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Christ alone in the Scripture.

A Devotional for June 20, 2025

From John Bunyan author of Pilgrim's Progress

Grace Excludes Works

“Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due”

Romans 4: 4.

These words do not only back what went before, as to the rejection of the law for righteousness as to justification with God; but supposing the law was of force to justify. Life must not be allowed to come that way[!] Because of the evil consequences that will unavoidably flow from it.

1. By this means, grace and justification by grace, would be rejected; and that would be a foul business. It would not be reckoned of grace.

2. By this, God would become the debtor and so the underling; and so, we in this the more honorable.

It would not be reckoned of grace, but of debt; and what would follow from hence? 

(1.) By this we should frustrate the design of Heaven, which is, to justify us freely by grace, through a redemption brought in by Christ (Romans 3: 24-26; Ephesians 2: 8-13).

(2.) By this we should make ourselves the saviors, and jostle Christ quite out-of-doors (Galatians 5: 2-4).

(3.) We should have heaven at our own dispose, as a debt, not by promise, and so not be beholden to God for it (Galatians 3: 18). It must, then, be of grace not of works for the prevention of these evils.

Again, it must not be of works, because if it should, then God would be the debtor, and we the creditor. Now, much blasphemy would flow from . . . [there]; as,

(1.) God himself would not be his own to dispose of; for the inheritance being God, as well as his kingdom (for so it is written, “heirs of God” (Romans 8:17)), himself, I say, must needs be our purchase.

(2.) If so, then we have right to dispose of him, of his kingdom and glory, and all—"Be astonished, O heavens, at this!”