The Burden and the Book

For mine iniquities are gone over mine head: as an heavy burden they are too heavy for me. PSALM 38:4

The Pilgrim’s Progress does not begin with a sunrise or a birth or a call. It begins with a man in rags, standing with his face turned from his own house, a book in his hand and a great burden on his back. As he reads, he weeps and trembles, and at last he breaks out with a cry: “What shall I do?” That is the first picture Bunyan gives us of the Christian life, and it is not a flattering one. Before a man is a pilgrim, he is a man in trouble.

The weight no one else could see

The burden is the first great image of the book, and Bunyan’s margin tells us what it means. It is sin — not a feeling of unease, not a vague dissatisfaction with life, but the guilt of a real person before a real God. The man has read in his book that his city will be burned with fire from heaven, and that he himself is condemned to die and after that to come to judgement. He is not willing to do the first, he tells Evangelist, nor able to do the second.

And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment. HEBREWS 9:27

What is striking is how lonely the burden is. The man goes home and tries to hide his distress from his wife and children. When he can bear it no longer and tells them, they think some frenzy has got into his head and put him to bed, hoping sleep will settle his brains. The next day they are harsh with him; then they deride him; then they neglect him. He goes out alone into the fields to read and pray.

The book in his hand

Notice what has done this to him. It is not a sermon, not a vision, not a disaster. It is the book. The man has been reading, and the more he reads the heavier the burden grows. Bunyan never needed to explain which book he meant. The margins of The Pilgrim’s Progress are thick with references, and Christian answers every argument on the road by saying, in effect, read it in my book.

For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. HEBREWS 4:12

What shall I do to be saved

Walking in the fields, reading as he was wont, the man bursts out again, crying, “What shall I do to be saved?” It is the jailer’s question at Philippi, and Bunyan puts the reference in the margin. He looks this way and that, as if he would run, but he stands still, because he cannot tell which way to go.

And brought them out, and said, Sirs, what must I do to be saved? And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house. ACTS 16:30–31

That picture of a man wanting to run and not knowing where is exactly right. Conviction on its own does not save anyone. It only makes a person restless. Bunyan knew that the devil is quite content for a soul to be troubled so long as it stays still — so long as it goes on feeling bad about sin without ever getting to Christ. The burden is meant to drive us somewhere. That is why the next person on the road is Evangelist.

Fly from the wrath to come

Evangelist gives the man a parchment roll, and written within are the words, “Fly from the wrath to come.” The man asks where to fly, and Evangelist points him over a wide field to a wicket gate he cannot yet see, and a shining light he thinks he can. Then the man begins to run.

O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come? MATTHEW 3:7

Here is the most famous and the most troubling moment in the opening pages. As he runs, his wife and children see him and cry after him to return. But the man puts his fingers in his ears and runs on crying, “Life! life! eternal life!” He does not look behind him.

Readers have sometimes been shocked by this, and it needs careful handling. Bunyan puts two texts in the margin: the words of Christ that no one can be His disciple who does not hate father and mother, wife and children, and the angel’s warning to Lot not to look back. He is not commending the abandonment of a family. Everything we know of Bunyan the husband and father — his agony in gaol over his blind daughter, his tenderness towards Elizabeth — tells against that. He is drawing, in the bold lines of a dream, the truth that nothing, not even the dearest human love, may hold a soul back from Christ. And the story does not end here. Christian pleads with his family before he leaves, and the whole Second Part of the book is the story of how his wife and children followed him.

If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. LUKE 14:26

Obstinate and Pliable

Two neighbours come after the man to fetch him back — for now we learn his name is Christian. Obstinate will not hear a word; he lumps Christian among the crazy-headed coxcombs who are wiser in their own eyes than seven men that can render a reason, tells Pliable to come home, and goes home himself. Pliable is more promising. He listens eagerly as Christian describes the endless kingdom, the crowns of glory, the company of the holy, and the place where all tears will be wiped away. Glad to hear of such things, he urges that they mend their pace. Christian answers that he cannot go as fast as he would, because of the burden on his back.

That little exchange is a whole sermon. Pliable is attracted to heaven but has no burden. He wants the glory without the conviction. Christian, who has the conviction, cannot run as fast as Pliable would like, because he feels the weight of sin that Pliable has never felt. Within a few pages Pliable is out of the road and home again. Bunyan is warning against a religion that is all hope and no repentance, all heaven and no sin — it is the first of many false pilgrims in the book, and it will not survive the first bog.

But he that received the seed into stony places, the same is he that heareth the word, and anon with joy receiveth it; yet hath he not root in himself, but dureth for a while. MATTHEW 13:20–21

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Have you ever felt the burden of your sin before God — not just regret, but guilt? If not, ask God this week to show you yourself as He sees you.

2. Christian’s burden came from reading his book. Read Romans 3:9–26 slowly and let it do its work.

3. If you are carrying something heavy that those around you cannot see, tell one trusted believer about it.

4. Examine yourself for the marks of Pliable: an attraction to heaven with no grief over sin. Where is your faith all promise and no repentance?

5. If you have prayed for years for family who mock or ignore your faith, take heart from the Second Part: Christiana came at last. Keep praying.

A PRAYER

Holy God, I have read in Your book what I am, and I cannot deny it. My sins are a burden too heavy for me.

Do not let me stand still under it, or try to shake it off by forgetting. Drive me to the One who alone can take it away.

Keep me from a religion that wants heaven without repentance; give me a true sense of my need and a true sight of Christ.

And for those I love who do not yet see, have mercy, and bring them after me on the road. Amen.