The Riches of Bunyan: Selected from His WorksBunyan, John
Religion
The Riches of Bunyan: Selected from His Works
Bunyan, John
Theology, Doctrinal
As God has mercies to bestow, and as he has designed to bestow them,
so those mercies are no fragments or the leavings of others, but
mercies that are full and complete to do for thee what thou wantest,
wouldst have, or canst desire. As I may so say, God has his bags
that were never yet untied, never yet broken up, but laid by him
through a thousand generations for those that he commands to hope in
his mercy.
I tell you, sirs, you must not trust your own apprehensions nor
judgments of the mercy of God; you do not know how he can cause it
to abound: that which seems to be short and shrunk up to you, he can
draw out and cause to abound exceedingly. There is a breadth and
length and depth and height therein, when God will please to open
it, that for its infiniteness can swallow up not only all thy sins,
but all thy thoughts and imaginations, and that also can drown thee
at last. "Now unto him that is able," as to mercy, "to do exceeding
abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power
that worketh in us, unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus
throughout all ages, world without end. Amen."
This therefore is a wonderful thing, and shall be wondered at to all
eternity, that the river of mercy, that at first did seem to be but
ancle deep, should so rise and rise that at last it became "waters
to swim in, a river that could not be passed over." Ezck. 47:5.
GOD THE JUSTIFIER.
The first cause of justification before God dependeth upon the will
of God, who will justify because he will; therefore the meritorious
cause must also be of his own providing, else his will cannot herein
be absolute; for if justification depend upon our personal
performances, then not upon the will of God. He may not have mercy
upon whom he will, but on whom man's righteousness will give him
leave; but his will, not ours, must rule here, therefore his
righteousness and his only. So then, men are justified from the
curse in the sight of God, while sinners in themselves.
GLORY OF GOD IN REDEMPTION.
In redemption by the blood of Christ, God is said to abound towards
us in all WISDOM. Here we see the highest contradictions reconciled;
here justice kisseth the sinner; here a man stands just in the sight
of God, while confounded at his own pollutions; and here he that
hath done no good, hath yet a sufficient righteousness, "even the
righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ."
The JUSTICE of God is here more seen than in punishing all the
damned.
The MYSTERY OF GOD'S WILL is here more seen than in hanging the
earth upon nothing; while he condemneth Christ though righteous, and
justifieth us though sinners, while he "maketh him to be sin for us,
and us the righteousness of God in him."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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