Are You On Your Way to the Place of Eternal Damnation? You Are if The Cross of Christ in Only Foolishness in Your Eyes! But it is the Power of God Unto Salvation to All Who Believe? A Point to Ponder

Are You On Your Way to the Place of Eternal Damnation? You Are if The Cross of Christ in Only Foolishness in Your Eyes! But it is the Power of God Unto Salvation to All Who Believe? A Point to Ponder . . .

A Devotional for Tuesday July 9, 2026

From the pen of British Baptist Pastor

John Bunyan, author of The Pilgrim's Progress

The Cross is Foolishness

God judges [,] “The preaching of the cross,” that is, Christ crucified, “is to them that perish foolishness” (1 Corinthians 1: 18, 23). What says the merit-monger, will you look for life by the obedience of another man? Will you trust the blood that was shed upon the cross, that ran down to the ground, and perished in the dust? Thus, deridingly they scoff at, stumble upon, and are taken in the gin that attends the gospel, [but is] not to salvation, but to their condemnation. Because they have condemned the just, that they might justify their own filthy righteousness (Isaiah 8: 14).

But I say, if all have sinned, if all are defiled, if the best of a man’s righteousness be but madness, blasphemy, injury; if for their righteousness they are judged hypocrites condemned as opposers of the gospel and as such have counted God foolish for sending his Son into the world; then must the best of “men be justified from the curse in the sight of God while sinners in themselves.” Because they still stand guilty in the sight of God, their hearts are also still filthy infected—"Though thou wash thee with nitre [saline solution], and take thee much soap, yet thine iniquity is marked before ME, saith the Lord God” (Jeremiah 2: 22). Wherefore, this vine is the vine of Sodom; these clusters are the clusters of Gomorrah; these grapes are grapes of gall; these clusters are bitter, they are the poison of dragons, and the cruel venom of asps (Matthew 3: 7; 23). John [the Baptist] in his ministry gives the first rebuke and jostle to such still calling them serpents and vipers concluding it is impossible they should escape the damnation of hell. For of all sin, man’s own righteousness, in special, bids defiance to Jesus Christ.