So I am willing to endure anything if it will bring salvation
and eternal glory in Christ Jesus to those God has chosen.
2 Timothy 2:10

Read: Ephesians 6:1-10, 2 Timothy 2:1-14
Pilgrim’s Progress Stage 2 Part 10

Relate: The Interpreter leads Christian to a vista overlooking a beautiful palace, its top shining like gold, and on the battlements, people in golden clothing are walking in joy. At the door of the palace stands a great crowd of men who desire to enter but they do not dare. They stand back, uncertain, held at a distance by their own hesitation. Nearby, a man sits at a table with a book, recording the names of those who wish to go in. Then one man steps forward from the crowd, looks the gatekeepers in the eye, puts on his armor, and fights his way through. He cuts and is cut. He hacks his way forward, refusing to be stopped. And he wins his way in.

There is a magnificent violence to this scene that Bunyan is entirely unrepentant about, and rightly so. The kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force. This is what Jesus told us in Matthew 11. The life of faith is not a passive journey. It is not a drift. It is not a life that happens to someone who wishes, vaguely and from a comfortable distance, that things were different. The man at the table records names. The palace is real. The joy on the battlements is real. But most of the people there wish they could enter without cost. They fear the conflict and they avoid the bloody business of fighting their way through. They will stand at that door forever, wanting without willing, hoping without committing. The palace will remain something they observed from a distance rather than something they ever actually entered.

React: This is one of the parts in Bunyan’s novel that many will claim to not have aged well. It is violent and bloody and seems for some to harken back to the shameful days when so called Christians were murdering Muslims in bloody Crusades. But I think we need it in our days precisely because the modern version of faith so often presents the opposite picture. We all too often hear a gospel of ease. We too often are preaching a Jesus who meets you wherever you are, makes no demands on you, and costs you nothing. The cross, in this telling, is a transaction that happened two thousand years ago with no particular implications for how you spend your Tuesday. 

The man in armor, hacking his way through the door, tells a different story. The entry is free. Good Will opened the gate for nothing. The grace is freely given. But the life inside the gate is anything but passive. The kingdom of God is engaged, not observed. It is entered with intentionality and commitment and the willingness to bleed on our way in. The name in the book is yours. The palace is real. Now put on your armor.

Respond:

Dear God,
We are promised that our struggle will not be against flesh and blood. But we are not promised that there will not be a struggle. We are called to contend for the faith. Help us, help ME, to be willing to endure anything if it will mean the salvation and glory of those whom God has called. Don’t let me settle for the sidelines. Help me to put on my armor… and then use it.
Amen