John Bunyan’s Come and Welcome to Jesus Christ, Part 1

A lesser known work by the author of The Pilgrim’s Progress is his work on the subject of assurance. John Bunyan wrote Come and Welcome to Jesus Christ in 1678. Beginning with the words of Jesus in John 6:37—“All that the Father gives to me will come to me, and those who come to me I will never cast out”—Bunyan proceeds to knock down one objection after another which our anxious hearts or the devil most commonly raise against us.

The Words of the Passage Itself

In the larger context of the sixth chapter of John’s Gospel, Christ had just walked on the water immediately after having multiplied the loaves and fishes. Two miracles in a day. In spite of the fact that “people may follow Christ for base motives … he does not refuse to give, even to these, good counsel: he tells them to labor for the meat that endures to eternal life.”1

The text itself consists of two parts: first, the Father and His gift; second, the Son and His reception of that gift. The particulars of the Son’s part are sufficient for all assurance, including His resolution to bring them to Himself, and the fact that not anything shall make Him dislike them in their coming.2

In his second chapter, Bunyan asks his reader four simple questions about the passage. What is the extent of the gift? Who is the person giving the gift? What is the meaning of “giveth”? and What does the Father’s purpose declare to us? These seem simple enough. The extent is all. Aside from John 6:37, some other verses considered are Romans 11:26; 9:6-8; Jn. 12:32; Rom. 11:32. These verses alone make any universal attempt to make all universal utter nonsense. Moreover different people and things are given to Christ for very different ends (Psa. 2:8-9; Mat. 11:27; Jn. 17:12). However, the “all” and “many” and “these” and “they” remain steady in meaning through John 6, 10, and 17, and the context makes plain that there is an invincible end for these because of the will and inseparable actions of the Father and the Son.

The person giving is the Father. Two things are taught to us by Jesus’s use of this title: “That the Lord God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, is concerned with the Son in the salvation of his people … [and that he] would familiarize this Giver to us.”3 As to the meaning of “giveth,” it is not the sense of an act in the past but “one that is present and continuing.”4 We must also see that with this giving: (i) with God all is present anyway; (ii) the Father who elects in Christ “before time” also gives them in time, that is “at the time of their conversion”; and (iii) this implies that He has not given all—at least not in the same way that the Father hands all over to the Son for judgment.

Finally the Father’s purpose declares four things to us: (i) “that he is able to answer this design of God”; (ii) “that he is and will be faithful in his office of Mediator”; (iii) “that he is, and will be, gentle and patient towards them, under all their provocations and miscarriages”; (iv) “that he has sufficient wisdom to contend with all those difficulties that would attend him in his bringing of his sons and daughters to glory.”5 

Meeting Objections to Oneself Having Come to Christ

In the third chapter Bunyan shows what this coming to Christ is and how powerful it is. It is, “First, that coming to Christ is a moving of the mind towards him. Second, that it is a moving of the mind towards him, from a sound sense of the absolute want that a man has of him for his justification and salvation.”6 The simplicity of the definition is crucial because so many people seem fixated on some extraordinary experience. But when God regenerates a soul, He regenerates a thinking, willing, feeling being, not a robot or a mystic in search of unnatural, random signs that do not pertain to his humanity.

What Bunyan does is to classify six objections that are specific to that coming to Christ, and another seven objections that miss the point of its power—the “shall,” or guaranteed, dimension. And Bunyan masterfully expressed these objections as if they were a running dialogue, one objection following as it naturally would the answer to the one before it. It is as if the author had some experience counseling others here. 

To the simple fact that Jesus makes no qualification—ALL—objection 1 speaks of wrong motives, to which Bunyan replies, “Why, what is your motive?” Answer: “That I might have life, and be saved by Jesus Christ.” Such a motive (even if attended by no other) is both lawful, given the many such appeals in Scripture, and honoring to Christ. It honors His word, His person, His mission, and His priesthood. In addition, such a one takes part in Christ and prepares the ark for himself and others.7 Bunyan’s aim here is to show these as diverse qualities of such a faith. In short, there is much in such a motive! 

Objection 2 answers back that this bad motive is self. Answer:

“Where does Christ Jesus require such a qualification of those that are coming to him for life? Come for life, and trouble not your head with such objections against yourself, and let God and Christ alone to glorify themselves in the salvation of such a worm as yourself.” Further, “He has no need of your designs, though you have need of his.”8

You will desire to glorify him soon enough with the avenger of death behind you. In objection 3, we wonder about those intrusive thoughts that specifically cast doubt upon the whole thing—Christ’s very person, divinity, and work. The response is essentially, Do you have such thoughts? How do your affections react? If they are a terror, then these are either the suggestions of the devil or the fruit of that body of sin. He then asks three similar questions: (1) Do you like these wicked blasphemies? (A) No. (2) Do you mourn for them? (A) Yes, but I don't prevail against them. (3) Do you sincerely choose, if you could have your choice, that your heart might be affected and taken with the things that are best, most heavenly, and holy? (A) With all my heart …” and so on.9

“But I am coming indifferently,” says objection 4. His opening response seems to evoke the language of Romans 8:26 of the inward groaning of the Spirit. And the subtle distinction to catch is that the works of the flesh are more evident than those first, secret operations of the Spirit.10 Your flesh are like the chains that bound those coming in the Prophets; and “it is glory to Christ that a sinner comes after him in chains.”11 So Bunyan sets forth the examples of how the feeble and hobbling faith of those infirmed in the Gospels came to Christ and how graciously He received them.

Objection 5 cries, “I am too late!” However, the answer comes, “You can never come too late” to Christ, if you come at all. He gives two instances for this—the man who came at the eleventh hour (Mat. 20:14-15) and the thief upon the cross (Lk. 23:42-43). “But what about the warning passages (Hebrews 6:4-6 and 10:24-30)?” the troubled conscience replies, “Are there not those we are told not to pray for (Jer. 6:16, Jude 22)? And does not God shut the door on many before their death?” The answer is: “Yes … but ‘when God shuts the door upon men, he gives them no heart to come to Jesus Christ.’”12 Note Bunyan’s mastery of the symbolism. When it is objected that many knocked on the door once shut (for example, at the ark), these “are to be referred to the day of judgment, and not to the coming of the sinner to Christ in this life.”13

Finally, the anxious heart declares in a sixth objection, “I have fallen!” Certainly falling is dangerous and dishonors Christ, but was this falling the end of David, Solomon, and Peter? Aaron, Moses, Hezekiah, and Jehoshaphat also fell. There is a very good reason such examples are placed in Scripture. 

Meeting Objections Oblivious to God’s Power to Draw

All of this the troubled heart hears and still says to the power behind Jesus’s words—namely, that such “SHALL” come—that even this is no guarantee. First, it is rightly understood that they are spiritually dead, to which Bunyan replies, “Shall-come can raise them from this death.”14 This alerts the reader to the fact that we are to understand the force of “shall come” as allusion to regeneration, an invincible action of God. Second, it is objected: They are Satan’s! No, again. “His power is but the power of a fallen angel, but SHALL-COME is the Word of God.”15 “But,” thirdly, “they will not come.” The son in the vineyard was one who said, “I will not,” and Bunyan takes this and other examples to mean that the answer lies in a contest of who lies: these resistors or else God. This was at one time, and to some measure, true of us all. “The obstinacy and plague that is in the will of that people shall be taken away.”16 

“But they are blind.” This is the fourth objection, and once again it is based on a truth (cf. 2 Cor. 4:4). If Christ says, “See, ye ‘blind that have eyes,’ who shall hinder it? (Eph. 5:8; John 9:39; Isa. 29:18; 43:8).”17 All of these are the same species of unbelief or else failure to be able to apply general truths to specific problems of the same kind. But, fifthly, what about those who sin exceedingly? Answer: Jeremiah 50:20—their iniquity shall be sought for, but not be found—cf. Jeremiah 33:8-9.18

This is just a failure to believe the very heart of the gospel! But the objections also take the more complex form of pitting a secondary cause against a primary cause, or to use the language Bunyan himself uses throughout, to confuse a conditional promise with an absolute promise.

So, the sixth objection is to point to the lack of faith and repentance. But again, the conditions are part of the promise. If these are needed for the journey home, will he who promised not provide it? Faith shall be given (Zeph. 3:12; Rom.15:12). So shall repentance (Acts 5:31; Jer. 31:9). “I told you before, that an absolute promise has all conditional ones in the belly of it, and also provision to answer all those qualifications.”19 

Finally, a seventh objection is to point to the endless maze of errors around us. But these chains and snares are no different than the others with respect to Christ’s power. But “errors are like that whore of whom you read in the Proverbs that sits in her seat in the high places of the city.”20

(To be continued)

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1. John Bunyan, Come and Welcome to Jesus Christ (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2011), 3.

2. Bunyan, Come and Welcome to Jesus Christ, 5.

3. Bunyan, Come and Welcome to Jesus Christ, 12, 13.

4. Bunyan, Come and Welcome to Jesus Christ, 14.

5. Bunyan, Come and Welcome to Jesus Christ, 18-22.

6. Bunyan, Come and Welcome to Jesus Christ, 25.

7. Bunyan, Come and Welcome to Jesus Christ, 32-36.

8. Bunyan, Come and Welcome to Jesus Christ, 36.

9. Bunyan, Come and Welcome to Jesus Christ, 39-40.

10. Bunyan, Come and Welcome to Jesus Christ, 41.

11. Bunyan, Come and Welcome to Jesus Christ, 44.

12. Bunyan, Come and Welcome to Jesus Christ, 46.

13. Bunyan, Come and Welcome to Jesus Christ, 47.

14. Bunyan, Come and Welcome to Jesus Christ, 57.

15. Bunyan, Come and Welcome to Jesus Christ, 57.

16. Bunyan, Come and Welcome to Jesus Christ, 59.

17. Bunyan, Come and Welcome to Jesus Christ, 61.

18. Bunyan, Come and Welcome to Jesus Christ, 61.

19. Bunyan, Come and Welcome to Jesus Christ, 63.

20. Bunyan, Come and Welcome to Jesus Christ, 65