Reformation Celebration 2026: John Bunyan and the Doctrine of Imputed Righteousness

Tonight we're going to be looking at all of this in the man, John Bunyan. Raise your hand if you've heard of John Bunyan. Many of you know him. Many of us know him as the author of Pilgrim's Progress. He was a preacher and a pastor. in 17th century England. Tonight we're gonna be looking at his life and particularly we're gonna really focus in on a truth that was really at the core of his life. The fact that Jesus' righteousness is imputed to the believer.

The burden on the back

And so a little roadmap of where we're going tonight. We're gonna walk through John Bunyan's life in three stages. Stage number one, the burden on the back. Stage number two, the righteousness in heaven. And stage number three, the power of grace. So let's go ahead and jump into stage one of his life, the burden on the back. Bunyan was born in 1628. As mentioned, he had a minimal grammar school education. Pretty much all of us will be educated. more than John Bunyan was ever educated.

He took up his father's trade as a tinker. A tinker was a sort of traveling blacksmith. They would go from house to house, village to village with an anvil, with tools, just going around trying to see if they could fix people's pots and pans and other metalwork.

And so think about this, one of the biggest writers of the English language. One of the greatest authors of one of the greatest classics, Pilgrim's Progress, grew up with minimal education and a blue collar family. That must mean that his books, widely read, there's something deeper to the power of them than just the rhetoric, the intellect, It has to be the message proclaimed in those books that was the power behind it. As a young man, Bunyan joined the army. And he writes about, at one point, he was assigned to stand as sentinel, as guard, during a siege.

For whatever reason, one of his other army buddies wanted to swap shifts with him, wanted to take his place for this particular day, for whatever reason. So they swapped places. And Bunyan's friend, standing guard in Bunyan's place, is shot in the head and killed. And so early on in his life, Bunyan is given these clear examples of eternal realities and of mortality.

He writes about his lifestyle at this time. He says,

it was my delight to be taken captive by the devil at his will, being filled with all unrighteousness from a child that I had but few equals, both for cursing, swearing, lying, and blaspheming the holy name of God.

Babunyan, shortly after leaving the army, began to have this weight upon his conscience. You know, one of the most interesting facts I find about his life, in 1905, some people looking through a pile of scrap metal come across this old anvil, just in a bunch of scrap metal.

They look on the side, it's inscribed, J. Bunyan, 1647, Elstow, which was Bunyan's hometown. It was discovered that this, in fact, was John Bunyan's anvil, used before he was even famous. And this is what Bunyan would have been envisioning. If you read The Pilgrim's Progress, the great problem that the main character, Christian, has in that book is there is a burden on his back, and he cannot get this burden off of his back. The picture here is that this burden is the conviction of sin. And you think of Bunyan going from town to town with a 60-pound anvil on his back, not to mention all of the tools that he would have. That's the picture Bunyan is giving of what was happening in his conscience before he came to understand the gospel. He writes, he would often have situations where, for example, he writes one day, he says,

a thought did suddenly dart from heaven into my soul. Will you leave your sins and go to heaven? Or have your sins and go to hell?

And his initial response to this burden on the back is really important to understand. He sought to better his heart to better his behavior, to better anything he could about his life in order to earn a sense of forgiveness. In order to ease the burden off of his back, he saw through his own works to the law to ease this burden. And yet he found it was futile and exhausting, and it wasn't working.

If you read on in Pilgrim's Progress, you'll find that main character Christian coming to a fellow named Mr. Worldly Wise Man. Sort of gives you an indication that maybe you shouldn't listen to this guy. And this guy tells Christian, hey, look, I know the way to get this burden off of your back. There's a mountain right over there called Mount Sinai. And if you are able in your own effort to climb up this mountain, there is somebody there who can help you take the burden off of your back. The picture here is this idea that we could earn our forgiveness before God by climbing up Mount Sinai, climbing up that mountain of God's commands and God's perfect law.

And yet we should know this does not work, does it? This does not work because God's law is good and perfect, and the standard of God's law in order to attain righteousness is perfection, absolute perfection at the heart level. And so we ask, how can anybody be saved if the standard of God's law is perfection? This is where we see God must provide a solution.

Believer, you, even you, after coming to Christ, you may still experience this burden on the back. In fact, actually, we would expect you would. The more you grow in holiness, the more you come to see your sin. The question is, what do you do in those moments, believer? Do you take this bad advice to go climb up Mount Sinai, to go climb up the mountain of God's commands, to earn your spot in his favor? You say, if I read the Bible more tomorrow, if I evangelized to three people this week, if I prayed a little longer, then I could feel forgiven.

Then this burden would be off of my back. Believer, do not travel up Mount Sinai. It will not work. And God has provided a much better solution. If you're in this room and you're not a believer, I wonder how often you feel this burden. And in fact, actually, if you are not following the Lord Jesus, we actually hope, we pray that you feel this burden. We want you to feel this piercing on your conscience, because that is the only way you will understand.

You need a Redeemer. But friend, even for you, if you are not following the Lord Jesus, do not seek to climb up Mount Sinai to find your righteousness before God. It will not work. You will never attain that standard of perfection through your works. Look to the Savior that God will provide.

The righteousness in heaven

That leads us to point number two, the righteousness in heaven. We try to do this Reformation celebration as close as October 31st as we can. And we do that because October 31st is this symbolic beginning of the Reformation, October 31st, 1517. This is when Martin Luther goes to nail his 95 theses to the Wittenberg church door. It's this symbolic beginning of the Reformation.

And you know, our man tonight, John Bunyan, loved Luther. Bunyan wrote of Luther's commentary on Galatians. He says,

I do prefer this book of Martin Luther upon the Galatians before all the books that ever I had seen.

And he writes,

I found my condition in Luther's experience so largely and profoundly handled as if his book had been written out of my heart.

As you read Bunyan's account of his conversion, you see a very parallel experience with Luther going on.

Both were awakened to the guilt of their sin and struggled for years trying to get this burden off. Both spent a long time seeking to do all sorts of self-punishments and all sorts of ways they would try to come up with to have a sense that they were forgiven. Luther even said,

if anyone could have earned heaven by his monkery, by the life of a monk, it was I.

Bunyan, as we've seen, tried to do the exact same thing, but both finally come to a very specific realization about a very specific truth that was recovered in the Reformation.

And so after a long season of bunion as this pilgrim trying to climb up Mount Sinai and realizing that this terrifying mountain he could never get to the top, he finds the burning hot center of the gospel, something we call imputation. So what is this truth of imputation that changed Bunyan's life? Well, simply, imputation means something that is not properly yours and yet is counted as yours. This idea that not only our sin counted as Jesus's on the cross as he's punished for our sin, but Jesus's righteousness, his righteous life, his perfect record, actually given to us. before God. Let me read you a portion of Bunyan describing the moment when he came to this realization. He says,

but one day as I was passing in the field, and that too with some dashes on my conscience, fearing lest yet all was not right, suddenly this sentence fell upon my soul.

Your righteousness is in heaven. And I thought with all, I saw with the eyes of my soul, Jesus Christ at God's right hand, there I say, was my righteousness. So that wherever I was, or whatever I was doing, God could not say of me, he lacks my righteousness, for that was just before him. I also saw, moreover, that it was not my good frame of heart that made my righteousness better, nor yet my bad frame that made my righteousness worse. For my righteousness was Jesus Christ himself. the same yesterday, today, and forever.

Further, the Lord did also lead me into the mystery of union with the Son of God, that I was joined to Him, that I was flesh of His flesh, bone of His bone. By this also was my faith in Him as my righteousness, the more confirmed in me. For if He and I were one, if He and I were one, than his righteousness was mine. His merits mine, his victory mine.

Now could I see myself in heaven and earth at once, in heaven by Christ my head, by my righteousness in life, though on earth by my body or person.

So Bunyan is showing us this scriptural truth that our salvation is God giving to us the very righteousness of Jesus Christ.

1 Corinthians 1.30 gives us a clear picture of this when Paul writes,

because of him, you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness. sanctification and redemption.

So Jesus does not give us righteousness, he himself stands in all of his perfection as our righteous record before God. Bunyan loved this doctrine.

After he died, as people were scrounging through some of his papers, They found actually some comments that Bunyan gives on 1 Corinthians 1.30, that verse that I just read. They found some comments that Bunyan gives on it.

Bunyan writes about 1 Corinthians 1.30,

Mark, the righteousness is still in him, not in us, even when we are made partakers of the benefit of it. even as the wing and feathers still abide in the hen, when the chicks are covered, kept, and warmed thereby."

This doctrine of imputation is not just something Paul came up with. Actually, you can see it run throughout the course of the entire storyline of Scripture. We start with Adam as the head, the representative of all humanity. And what does he do? As our representative, he fails. He sins. And so all of his descendants, not only are we, as his descendants, sinners ourselves, but the church has rightly confessed all throughout the history of the church, Adam's guilt for his own sin actually was imputed to us as our guilt as well.

We read of that earlier in Romans 5. Adam's sin as our representative imputed to us We go on later, we see in the history of Israel, we see as the king was, so the people are. If the king was righteous, if he followed the law of God, the nation, the people that he represents would be blessed. If the king was unrighteous, if he was a lawbreaker, the people would be taken to exile and punished.

We look in the sacrificial system of the Old Testament. We see on the Day of Atonement, symbolically, the high priest laying his hands on the sacrificial goat as the sins of the people are symbolically imputed to the sacrifice. And where does all of these shadowy pictures come to fulfillment? They come to their ultimate fulfillment as our sin is imputed to Christ. But not only that, his righteousness given to us as our representative, as our king, as our second Adam.

Even a biblical theme such as marriage points to this reality of imputation. We know the New Testament speaks of marriage As having relation to Christ in the church, it's this wonderful picture of Christ in the church. Luther himself comments on how marriage points to this idea of imputation when he says,

the third incomparable benefit of faith is that it unites the soul with Christ as a bride is united with her bridegroom.

By this mystery, as the apostle teaches, Christ and the soul become one flesh. And if they are one flesh, it follows that everything they have, they hold in common, the good as well as the evil. Accordingly, the believing soul can boast of and glory in whatever Christ has, as though it were his own. And whatever the soul has, Christ has claimed as his own.

Believer, the truth of imputation is glorious because it means your righteous standing does not waver from day to day. It is a solid rock. It is as sure as the Son of God is eternal. As long as the Son of God continues to be eternal, your righteousness, believer, your right standing before God is safe and secure.

The power of grace

That leads us to point three, section three of Bunyan's life, the power of grace. Now, let's think a little bit just about this doctrine of imputation that Bunyan is showing us. What does that mean for our life as believers? I want to submit to you, first of all, believer, be at rest.

Your righteousness before God is as complete and secure as Jesus Christ himself. Because it's his, and you are his. You know what the Bible tells us Christ did after his work on earth was accomplished for our salvation? It tells us that he went to the right hand of God and sat down. He sat down. as opposed to all of these priests of Israel in the Old Testament having to stand day by day by day, never being able to sit down because they have to continually offer these sacrifices because they can never really take away sins. Jesus, when he accomplished his work, he sat down and he's at rest.

Believer, you, united to him, having all of his righteousness, be at rest. You can rest. Your soul can be at rest. Do you find yourself consciously or constantly anxious about how you're performing for God, if you've done enough? Believer, if you're in the Lord Jesus, be at rest. He is enough for you. He has done it all. He is seated. You can be at rest. Let's show this anxiety-ridden world what it looks like to have a soul that is just calm, stable, steadfast, because we know we are secure in him.

So near in your suffering

The second thing we can learn from this doctrine, believer, if you are united to him in all of his righteousness, know that he is so near in your suffering. If you are united to him to the point that his righteousness is yours, how could he not be near you in your suffering?

Bunyan gives us a great example in his life. We don't have time to recount all of the many horrendous sufferings that Bunyan went through in his life, but he's known for suffering some of the worst persecution for those preachers like him who are known as nonconformists.

And not only were his prison sentences long, not only were the prisons back then very inhumane, but he had to bear the immense suffering in his family life as well. He experienced the death of his first wife in 1658, leaving him with four children, all under the age of 10, one of whom was blind. Bunyan marries again a little later on, but only about a year after this marriage, he's taken to prison. And the pain of all of this upon his second wife, who was pregnant, leads to her miscarriage.

And he cannot care for her because he's in prison. And she has to raise their four children, one of whom is blind, by herself for 12 years. When she tries to go to the courts to appeal for his release, she is brutally slandered by the justices of the court. So Bunyan was not this ivory tower figure with some sort of superficial optimism about life.

But we need to ask what empowered him to endure all of this. He writes in his imprisonment that though his soul, it often struggled, he writes of all the struggles in his soul while he's in prison. But he also writes,

Jesus Christ, was never more real and apparent than now in prison. Here I have seen and felt him indeed. I have had sweet sights of the forgiveness of my sins in this place and of my being with Jesus in another world.

Bunyan could endure all of this because he knew that being united to Jesus means that he will never be far away. He will always be near. If you are so united to him that everything he has done counts as yours, how near is he in your suffering? So near.

No hope without it

Well, I'll close now with an example of another man who, in his darkest days, found his only comfort in this great truth of imputation. His name was J. Gresham Machen, great professor of theology about a century ago. By this time, this whole concept of imputed righteousness is being referred to as the active obedience of Christ. It's just another phrase you could use for this idea. And J. Gresham Machen lying on his deathbed in 1937, experiencing extremely painful inflammation of his lungs, inflammation of his chest cavity, all of this suffering.

As he's lying on his deathbed, he sends a telegram message to his colleague, John Murray. And it simply says this,

I'm so thankful for the active obedience of Christ. No hope without it. I'm so thankful for the active obedience of Christ. No hope without it.

Friend, when you reach your final day, when you're suffering on your deathbed in pain, What will be your only comfort? When you look back on your life, all of your mistakes, when you look back on your Christian life, all of your failures, what will be your hope on that final day? The obedience of Jesus Christ given to you as you stand before God. Will that be your hope, your only hope in death?

Let's pray together. Lord, we just stand amazed about how you have condescended to us, taken on flesh. Lord, how you have not only borne our sin and your body on the tree, you have not only erased our debt. Lord, you are so lavish as to give us the obedience that you earned, to give us the righteous standing that you earned. and that we may enjoy it. Oh Lord, let that be our hope, not our works, not our striving. Let us be empowered for the Christian life through our rest in Christ. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.