Pilgrim's Progress: Part 2: Ignorance's Ignorant Confession and Christian's Response

First Christian points out that Ignorance has a Fantasy Faith not founded upon the word. Now consider points 2 and 3 where Christian shows easily it also a False Faith.


Christian: How dost thou believe?

Ignorance: I believe that Christ died for sinners; and that I shall be justified before God from the curse, through his gracious acceptance of my obedience to his laws. Or thus, Christ makes my duties, that are religious, acceptable to his Father by virtue of his merits, and so shall I be justified.

Christian: Let me give an answer to this confession of thy faith.

1. Thou believest with a fantastical faith; for this faith is nowhere described in the word.

2. Thou believest with a false faith; because it taketh justification from the personal righteousness of Christ, and applies it to thy own.

3. This faith maketh not Christ a justifier of thy person, but of thy actions; and of thy person for thy action’s sake, which is false.

IN POINT 2:

This confession is False for it described a faith that takes from being justified by the personal righteousness of Christ and instead describes being justified by your own personal righteousness. Though it adds that your works are made acceptable by the virtue of Christ it cannot be escaped that it is the works that are themselves the righteousness upon which acceptance is found.

IN POINT 3 shown FALSE:

Further the faith described by Ignorance is shown to be a FALSE FAITH because in his confession JESUS CHRIST IS NOT THE JUSTIFIER of the PERSON BUT OF HIS WORKS. And then the Person is actually Justified by the WORKS. This sounded so much like New Perspective theology whereby one is justified not by the imputed righteousness of Christ but on the basis of the whole life lived that I wanted to put a picture of N.T. Wright at the top of my post.

Bunyan says it so well as he shows the falsness of this ignorant Faith: "This faith maketh not Christ a justifier of thy person, but of thy actions; and of thy person for thy action’s sake, which is false."

Christ is the justifier of the person. Take this away and you have a false faith. Worse yet in Ignorance's system work's are the grounds of one's acceptance and entrance into heaven. Christ justifies the works says Ignorance and these works then justify the person. When reading Ignorance's Confession, I actually missed this. So thankful then was I when Bunyan made it so plain, and so applicable to a whole host of false system with this confession of Ignorance at their very core. ie. Federal Vision, Roman Catholicism, New Perspective, Ignorant beleivers in a multitude of ignorant churches - GOD HAVE MERCY.