Most well known for his literary classic Pilgrim's Progress, John Bunyan highlights for us the story of his conversion in another one of his works titled Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, which he wrote while in prison...
"But one day as I was passing into 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, Thy righteousness is in heaven; and methought withal, 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 wants 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 and to day and for ever (Heb xiii 8). Now did my chains fall off my legs indeed, I was loosened from my afflictions and irons, my temptations also fled away; so that, from that time, those dreadful scriptures of God left off to trouble me now; now went I also home rejoicing, for the grace and love of God.
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His story makes me think of the fourth verse of the wonderful hymn And Can It Be That I Should Gain? by Charles Wesley...
Long my imprisoned spirit lay,
Fast bound in sin and nature’s night;
Thine eye diffused a quickening ray—
I woke, the dungeon flamed with light;
My chains fell off, my heart was free,
I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.
My chains fell off, my heart was free,
I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.
....
May we remember 'It is Finished'. As we are in Christ, we are clothed in His righteousness. I know I struggle in thinking I need to do better in effort to gain something of my own. It is a lie, and it is enslaving; and countless times it leaves me in a state of anxiety and restlessness. But I also know, I am freed from that bondage when I simply look to Jesus on the cross, because for me, He gained everything already.
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