The Pharisee and the Publican by John Bunyan (books under 200 pages txt) 📖

from the ears or the knowledge of the person therein concerned? Yea, may not the king after all leave this person, with others under the same transgression, to sue for and obtain this pardon with great expense and difficulty, with many tears and heart-achings, with many fears and dubious cogitations?

Why, this is the case between God and the soul that he saveth; he saveth him, pardoneth him, and secureth him from the curse and death that is due unto sin, but yet doth not tell him so; but he ascends in his great suit unto God for it. Only this difference we must make between God and the potentates of this world; God cannot pardon before the sinner stands before him righteous by the righteousness of Christ; because he has in judgment, and justice, and righteousness, threatened and concluded, that he that wants righteousness shall die.

And I say again, because this righteousness is God’s and at God’s disposal only, it is God that must make a man righteous before he can forgive him his sins, or bestow upon him of his secondary blessings; to wit, his Spirit, and the graces thereof. And I say again, it must be this righteousness; for it can be no other that justifies a sinner from sin in the sight of God, and from the sentence of the law.

Secondly, This is, and must be the way of God with the sinner, that faith may not only have an object to work upon, but a motive to work by.

(1.) Here, as I said, faith hath an object to work upon, and that in the person of Christ, and that personal righteousness of his, which he in the days of his flesh did finish to justify sinners withal.

This is, I say, the object of faith for justification, whereunto the soul by it doth continually resort. Hence David saith to Christ, “Be thou my strong habitation (or as you have it in the margin, Be thou to me a rock of habitation) whereunto I may continually resort;”

Psalm lxxi. 3. And two things he infers by so saying.

The first is, That the Christian is a man under continual exercises, sometimes one way, and sometimes another; but all his exercises have a tendency in them more or less to spoil him; therefore he is rather for flying to Christ than for grappling with them in and by his own power.

The second is, that Christ is of God our shelter as to this very thing. Hence his name is said to be “a strong tower,” and that the righteous run into it, and are safe, Prov. xviii. 10. That also of David in the fifty-sixth Psalm is very pregnant to this purpose; “Mine enemies,” saith he, “would daily swallow me up; for they be many that fight against me, O thou Most High.” And what then? Why, saith he, “I will trust in thee.” Thus you see, faith hath an object to work upon to carry the soul unto, and to secure the soul in times of difficulty, and that object is Jesus Christ and his righteousness.

But,

(2.) Again, as faith hath an object to work upon, so it hath a motive to work by; and that is the love of God in giving of Christ to the soul for righteousness. Nor is there any profession, religion, or duty and performance, that is at all regarded, where this faith, which by such means can work, is wanting. “For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision, but faith which worketh by love” (so Gal. v. 6) acteth lovely; or, by faith whose fruit is love (though true faith hath love for its offspring) but faith which worketh by love, that is true, saving, justifying faith, as it beholdeth the righteousness of Christ as made over to the soul for justification; so it beholdeth love, love to be the cause of its so being made over.

It beholdeth love in the Father, in giving of his Son, and love in the Son, in giving of himself to be made soul-saving righteousness for me. And seeing it worketh by it, that is, it is stirred up to an holy boldness of venturing all eternal concerns upon Christ, and also to an holy, endeared, affecting love of him, for his sweet and blessed redeeming love. Hence the apostle saith, “The love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead: and that he died for all, that they which live, should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them and rose again,” 2 Cor. v. 14, 15.

Thus then is the heart united in affection and love to the Father and the Son, for the love that they have shewed to the poor sinner in their thus delivering him from the wrath to come. For by this love faith worketh, in sweet passions and pangs of love, to all that are thus reconciled, as this sinner seeth he is. The motive then, whereby faith worketh, both as to justification and sanctification, the great motive to them, I say, is love, the love of God, and the love of Christ: “We love him, because he first loved us.” That is, when our faith hath told us so; for so are the words above, “We have known and believed the love that God hath to us.” And then, “We love him, because he first loved us.” And then, “This commandment have we from him, that he that loveth God, loveth his brother also,” 1 John iv. 16-21. But this our poor Pharisee understandeth not. But, 5. Righteousness by imputation must be first, to cut off boasting from the heart, conceit, and lips of men. Wherefore he saith, as before, that we are justified freely by the grace of God, not through, or for the sake of an holy gospel-principle in us; but “through the redemption that is in Jesus Christ,” &c. “Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? Of works? Nay, but by the law of faith.” And this is the law of faith, by which we are justified as before; Rom. iii. 27, 28.

Nor can any man propound such an essential way to cut off boasting as this, which is of God’s providing: For what is man here to boast of?

No righteousness, nor yet of the application of it to his soul. The righteousness is Christ’s, not the sinner’s. The imputation is God’s, not the sinner’s. The cause of imputation is God’s grace and love, not the sinner’s works of righteousness. The time of God’s imputing righteousness is when the sinner was a sinner, wrapped up in ignorance, and wallowing in his vanity; not when he was good, or when he was seeking of it; for his inward gospel-goodness is a fruit of the imputation of justifying righteousness. Where is boasting then?

Where is our Pharisee then, with his brags of not being as other men are? It is excluded, and he with it, and the poor Publican taken into favour, that boasting might be cut off. “Not of works, lest any man should boast.” There is no trust to be put in men; those that seem most humble, and that to appearance, and farthest off from pride, it is natural to them to boast; yea, now they have no cause to boast; for by grace are we saved through faith, and that not of ourselves, it is the gift of God. “Not of works, lest any man should boast.”

But if man is so prone to boast, when yet there is no pound of boasting in him, nor yet in what he doth; how would he have boasted had he been permitted by the God of heaven to have done something, though that something had been but a very little something, towards his justification? But God has prevented boasting by doing as he has done; Eph. ii. 8, 9. Nay, the apostle addeth further (lest any man should boast), that as to good works, “We are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them; ver. 10. Can the tree boast, since it was God that made it such? Where is boasting then? “But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption: that, according as it is written, he that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord;” 1

Cor. i. 30, 31. Where is boasting then? Where is our Pharisee then, with all his works of righteousness, and with his boasts of being better than his neighbours?

It may be said, If we should be justified for the sake of our inherent righteousness, since that righteousness is the gift of God, will it not follow that boasting is, in the occasion thereof, cut off?

Answ. No; for although the principle of inherent righteousness be the gift of God, yet it bringeth forth fruits by man, and through man; and so man having a hand therein, though he should have ever so little, he has an occasion offered him to boast. Yea, if a man should be justified before God by the grace, or the working of the grace of faith in him, he would have ground of occasion to boast; because faith, though it be the gift of God, yet as it acteth in man, takes man along with it in its so acting; yea, the acting of faith is as often attributed to the man by whom it is acted, and oftener, than to the grace itself. How then can it be, but that man must have a hand therein, and so a ground therein, or thereof to boast?

But now, since justification from the curse of the law before God lieth only and wholly in God’s imputing of Christ’s righteousness to a man, and that too, while the man to whom it is imputed is in himself wicked and ungodly, there is no room left for boasting before God, for that is the boasting intended; but rather an occasion given to shame and confusion of face, and to stop the mouth for ever, since justification comes in a way so far above him, so vastly without him, his skill, help, or what else soever; Ezek. xvi. 61-63.

6. Righteousness by imputation must be first, that justification may not be of debt, but of mercy and grace. This is evident from reason.

It is meet that God should therefore justify us by a righteousness of his own, not of his own prescribing; for that he may do, and yet the righteousness be ours; but of his own providing, that the righteousness may be his. “Now to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt;” Rom. iv. 2-4. If I work for justifying righteousness, and that way get righteousness, my justification is not of grace, but of debt. God giveth it not unto me, but he oweth it unto me; so then it is no longer his, but mine: mine, not of grace, but of debt. And if so, then I thank him not for his remission of sins, nor for the kingdom of heaven, nor for eternal life; for if justifying righteousness is of debt, then when I have it, and what dependeth thereon, I have but mine own; that which God oweth to me.

Nor will it help at all to say, But I obtain it by God’s grace in me; because that doth not cut off my works, nor prevent my having of a hand in my justifying righteousness.

Suppose I give a man materials, even all materials that are necessary to the completing of such or such a thing; yet if he worketh, though the materials be mine, I am to him