John Bunyan And His Relevance For Today

By Pieter DeVries

John Bunyan is one of the most important persons in the history of the church. His work, The Pilgrim’s Progress, is read all over the world in all circles: Reformed, Baptist, Presbyterian, Lutheran, and so on.

Who was John Bunyan? In Dutch, we have a phrase: “He curses like a tinker.” That goes back to John Bunyan who, after he left school, became a tinker just as his father. As a young man, Bunyan was known for his cursing and swearing. How he transformed from that to becoming the author of the most widely read Christian book after the Bible is revealed in the title of his autobiography: Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners. John Bunyan was a sinner saved by grace. In his life, he struggled severely with the heart-burning question: How can I have peace with God? By God’s grace, he found the answer. He became a guide to Christ for others. He still speaks hundreds of years later through his many writings, especially The Pilgrim’s Progress.

John Bunyan was in more than one respect a child of his time; he was a seventeenth-century Englishman. But what he wrote crosses the bounds of the century in which he lived. He brought a message that is still relevant today. The most important question which we can ever ask is: How can I find peace with God? There is only one answer, the answer Bunyan found, by the grace of God: we are right in the sight of God by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. God imputes the righteousness of Jesus Christ to the sinner who puts his trust in Christ as his Savior. Still today, the law must be preached so that sinners begin to realize that God is angry with them every day. The gospel must be proclaimed in all its freeness and fullness so that wounded consciences might be healed.

The Spirit of God teaches sinners the same lessons in every age. Bunyan experienced that in a very remarkable way during a time of deep concern about his soul. While he was going through such a spiritually dark valley, he laid hands on an old volume of Luther’s commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians. It amazed him that a man who had lived about a century before him could so exactly share his burden and have a similar experience. He came to appreciate Luther greatly, as he wrote in Grace Abounding:

I do prefer this book of Martin Luther upon the Galatians, excepting the Holy Bible, before all the books that ever I have seen, as most fit for a wounded conscience.... I found my condition in his experience so largely and profoundly handled as if his book had been written of my heart. This made me marvel; for thus thought I, this man could not know anything of the state of Christians now, but must needs write and speak the experience of former days.

What Bunyan said of the commentary of Luther on the Galatians can be said of his own works, too: they speak of the state of Christians in all places and all ages. He answers the question of how a sinner can find peace with God. God’s unchanging way of salvation is proclaimed.

The Pilgrim’s Progress is an allegory, a story in which each detail has meaning. Reading it, the reader can identify with Christian and his struggles, sorrows, and joys. The first part of The Pilgrim’s Progress reflects the experiences of Bunyan as a man and a Christian; in the second part, we see him as a pastor. Bunyan pays great attention to the great diversity that there is in the life of faith. We see him as a pastor of souls. Mr. Great-Heart is portrayed as a model for the pastor; Bunyan wanted to be a Mr. Great-Heart for his own flock. He had a special love for Christians who are weak in faith and assurance.

A Short Sketch Of Bunyan’s Life

I want to pay some attention to Bunyan’s life, regardless of familiarity, because there is a close relationship between the message of Bunyan and his life. Much like Luther, he learned his theology through his struggles and trials. According to Luther, one can never become a real theologian when he has no trials and knows nothing of the assaults of Satan. Luther said, “I have discussed my theology with the devil [meaning the devil accusing him and pointing him to his sins] and I know it holds good [meaning the righteousness of Christ is a sufficient answer against all the accusations of the devil].”

Bunyan was born in 1628 in Elstow, a little village not far from Bedford. His parents belonged to the Church of England. They did not pay much attention to the eternal welfare of their son. Nevertheless, as a young boy, Bunyan had deep impressions of the coming judgment and of everlasting punishment. In the seventeenth century, a strong sense of eternity was common among all people, whether they were Protestant or Roman Catholic. What divided Protestants and Roman Catholics was not the sense of eternity, but the answer to the question: How can a man be right in the sight of God?

When Bunyan grew older, his deep impressions disappeared. He became a ringleader in doing evil. He especially committed the sin of cursing and desecrating the name of the Lord. The middle of the seventeenth century was a very exciting time for England. There was a civil war between King Charles I and his parliament. Bunyan served in the parliamentary army. His life was spared in a wonderful way on several occasions. Only after his conversion did he fully realize this.

Not long after he left the army, Bunyan married. Just as he had, his wife came from a very poor and simple family. She was an orphan. Among a few other things, her father left her two books, The Plain Man’s Pathway to Heaven by Arthur Dent and The Practice of Piety by Lewis Bayly. Sometimes she read the books to her husband. She urged him to go to church, to which he agreed. He had already stopped his habit of swearing and cursing. Now he started going to church two times on a Lord’s Day. He began to read the Bible. The epistles of Paul were too difficult for him, but he enjoyed the stories of the four gospels. In his autobiography, Grace Abounding, Bunyan says of this period of his life: “I thought no man in England could please God better than I.”

Bunyan was trying to please the Lord by the works of the law. He did not realize yet that we can never please the Lord in that way. But something brought a complete change in his life and his views. Doing his work as a tinker in one of the streets of Bedford, he heard three or four women speaking about the Lord’s dealings with their souls. He immediately realized that these women possessed something he did not have. They had peace with God. He realized that he did not have it, although outwardly so many things had changed in his life.

The women belonged to the congregation of a certain John Gifford. Gifford had been an officer in the army of the king. After his conversion, he had become a minister of a church in Bedford. Bunyan went to a worship service there. He told the children of the Lord there about the struggle of his soul to find peace with God. They pointed him to the promises of God, but he could not apply them to his soul. He wrote in Grace Abounding, “But they had as good have told me that I must reach the sun with my finger as have bidden me to receive and rely upon the promise; and as soon as I should have done it, all sense and feeling was against me, and I saw I had a heart that would sin, and that lay under a law that would condemn.” He could not see the relation between law and gospel. He could not understand the unconditional nature of the gospel. Through many struggles and trials, he was brought to spiritual freedom. The preaching of Gifford meant much to him. Bunyan learned the meaning of the words: “But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness” (Rom. 4:5). In his The Doctrine of Law and Gospel Unfolded, he wrote:

This is a legal and old covenant spirit that secretly persuades the soul that if ever it will be saved by Christ, it must be fitted for Christ by its getting a good heart and good intentions to do this and that for Christ.... Friend, if thou canst fit thyself what need hast thou of Christ? If thou canst get qualifications to carry to Christ that thou mightest be accepted, thou dost not look to be accepted in the Beloved.

Around 1653, Bunyan joined Gifford’s congregation. According to an old tradition, he was baptized in the Ouse River that year. In 1655, he became a deacon. In 1660, the monarchy was restored in England; the ecclesiastical and political situation changed. Bunyan was one of the first who felt it. Because of lay-preaching, he was arrested and imprisoned for twelve years. There he wrote several books, including the beginning of The Pilgrim’s Progress.

In 1672, Bunyan was released from prison. That same year, Charles II proclaimed his Declaration of Indulgence that gave more freedom for dissenters who would not worship in the Church of England, but in 1676, Bunyan was arrested again. Now he was in prison for only half a year. During his second imprisonment, he finished The Pilgrim’s Progress. He asked the great theologian John Owen, a good friend, for advice before publishing it. Owen’s feedback was encouraging, and The Pilgrim’s Progress immediately proved to be a great success. During Bunyan’s lifetime, more than 100,000 copies were sold in Britain. It was translated into Dutch in 1682. Today, it has been translated into more than 200 languages.

Bunyan died on August 31, 1688. At the end of The Pilgrim’s Progress, Bunyan writes about the glory of heaven: “There were also of them that had wings and they answered one another without intermission saying: Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord. And after that they shut up the gates; which when I had seen it, I wished myself among them.” When Bunyan died, this desire was fulfilled.

Themes From The Works Of Bunyan

The first thing I would mention in this connection is the strong sense of eternity. When Christian left the City of Destruction, he put his fingers in his ears and cried: “Life, life, eternal life.” Speaking of the Bible, Bunyan writes in one of his books, “All its doctrines, counsels, encouragements, threatenings and judgments have a look one way or other upon the next world.”

Bunyan spoke clearly about the reality of everlasting punishment. He said to them that came to hear him: “Be willing to see the worst of thy condition. It is better to see it here than in hell, for thou must see thy misery here or there.” “For when men come to see the things of another world, what a God, what a Christ and a heaven is to be enjoyed, and when they see it is possible for them to have a share in it, I tell you it will make them run through thick and thin to enjoy it.”

Second, Bunyan preached Christ and His righteousness as the only ground of salvation and justification. To use his expression, Christ was a public, or common, Person. As the surety and representative of His church, He bore the sins of His people. He died and rose again for them. We receive a share in Christ and His work when we lay hold on Him by faith. We must receive Christ on His own terms. That means we have to receive Him freely.

Bunyan wanted to preach the free offer of Christ as powerfully as possible. He denied that a man must be assured of the sincerity of his faith or his intentions before coming to Christ. In his work, The Pharisee and the Publican, he writes:

Again, I, in the first acts of my faith, when I am come to Christ, do not accept of him, because I know I am righteous, either with imputed righteousness, or with that which is inherent: both these, as to my present privilege in them, may be hidden from mine eyes, and I only put upon taking of encouragement to close with Christ for life and righteousness, as he is set forth to be a propitiation before mine eyes, in the word of the truth of the gospel; to which word I adhere as, or because I find, I want peace with God in my soul, and because I am convinced, that the means of peace is not to be found any where but in Jesus Christ.

His works Come and Welcome to Christ and The Jerusalem Sinner Saved particularly show us the moving and compassionate way in which Bunyan preached the gospel. But Bunyan did not preach the free offer at the expense of the preaching of the law. According to him, the preaching of the gospel has no context without the preaching of the law. In Grace Abounding, he says:

In my preaching of the Word I took special notice of this one thing that the Lord did lead me to begin where his Word begins with sinners; that is to condemn all flesh and to open and allege that the curse of God by the law doth belong to and lay hold on all men as they come into the world because of sin.

The law must be preached because “so long as sinners can make a life out of anything below Christ, so long they will not close with Christ.”

Third, I also want to draw attention to Bunyan’s view of the relation between faith and assurance. In The Pilgrim’s Progress, the cross is not placed directly behind the Wicket Gate. Why not? Because coming to faith in Christ is not the same as having the full assurance of faith. In the life of most Christians, there is a distance in time between coming to Christ and coming to full assurance. Clearly, Bunyan intentionally placed the house of Interpreter between the Wicket Gate and the cross. The Wicket Gate is a symbol for Christ; the first part of The Pilgrim’s Progress is a symbolical expression of the Puritan view of effectual calling. Convinced of his misery, Christian leaves the city of Destruction and flees to the Wicket Gate.

Fourth, Bunyan did not only speak about faith and justification, but also about sanctification. True holiness flows from justifying and saving faith. Bunyan also stressed self-examination. He called people to examine their own hearts when they professed that they belonged to Christ.

We can learn from Bunyan that a Christian always remains a student of Christ. It is not possible to fully comprehend the richness of Christ. There are always many reasons to pray for the light and wisdom of the Holy Spirit. It is remarkable that, in The Pilgrim’s Progress, Christian is confronted with the severest struggles after he has been at the cross and has lost his burden there. Bunyan wanted to show that the strength of a Christian does not lie in his faith or conversion as such, but in Christ in whom he believes and in God to whom he has dedicated his life.

Bunyan portrays all children of God as poor beggars in themselves. Real assurance and growth in grace make a man humble. Bunyan also makes clear to us that no matter how severe the struggles of a Christian may be, it is impossible that he would lose his faith. Real faith is a gift of God, and the gifts of God are without repentance. When a man goes through the Wicket Gate, he will be led onward to finally pass through the gates of heaven into eternal glory. Even in the river of death, Christian was severely assaulted by the devil. Hopeful tried to encourage him and said, “Brother, I see the gate, and men standing to receive us.” Christian answered: “It is you, it is you they wait for; you have been Hopeful ever since I knew you.” But finally Christian broke out with a loud voice: “O, I see him again, and he tells me, When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee (Isa. 43:2).” The Lord loosened his bonds. In this way, Bunyan makes it clear that the children of God are more than conquerors through Him that loved them.

Conclusion

Bunyan was a preacher with a burning compassion for souls. In Grace Abounding, he writes:

It pleased me nothing to see people drink in opinions if they seemed ignorant of Christ, and the worth of their own salvation. Sound conviction of sin, especially for unbelief, and a heart set on fire to be saved by Christ with a strong breathing after a truly sanctified soul, that was it what delighted me.

May God give preachers the same spirit Bunyan had, and may the preaching be blessed so that souls are saved by Christ and Christ alone. Those who are saved are pilgrims on earth, and heaven—where we shall see the Lamb that was slain and where God is all in all—will be our final home. A pilgrim knows both sorrow after God and joy in God. One day, God will wipe away all tears and the joy of God’s people will pass all understanding. We begin to experience that here; there we receive the fullness of joy and gladness. Let us pray that the Lord would grant us both sorrow after Him and joy in Him in this life, that we may enjoy the full glory in life eternal and not be eternally separated from Him.