John Bunyan — Author of The Pilgrim’s Progress

John Bunyan, the world-renowned author of The Pilgrim’s Progress, was born near Bedford, England, in 1628. He came from a humble family, received only a limited education, and followed his father into the trade of a tinker, or brazier, repairing pots and other metal utensils.

Although Bunyan was not known as a drunkard or libertine, his early life was marked by profanity, Sabbath-breaking, worldly amusements, and what he later recognized as deep rebellion against God. In his own spiritual autobiography, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, he described himself as a leader among the young people around him in vice and ungodliness.

Yet even as a child, Bunyan was haunted by thoughts of judgment and eternity.

When he was only nine or ten years old, he sometimes trembled at the thought of the Day of Judgment and the torments of hell. His nights were disturbed by terrifying dreams, and even during his childhood games he could suddenly become overwhelmed by fears concerning eternity.

But the impressions passed.

His pleasures drove the warnings from his mind, and as he grew older, he grew harder.

Even then, God mercifully preserved his life on several occasions. Bunyan later remembered nearly drowning twice. On another occasion, while serving as a soldier, he was selected to go with others to a siege. At the last moment, another soldier asked to take Bunyan’s place. Bunyan agreed. While the substitute stood sentinel, he was struck in the head by a musket ball and killed.

Bunyan survived.

But even that did not immediately turn his heart toward God.

Soon afterward, Bunyan married a young woman whose father had been known as a godly man. The newly married couple were extremely poor. Bunyan later said that between them they possessed scarcely “a dish or spoon.”

His wife, however, brought two treasures into their home: two books inherited from her father—Arthur Dent’s The Plain Man’s Pathway to Heaven and Lewis Bayly’s The Practice of Piety.

Bunyan began reading them with her.

His wife also told him about the godly life of her father—how he had reproved sin and sought to live consistently before God. The books and her testimony began to make an impression upon Bunyan, though he was still far from understanding salvation through Christ.

One day Bunyan heard a sermon concerning the Sabbath and the sin of breaking it through unnecessary labour and recreation.

The sermon followed him home.

That afternoon, Bunyan went out to enjoy his usual games. But in the midst of his amusement, his conscience was suddenly pierced.

As he was about to strike a ball, a question seemed to come into his soul:

“Wilt thou leave thy sins, and go to heaven, or have thy sins and go to hell?”

His arm stopped.

Looking toward heaven, it seemed to him as though the Lord Jesus were looking down upon him in displeasure.

Yet instead of immediately turning to Christ, Bunyan fell into despair. He reasoned that perhaps he had already sinned too much—that repentance had come too late.

So, for a time, he plunged back into sin.

Then came another unexpected rebuke.

Bunyan was standing near a neighbour’s shop window, cursing and swearing in his usual manner, when the woman inside heard him. What made the incident especially remarkable was that Bunyan himself described her as a very ungodly woman.

Yet even she was horrified by his language.

She told him that he was the ungodliest fellow for swearing that she had ever heard and that his example was enough to corrupt the young people of an entire town.

Bunyan was stunned.

He hung his head in shame before God.

If even such a woman thought his language terrible, what must God think of him?

From that time onward, he began to leave off swearing. The change was so dramatic that Bunyan himself wondered at it.

He also began reading the Bible.

At first, he particularly enjoyed its historical portions. Paul’s Epistles were still largely beyond his understanding because, as he later admitted, he did not yet understand either the corruption of his own nature or the worth of Jesus Christ as Saviour.

His outward life nevertheless underwent an extraordinary reformation.

He abandoned old companions. He tried to obey the commandments. People began to notice the change and to regard Bunyan as a religious man.

And Bunyan enjoyed their approval.

He later described what he was doing:

“I set the commandments before me for my way to heaven.”

He strove to keep them and sometimes thought he was succeeding.

For roughly a year, Bunyan lived in this outwardly reformed condition.

But afterward he looked back and saw the terrible problem.

He had changed his behaviour without yet knowing Christ.

He had religion.

He had morality.

He had reformation.

But he did not yet understand grace.

He described himself during this period as little more than “a poor painted hypocrite.”

Then one day, while working at his trade in Bedford, Bunyan came across several poor women sitting together and talking about the things of God.

He stopped to listen.

Their conversation was unlike the religious talk to which he was accustomed.

They spoke of the new birth.

They spoke of the corruption of their own hearts.

They spoke of temptation.

They spoke of the promises of God.

They spoke of the love of Christ and of the way God had comforted their souls.

Bunyan was astonished.

These women seemed to possess something he did not.

He later described his impression with one of the most beautiful pictures in Grace Abounding. It seemed to him as though they were sitting on the sunny side of a high mountain, warming themselves in the pleasant beams of the sun, while he stood far away, shivering in frost, snow, and dark clouds.

He wanted to get where they were.

He wanted to know the God they knew.

Now Bunyan’s struggle became deeper.

He was no longer merely troubled by swearing, Sabbath-breaking, or other outward sins.

He began to see what he called his “inward and original pollution.”

The great problem was within.

He became so conscious of the corruption of his heart that he said he appeared more loathsome in his own eyes than a toad.

Periods of terrible despondency followed.

Bunyan feared that he was beyond mercy.

He was assailed by blasphemous thoughts and terrible temptations. At times he feared that he had sinned away his opportunity to be saved.

He longed to find some older Christian writer who had passed through similar struggles—not merely someone who could explain them intellectually, but someone who had actually experienced them.

Then, in the providence of God, an old copy of Martin Luther’s Commentary on Galatians came into his hands.

The book was so old that it was almost falling apart.

Bunyan began to read.

He was astonished.

“When I had but a little way perused the book,” he later wrote, “I found my condition, in his experience, so largely and profoundly handled, as if his book had been written out of my heart.”

Luther wrote about temptation, despair, law, grace, faith, and the righteousness that comes through Christ.

Bunyan had finally found another man who seemed to understand the darkness through which he was passing.

He valued the book so highly that he later said that, apart from the Bible itself, he preferred Luther’s Commentary on Galatians above every other book he had encountered as a help to “a wounded conscience.”

For a time, Bunyan was filled with joy.

He said that he felt love toward Christ “as hot as fire.”

But severe temptations returned.

The road into settled peace was not quick for John Bunyan.

Again and again his feelings changed.

Again and again his conscience accused him.

But gradually God taught him to look away from himself.

On one occasion, while labouring under severe spiritual trial, the words of Scripture came to him:

“The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.”

Then another great truth broke upon his soul:

“Thy righteousness is in heaven.”

This changed everything.

Bunyan had spent years looking inside himself.

Was his repentance deep enough?

Was his faith strong enough?

Were his feelings right?

Had he obeyed enough?

Had he sinned too greatly?

But now, by faith, his eyes were directed away from John Bunyan and toward Jesus Christ at the right hand of God.

And there, he realized, was his righteousness.

His acceptance before God did not rest upon the perfection of John Bunyan.

It rested upon Jesus Christ.

Bunyan could say, in effect:

There is my righteousness.

Christ Himself was his righteousness.

Christ was made unto him wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption.

This truth became his peace with God.

The change would eventually make the Bedford tinker a preacher.

In 1653, Bunyan joined the congregation at Bedford, and within several years he was preaching the Gospel himself. Though he possessed little formal education, ordinary people flocked to hear him because he preached the spiritual realities through which he himself had passed.

He later explained that he preached what he had “seen and felt.”

At first he preached much about sin and judgment. Later, as he found deeper peace himself, his preaching increasingly centered upon Jesus Christ—His offices, His grace, and His benefits to sinners.

Then came prison.

In 1660, after the restoration of Charles II, Bunyan was arrested while preparing to preach at an unauthorized religious meeting. The authorities offered him the possibility of freedom if he would agree to stop preaching.

Bunyan would not make that promise.

He remained imprisoned for more than eleven years. In his own account, he wrote that he had lain in prison for “complete twelve years.”

The suffering was severe.

Bunyan had a wife and children. One of his daughters, Mary, was blind, and separation from her especially broke his heart.

Yet the authorities could imprison the preacher, but they could not imprison his message.

During his imprisonment Bunyan wrote Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, the extraordinary account of his conversion and spiritual struggles from which much of this story is drawn.

And out of Bunyan’s experiences eventually came the work that would make his name known throughout the world:

The Pilgrim’s Progress.

Its central character, Christian, begins the story with a book in his hand and a terrible burden upon his back. He reads, trembles, and cries:

“What shall I do?”

Christian then sets out on a journey toward the Celestial City.

Along the way he faces the Slough of Despond, the Valley of the Shadow of Death, Vanity Fair, Doubting Castle, Giant Despair, and many other dangers.

And at the Cross, Christian’s great burden finally falls from his back.

It is difficult to read The Pilgrim’s Progress alongside Grace Abounding without seeing something of Bunyan’s own experience behind Christian’s journey.

Bunyan knew the burden of guilt.

He knew the Slough of Despond.

He knew the voice of Giant Despair.

He knew what it was to fear that there was no hope.

And he knew the joy of discovering that salvation was not found in the goodness of John Bunyan, but in the righteousness of Jesus Christ.

The man who had once been notorious for his swearing became a preacher of Christ.

The man who once trembled at thoughts of judgment became a comforter of troubled consciences.

The poorly educated tinker became one of the most enduring Christian writers in history.

The prisoner became the author of a book that outlived the prison.

But perhaps the heart of John Bunyan’s testimony can be reduced to the truth that finally brought peace to his troubled soul:

For years, he had looked within himself and found sin, weakness, failure, and despair.

At last he looked to Christ.

And there was his righteousness.

“The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.”