The Pilgrim's Progress: A Readable Modern-Day Version of John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress (The Pilgrim's Progress Series Book 1)

by John Bunyan

This is to show how the law, instead of cleansing the heart from sin, revives sin, giving it strength to grow and develop in the soul.38 You can see that the law can both discover and condemn sin, but it has no power to control it. “In contrast, the gracious young lady you saw sprinkle the room with water cleaned it easily. This is to show you that the Gospel comes with sweet and precious influences, cleansing the heart and making it livable.

This is a difficult concept for man to understand—that even when we are tempted, Christ is doing all the work by supplying the grace we need to stand firm.”

“Well, there was another thing that started to concern me when I began to make efforts to become a better person. When I looked closer at the best of my performance, I still saw sin, new sin, mixing in there right with it. So I was forced to conclude that despite feeling good about myself and my new efforts to improve my life, I’ve committed enough sin in one day to send me to Hell even if I had never sinned before.”

“I had no idea what to do until I shared all my concerns with my friend Faithful. He told me that the only way to be right with God is to attain perfect righteousness from a man who had never sinned. If not, no amount of my own righteousness nor all the righteousness in the world could save me.”

“Listen to me,” Hopeful said directly. “God has hidden Christ from our natural understanding so that no one can be saved unless God the Father reveals Himself to them.”

Hopeful softened his tone and said, “Please allow me to give you one more piece of advice. You shouldn’t speak about sin so lightly. I will boldly affirm, even as my good friend has already done, that no man can know Jesus Christ except by the revelation of the Father. And what’s more, I will also say that faith that takes hold of Christ, assuming it’s a saving faith, must be molded into shape by the exceeding greatness of His mighty power.207

“To justify their actions, they start to nitpick and look for faults in the lives of other Christians. Their evil intent is to discredit religion and to provide an excuse for avoiding church. “Then they begin to find friendship and belonging by surrounding themselves with sinful, immoral, and godless people, who just lead them further into sin. “Eventually, they give in to immoral and ungodly conversations in their personal lives, hoping to discover others with whom they can relate and find encouragement as well as who will not put them down.