An excerpt from Pilgrims Progress by John Bunyan:
“Now when I had climbed about halfway up, I looked behind and saw someone coming after me, swift as the wind. Soon he overtook me just about the place where the arbor stands.”
“… as soon as the man overtook me, without saying a word, he struck me and knocked me down unconscious. When I came to, I asked him why he had thus assaulted me. He said it was because of my secret inclination to follow Adam the First, and with that he struck me with another deadly blow on the chest and beet me down backward, and I lay at his feed as if I were dead. So when I came to, I cried to him for mercy. But he said, ‘I do not know how to show mercy’ and with that knocked me down again. He would have beaten me to death, except One came by and told him to stop.”“Who was it that told him to stop?”
Faithful went on, “I did not recognize Him at first, but as He went by I saw the wounds in His hands and in HIs side. Then I concluded that He was our Lord. So I continued….”
Christian then explained, “The man who overtook you was Moses. He spares no one, and he does not know how to show mercy to anyone who transgresses his law.”
This passage of this old book is something we struggle with to this day. Christian and non-Christian… so many of us believe our judgement will be based on how good we are or were. But not the case. We are dependent upon the mercy of Christ.
