Pilgrim's Progress: Talking to Stay Awake

Our two traveler's in order to prevent their falling asleep while traveling through the enchanted ground, purpose to commune together in Spiritual Conversation. Talking with your brother can keep you awake, awake spiritually.

I was struck by this in their conversation:

"Christian: And did you ask him what man this was, and how you must be justified by him?

Hopeful: Yes, and he told me it was the Lord Jesus, that dwelleth on the right hand of the Most High. Heb. 10:12-21. And thus, said he, you must be justified by him, even by trusting to what he hath done by himself in the days of his flesh, and suffered when he did hang on the tree. Rom. 4:5; Col. 1:14; 1 Pet. 1:19. "

Note the next question. It reminds me so much of our study in Romans - primarily Romans Chapter four where we learn that though there is NONE Righteous, yet we can find a righteousness imputed by Faith, the Righteousness of Jesus Christ.

In our Romans study this discovery led to the next question: "But how can the righteousness of another be counted as mine?"

Here is almost the same question from the lips of Hopeful:

"I asked him further, how that man’s righteousness could be of that efficacy, to justify another before God."

And just as Romans Four led us into Romans Five where we learn of the representative work of Jesus Christ, the Federal Headship. Rom 5:19.

We hear the recounting of Hopeful:
"And he told me he was the mighty God, and did what he did, and died the death also, not for himself, but for me; to whom his doings, and the worthiness of them, should be imputed, if I believed on him."

How wonderfully and yet simply into the CHRISTIAN-and-HOPEFUL conversation is the truth of the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ made manifest.