ - but as he sleeps his scroll falls out of his hand.

This has puzzled readers of Pilgrim’s Progress for generations. Firstly, in spite of the fact that the Lord provides for rest, there is a sense in which Christian has abused this privilege. The clue seems to be in the phrase, ‘pleasing himself, he at last fell into a slumber’. Later Christian will rue ‘his sinful sleep’; and wonders at his own wretchedness ‘that I should sleep in the daytime… in the midst of Difficulty! That I should so indulge the flesh as to use that rest for ease to my flesh, which the Lord of the Hill hath erected only for relief of the spirit of pilgrims!’ . A messenger awakens him and rebukes him when it is almost night (which sounds ominous!), ‘Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider her ways and be wise’ (Prov.6:6). Rest is good, and can be a blessing, but when it is indulged it becomes laziness and is damaging to us. Christian is not free from the faults that characterise others he meets (Sloth). Often what distinguishes true Christians from false ones is not necessarily their lack of sin, but their lack of desire for sin, and their willingness to repent. Although, over time that does lead to a mitigating of sinful behaviour.

Having turned the Lord’s help into a hindrance, Christian repents, and speeds on his way. But he has left the scroll behind. What does the scroll represent? Some have thought that it symbolises Christian’s salvation. Can a Christian lose this? Bunyan would hardly countenance such an idea. But can a Christian lose their assurance, their confidence that the Lord is at work in and through them? …that He is preserving them in the way? That seems more likely what Bunyan is warning against. When Christian meets Timorous and Mistrust, who cannot believe that the Lord would lead them past the lions, Christian reaches for his scroll ‘that he might read therein and be comforted’. When he can’t find it, he is in ‘great distress’.

Christian’s sinful slumber has consequences for his pilgrimage. His failure to ‘watch and pray’ has left him ill-equipped to rebuff Timorous and Mistrust, and hopelessly unable to face the lions in the road ahead. He must retrace his steps and rediscover his joy and confidence in the faithfulness of His God to lead him through such dangers before he can go any further.

Questions to ponder:

How would you counsel a Christian who was insecure in their relationship with God? How serious an issue do you think it is to lack confidence in that relationship? How would it damage our discipleship?

How can we cultivate greater confidence and joy as Christians?

What is the link between spiritual assurance, and courage?

The Gift of Interpretation

The House of the Interpreter remains one of the most intriguing sequences of the whole of Pilgrim’s Progress, and in it Bunyan is laying out the key dynamics that will shape Christian’s experience of discipleship. Some speak to what he has already experienced, some are designed to prepare him for what lies ahead. As we see in the first picture, there are those authorised and able to teach such things, and to lead pilgrims safely on the way… and there are those who aren’t. It is more important than we might realise to make sure that we are listening to the right preachers, ‘lest in thy journey thou meet with some who pretend to lead thee right, but their ways go down to death’.

Interpreter draws on such homely and everyday images as dusty rooms; children waiting for gifts; a fire in a hearth; guards at a doorway; a prisoner; someone waking, trembling from a nightmare… from these humble, familiar analogies, profound spiritual truths are drawn to help Christian understand what he has already been through (e.g. his flirtation with morality and legalism), or to equip him for the journey ahead. He will face many difficulties and dangers, trials and temptations. These foundational truths will encourage our Pilgrim to press on, when his heart would otherwise fail. As with the rest of the book, we aren’t left to guess at the meanings of what we are shown. Interpreter lives up to his name.

Christian is schooled as to the presence and nature of sin in the human heart; he is taught the importance of valuing the new creation over the old; he is shown the grace of Christ in preserving His saints in the face of Satan’s opposition; he is warned of the danger of not putting into practise what we learn from Scripture, and of denying Christ; he sees the dangers of persecution and suffering; and he is shown how to live with an awareness that he does so before God, and in the light of the Day of Judgement… These are all lessons Christian will have to draw on later in the journey; and they are worth pondering in our own expereince of discipleship.

‘Then Interpreter said to Christian, Hast thou considered all these things?’ ‘Yes’ Christian replies ‘and they put me in hope and fear’. This (perhaps unexpected?) combination of emotions holds the Pilgrim in creative balance. it is a well known observation that the most frequently repeated exhortation in the Bible is for Christians to fear the Lord. But it is not a fear that shuts out hope, but one that rather gives lustre to a joyful hope of the New Creation. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Without it we cannot follow the path of pilgrimage.

Only as he leaves Interpreter’s house does Christian finally come to the cross. And finally he loses his burden, watching it roll into the tomb, ‘and I saw it no more’. The three Shining Ones bless him with peace, absolution, the robes of righteousness (Zech.3:4; Rev.19:8), a mark on his forehead (Ezek.9:4; Rev.7:3) and a scroll. Watch for that - it becomes significant later! In the meantime, Christian runs through surprise, wonder, weeping, joy and song in swift succession, and heads off down the narrow path!

The sequence of events as Bunyan describes them has caused quite a bit of discussion. Some feel that Christian has, well, become a Christian earlier, and that Bunyan’s point is that a person ‘may be a Christian and yet have a deep sense of the burden of sin’. This is undoubtedly true; but my own view is that it is only here, at the cross that Christian is saved. Only here is he freed from the guilt of sin, clothed in the righteousness of Christ, assured of peace with God and forgiveness by Him. Bunyan’s point is rather, that the Spirit can be leading us for some time before we actaully come to the cross. We can know quite a bit about Jesus, and what it would mean to follow Him, even before we are regenerated. We can experience quite a lot and still not be a Christian! Our journey to Christ starts before we come to the cross.

This is the thinking that lies behind courses such as Christianity Explored. And it is the experience of many of us in our own journey. Looking back, we can see God’s hand on us, guiding us to Calvary, long before we actually became Christians.

Questions to ponder:

Go back to the first picture Christian sees. What characterises a minister of the Gospel? Would you pray for these things in those involved in ministry at MIE?

What does it mean to fear the Lord?

How does hope feature in your life as a Christian?

Can you tell the story of how you became a Christian, tracing out how God lead you to the Cross of Christ, and what happened when you were converted? Can you find someone to tell that story to?

When trusting Christ is not enough...

Take a moment, and ask yourself: What is the Gospel? What is the ‘Good News’ that beats at the heart of my faith?

Now, take another moment and ask yourself what you make of Evangelist?

There are two aspects to Evangelist’s contribution that are worth pondering. The first is his method. Whereas our instinct might be to soothe someone’s spiritual anxiety and discomfort, perhaps by assuring someone wrestling with a sense of guilt or unworthiness that God is loving and compassionate, Evangelist seems to aggravate precisely that we would seek to alleviate. Before he presents the Good News of the Gospel, he wants to make sure we understand why it is Good News. He wants to make sure we know the reality of what the Gospel saves us from. He pushes until the man before him is convinced that ‘I am not fit to go to judgement … the thoughts of these things makes me cry’.

Only now will Evangelist reveal that there is a way to be saved from that judgement. This is the second thing worth pondering: the content of the Gospel. The Gospel is not here being presented as a way of dealing with our sense of guilt, or lack of fulfilment in life. It is about how God protects us from His own holy response to our sin. Only when the reality of judgement is in focus, does Evangelist take to his lips a phrase of John the Baptizer, ‘Flee from the coming wrath’ (Matt.3:7).

But why does Evangelist not take him straight to the cross?

It is possible that this is a narrative devise used by Bunyan to expose the mistakes we can make in trying to deal with our guilt. It gives him a chance to introduce characters such as Obstinate (stubbornly holding to an opinion or course of action) who will not accept the Bible’s diagnosis of his state before God (‘away with your Book’), nor entertain any sacrifice of what he thinks of as ‘the good life’; Pliable, who sets out to follow the way of Christ without any ‘burden of sin’ and quickly loses interest in what had initially seemed attractive, when the going becomes difficult in the Slough of Despond (discouraged and disheartened by the response of mocking, threatening and calling back by others); and Mr. Worldly-Wiseman, who holds the remarkably contemporary opinion that we don’t need to be Christian to be good, and that while a little bit of self-affirming, ‘civic religion’ is no doubt a good thing, you certainly don’t want to be too serious about anything Evangelist says! That’s all a bit extreme, and unnecessary. It might sound sophisticated and reasonable, but ‘Christian’ (as he is now called) soon learns the hard way that Morality only increases the burden of sin, ‘and he soon began to be sorry that he had taken Mr. Worldly-wiseman’s counsel’.

More likely however, Bunyan understands and is teaching us about a wisdom that is needed in leading people to Christ. Counter-intuitively, there is great spiritual danger in rushing ahead of the Spirit’s leading someone to the Cross. Jesus once left a teacher of the Law ‘not far from the Kingdom of heaven’ (Mk.12:34). Not far… but not ‘in’ either.

Even though he is weighed down by his burden of sin, and is anxious about judgement, Christian is not ready yet to trust Christ, or at least, he is still too ready to trust others. He might be willing to trust Christ, but he is not yet willing to trust Christ alone. Only after he has been to the house of the Interpreter will be ready to climb ‘Salvation Hill’…

Questions to ponder:

Is Bunyan setting the bar too high?

Does reading this part of Pilgrim’s Progress help you make sense of your own experience of becoming a Christian? …and perhaps what you have seen of other people’s experiences of becoming Christians, or not, as the case may prove to be?

Take some time to pray for those you know who think and behave in ways that remind you of Obstinate, Pliable and Mr. Worldly-wiseman. Is there any way over the next few days you could say or do something that might help them re-engage with the Gospel?

The Gospel begins in the City of Destruction

Pilgrim’s Progress starts without a Pilgrim. Or better, it starts with the making of a Pilgrim. Pilgrims are made, not born. Or better, they are born again. And the process of birth is often a traumatic one.

Bunyan begins with ‘a man’. He does not yet have a name; he is dressed in rags (a reference to Is.64:6); with his face already turned away from his own house, with a book in his hand and a burden on his back (Ps.38:4). He is weeping and trembling, and he feels an anxiety that he cannot keep to himself. He is fearful of the coming judgment. ‘I am informed that our city shall be burned with fire from heaven … in which [we] shall come to ruin’.

Although he meets with scepticism from his family and friends (who fear he is becoming mentally unstable!) his state of spiritual concern becomes agonising, and his fear and confusion are palpable in these opening paragraphs. Only Evangelist is able to point him in the right direction, as we’ll see tomorrow…

It’s unfamiliar territory, and likely not where we would start the story. It all feels, well, very 17th Century-ish. We tend to think of Christianity in much more postive and constructive terms. We don’t start our story in a state of fear about our spiritual condition and our destiny of destruction. It’s all very quaint, but probably best left in the 1600s!!?

Which just goes to show, we weren’t listening to C.S. Lewis yesterday. Might not this be one of our blind spots? …one of the ‘characteristic mistakes’ of the 21st Century that old books like this one might alert us to?

Bunyan has his finger on the pulse of reality. He self-conciously presents our spiritual biography as shaped by ‘the book’. Our experience of our story might not start here, but it has to pass this milestone. The Spirit of Christ has many routes to bring us to this place of despair, but we all must pass it. I’d venture to suggest that until we have experienced something like this ‘man’s’ sense of helplessness before the judgement of God, we haven’t really begun to experience the Gospel at its deepest level. Or put another way, until we have experienced the trauma of our sin, we will struggle to enjoy the depth of his grace. As we’ll see on Saturday (at Romansfest) the Christian Gospel as laid out by the Apostles in ‘the book’ begins with the hopelessness of humanity. It begins with the desperation we must feel as we recognise that God’s holiness will not compromise with sin, only destroy it. The City of Destruction is well named. The burden is real. And as far as Bunyan is concerned, until we have recognised it, we haven’t yet started our pilgrimage.

Questions to consider:

In another work (Law and Grace) Bunyan wrote: Sometimes I have been so laiden with my sins, that I could not tell where to rest, nor what to do, yes, at such times I thought it would have taken away my senses’.

Do you have anything in your own experience that resonates with this?

Do you think this is an essential part of Christian experience?

Approaching the Pilgrim's Progress...

As we approach a book like Pilgrim’s Progress, it should be with humility and a prayerful expectancy.

It is - after the Bible itself - probably the book that has outsold every other published Christian book… ever (excluding liturgical books such as the Book of Common Prayer)! It is considered by many scholars as one of the most important books ever written. It has never been out of print, and is currently available in over 200 languages It has been on the ‘must read before I die’ lists of many of the world’s great thinkers and leaders, from Benjamin Franklin to Spurgeon (who claimed to have read it over a hundred times) and C.S.Lewis; with one contemporary scholar at least arguing that it should be required reading ‘for all Christians of all denominations of all ages’.

John Owen, a contemporary of Bunyan, and likely the greatest theologian the English speaking world has ever produced, told Charles II he would gladly give up all his learning if he could preach like Bunyan.

Simply from a literary perspective it signalled the birth of a whole new way of writing, betraying the aesthetic instinct of Biblical Christianity, and its impulse to the development of culture and literature. From a Christian perspective it is one of the most insightful books of pastoral theology at the Church’s disposal. It is saturated in the Bible’s way of thinking, exposes the dynamics of the soul, and lays out the reality of Christian experience so compellingly that it resonates with the disciple of Christ in any age and in any culture. When originally published, the book became an instant best seller, and by his death, Bunyan was preaching to congregations of thousands.

For us it has an added advantage. In writing the foreword to another Christian Classic (On the Incarnation), C.S. Lewis highlights the value of reading books from a different age:

Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books [or ideas, practices, etc.] that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means old books. All contemporary writers share to some extent the contemporary outlook—even those, like myself, who seem most opposed to it ... We may be sure that the characteristic blindness of the twentieth century … lies where we have never suspected it. None of us can fully escape this blindness, but we shall certainly increase it, and weaken our guard against it, if we read only modern books.

Where they are true they will give us truths which we half knew already. Where they are false they will aggravate the error with which we are already dangerously ill. The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books. Not, of course, that there is any magic about the past. People were no cleverer then than we are now; they made as many mistakes as we. But not the same mistakes. They will not flatter us in the errors we are already committing; and their own errors, being now open and palpable, will not endanger us. Two heads are better than one, not because either is infallible, but because they are unlikely to go wrong in the same direction…

As we read this classic over the next few weeks, it is worth doing so slowly, prayerfully, and with an anticpation that the Spirit will use a book so packed with Biblical insight and imagery, to help us understand ourselves, our God, our pilgrimage… and to correct and rebuke us where our thinking on such matters is skewed or inadequate. It promises to be an exciting season!