The Works of John Bunyan, vol 1, John Bunyan [reading like a writer TXT] 📗

Thess 1:10) They shall also admire to think, to see, and behold, what believing has brought them to, while the rest, for refusing to come to God by Christ, drink their tears mixed with burning brimstone.

Repentance will not be found in heaven among them that come to God by Christ; no, hell is the place of untimely repentance; it is there where the tears will be mixed with gnashing of teeth, while they consider how mad, and worse, they were in not coming to God by Jesus Christ.

Then will their hearts and mouths be full of, ‘Lord, Lord, open unto us.’ But the answer will be, Ye shut me out of doors; ‘I was a stranger, and ye took me not in’; besides, you refused to come to my Father by me, wherefore now you must go from my Father by me. (Matt 25)

They that will not be saved by Christ, must be damned by Christ; no man can escape one of the two. Refuse the first they may, but shun the second they cannot. And now they that would not come unto God by Christ will have leisure and time enough, if I may call it time, to consider what they have done in refusing to come to God by Christ. Now they will meditate warmly on this thing, now their thoughts will be burning hot about it, and it is too late, will be, in each thought, such a sting, that, like a bow of steel, it will continually strike him through.

Now they will bless those whom formerly they have despised, and commend those they once contemned. Now would the rich man willingly change places with poor Lazarus, though he preferred his own condition before his in the world. The day of judgment will bring the worst to rights in their opinions; they will not be capable of misapprehending any more. They will never after that day put bitter for sweet, or darkness for light, or evil for good any more.

Their madness will now be gone. Hell will be the unbeliever’s bedlam house, and there God will tame them as to all those bedlam tricks and pranks which they played in this world, but not at all to their profit nor advantage; the gulf that God has placed and fixed betwixt heaven and hell will spoil all as to that. (Luke 16:23-26) But what a joy will it be to the truly godly to think now that they are come to God by Christ! It was their mercy to begin to come, it was their happiness that they continued coming; but it is their glory that they are come, that they are come to God by Christ.

To God! why, he is all! all that is good, essentially good, and eternally good. To God! the infinite ocean of good. To God, in friendly-wise, by the means of reconciliation; for the other now will be come to him to receive his anger, because they come not to him by Jesus Christ. Oh! that I could imagine; oh! that I could think, that I might write more effectually to thee of the happy estate of them that come to God by Christ.

But thus have I passed through the three former things, namely, 1. That of the intercession of Christ. 2. That of the benefit of intercession. 3. That of the persons that are interested in this intercession.

[IV. EVERY SINCERE COMER CERTAIN OF SALVATION.]

Wherefore now I come to the fourth and last head, and that is, TO

SHOW YOU THE CERTAINTY OF THEIR REAPING THE BENEFIT OF HIS INTERCESSION.

‘Wherefore he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them.’

[Christ ever living is the safety of comers.]

The certainty of their reaping the benefit of being saved that come unto God by Christ is thus expressed: ‘Seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them.’ The intercession of Christ, and the lastingness of it, is a sure token of the salvation of them that come unto God by him.

Of his intercession, what it is, and for whom, we have spoken already; of the success and prevalency of it, we have also spoken before; but the reason of its successfulness of that we are to speak now. And that reason, as the apostle suggesteth, lies in the continuance of it, ‘Seeing he ever liveth to make intercession.’ The apostle also makes very much of the continuation of the priesthood of Christ in other places of this epistle: he abides a priest continually, ‘Thou art a priest for ever.’ He ‘hath an unchangeable priesthood.’ (Heb 7:3,17,21,24) And here he ‘ever liveth to make intercession.’

Now, by the text is showed the reason why he so continually harpeth upon the durableness of it, namely, for that by the unchangeableness of this priesthood we are saved; nay, saved demonstratively, apparently; it is evident we are. ‘He is also able to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them.’ For,

First, The durableness of his intercession proves that the covenant in which those who come to God by him are concerned and wrapt up is not shaken, broken, or made invalid by all their weaknesses and infirmities.

Christ is a priest according to covenant, and in all his acts of mediation he has regard to that covenant; so long as that covenant abides in its strength, so long Christ’s intercession is of worth.

Hence, when God cast the old high priest out of doors, he renders this reason for his so doing: ‘Because they continued not in my covenant’; that is, neither priests nor people. Therefore were they cast out of the priesthood, and the people pulled down as to a church state. (Heb 7:6-9) Now, the covenant by which Christ acteth, as a priest, so far as we are concerned therein, he also himself acteth our part, being, indeed, the Head and Mediator of the body; wherefore, God doth not count that the covenant is broken, though we sin, if Christ Jesus our Lord is found to do by it what by law is required of us. Therefore he saith, ‘If his children break my law, and keep not my commandments, I will visit their sins with a rod,’ &c. But their sins shall not shake my covenant with my Beloved, nor cause that I for ever should reject them. ‘My covenant will I not break, nor alter the thing that is gone out of my lips.

His seed will I make to endure for ever, his seed shall endure for ever.’ (Psa 89:30-36) Hence, it is clear that the covenant stands good to us as long as Christ stands good to God, or before his face; for he is not only our Mediator by covenant, but he himself is our conditions to Godward; therefore he is said to be ‘a covenant of the people,’ or that which the holy God, by law, required of us. (Isa 42:6) Hence, again, he is said to be our justice or righteousness; to wit, which answereth to what is required of us by the law. He is made unto us of God so, and in our room and in our stead presenteth himself to God. So, then, if any ask me by what Christ’s priesthood is continued, I answer, by covenant; for that the covenant by which he is made priest abideth of full force. If any ask whether the church is concerned in that covenant, I answer, yea; yet so as that all points and parts thereof, that concern life and death everlasting, is laid upon his shoulders, and he alone is the doer of it. He is the Lord our righteousness, and he is the Saviour of the body, so that my sins break not the covenant; but them15

notwithstanding, God’s covenant stands fast with him, with him for evermore. And good reason, if no fault can be found with Christ, who is the person that did strike hands with his Father upon our account and for us; to wit, to do what was meet should be found upon us when we came to appear before God by him.

And that God himself doth so understand this matter is evident; because he also, by his own act, giveth and imputeth to us that good that we never did, that righteousness which we never wrought out; yea, and for the sake of that transmitteth our sins unto Christ, as to one that had not only well satisfied for them, but could carry them so far, both from us and from God, that they should never again come to be charged on the committers, to death and damnation.

(Rom 4:1-5) The Scriptures are so plentiful for this, that he must be a Turk, or a Jew, or an atheist that denies it. Besides, God’s commanding that men should believe in his Son unto righteousness well enough proveth this thing, and the reason of this command doth prove it with an over and above; to wit, ‘For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.’ (2 Cor 5:19-21) Hence comes out that proclamation from God, at the rising again of Christ from the dead: ‘Be it known unto you, therefore, men and brethren, that through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins; and by him all that believe are justified from all things, from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses.’ (Acts 13:38,39) If this be so, as indeed it is, then here lieth a great deal of this conclusion, ‘he ever liveth to make intercession,’ and of the demonstration of the certain salvation of him that cometh to God by him, ‘seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them.’ For if Christ Jesus is a priest by covenant, and so abides as the covenant abides, and if, since the covenant is everlasting, his priesthood is unchangeable, then the man that cometh to God by him must needs be certainly saved; for if the covenant, the covenant of salvation, is not broken, none can show a reason why he that comes to Christ should be damned, or why the priesthood of Jesus Christ should cease. Hence, after the apostle had spoken of the excellency of his person and priesthood, he then shows that the benefit of the covenant of God remaineth with us, namely, that grace should be communicated unto us for his priesthood’s sake, and that our sins and iniquities God would remember no more. (Heb 8:10-12; 10:16-22) Now, as I also have already hinted, if this covenant, of which the Lord Jesus is Mediator and High Priest, has in the bowels of it, not only grace and remission of sins, but a promise that we shall be partakers thereof, through the blood of his priesthood, for so it comes to us; then, why should not we have boldness, not only to come to God by him, but to enter also ‘into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by that new and living way,’ &c.

Second, But, further, this priesthood, as to the unchangeableness of it, is confirmed unto him ‘with an oath, by him that said unto him, the Lord sware, and will not repent, Thou art a priest for ever.’ This oath seems to me to be for the confirmation of the covenant, as it is worded before by Paul to the Galatians, (Gal 3:15-17), when he speaks of it with respect to that establishment that it also had on Christ’s part by the sacrifice which he offered to God for