A Journey Through Interpreter's House in Pilgrim's Progress: Part 3
The Dusty Parlor: Distinction between the Law and the Gospel
Having shown Christian the Portrait of the Godly Minister, Interpreter now takes him by the hand and leads him into a dusty parlor room. In this room, Interpreter will teach Christian the importance of the distinction between the law and the Gospel.
Bunyan offers to us a beautiful literary masterpiece in this scene. We read,
Then He took him by the hand, and led him into a very large parlour that was full of dust, because never swept; the which, after He had reviewed a little while, the Interpreter called for a man to sweep. Now, when he began to sweep, the dust began so abundantly to fly about, that Christian had almost therewith been choked. Then said the Interpreter to a damsel that stood by, Bring hither water, and sprinkle the room; the which when she had done, it was swept and cleansed with pleasure.
CHRISTIAN: Then said Christian, What means this?
INTERPRETER: The Interpreter answered, This parlour is the heart of a man that was never sanctified by the sweet grace of the Gospel; the dust is his original sin and inward corruptions that have defiled the whole man. He that began to sweep at first, is the Law; but she that brought Water, and did sprinkle it, is the Gospel. Now, whereas thou sawest, that so soon as the first began to sweep, the dust did fly about that the room by him could not be cleansed, but that you were almost choked therewith; this is to show thee, that the law, instead of cleansing the heart (by its working) from sin, doth revive, put strength into, and increase it in the soul, even as it doth discover and forbid it, for it does not give power to subdue.
Again, as you saw the damsel sprinkle the room with water, upon which it was cleansed with pleasure; this is to show thee, that when the Gospel comes in the sweet and precious influences thereof to the heart, then, I say, even as thou sawest the damsel lay the dust by sprinkling the floor with water, so is sin vanquished and subdued, and the soul made clean, through the faith of it, and consequently fit for the King of glory to inhabit.[1]
Bunyan gives to us the explanation of the allegory that is presented in the scene of the dusty parlor.
The parlor is the heart of a man, polluted with sin, never sanctified by the grace of the gospel.
The dust is the man’s original sin and his inward corruptions that defile the whole of the man. The dust represents his total depravity.
The sweeper is the law of God which arouses, revives, and discovers the inward sinfulness and corruptions of man.
The damsel and the water she sprinkles is the Gospel of Jesus Christ which alone can clean the heart of man.
Interpreter is teaching Christian the reality, that while the law is good and holy, it can by no means bring salvation to the sinful man. This is not because there is some insufficiency in the law to do what God purposed it to do. This is because by God’s design and purpose the law was never intended to save. It cannot save, because it is not purposed to save.
Rather the law comes in, stirs up the sinful dust of our wretched hearts, choking us out, and exposing to us the depravity of our nature. In this way, the law searches us, examines us, and exposes us as sinners. It reveals to us our need for salvation, but it is helpless to save us.
The law in this way serves as a mirror, the law reflects to us the perfect righteousness and glory of our God and it reflects to us the filthiness of our sinfulness. But like a mirror, the law is helpless to cleanse us.
Picture it this way. Suppose you have been working outside in the yard all morning. You come inside, enter the bathroom, look in the mirror, and see that you are covered in dirt and grime. It would be absurd for you to then take the mirror off the wall and try to scrub yourself clean with the mirror. The mirror merely reflects to you the reality that you are filthy. It cannot clean you, for it is not purposed to clean you. Rather, the mirror, by revealing to you the filth that is on you, directs you to the soap and the water, the source of cleansing. The law serves us in the same way. It reflects to us our sinfulness and then directs us to the source of salvation and cleansing—the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
If we attempt to be cleansed by the law we will be choked out by the dust of our sin and we will never find the salvation that we are so desperately looking for.
What Bunyan does in this scene is offer to us a wonderful allegorical picture of what Paul teaches in Romans 7:7-13.
What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.” But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. For apart from the law, sin lies dead. I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died. The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me. So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good. Did that which is good, then, bring death to me? By no means! It was sin, producing death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure.
In these verses, Paul is showing us through his own personal experience that our self-righteousness is so entrenched in our being, that until the law strips us of it and convicts us of our sin, we will never cast ourselves upon Christ alone for salvation. This is one of the purposes and uses of the law. The law comes and stirs up sin within us so that our sinfulness becomes more obvious to us; so that we can by grace be led to Christ who is the only source of cleansing salvation.
Let us spend some time walking through these verses in Romans 7.
Up to this point in the book of Romans Paul has said some startling things regarding the law of God.
Romans 3:20–through the law comes knowledge of sin
Romans 5:20–Now the law came in to increase the trespass
Romans 6:14–For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under the law but under grace.
Romans 7:5-6– For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.
In Romans 7:7-13, Paul is expecting his Jewish interlocutor to offer the objection, “Is the law sin?”
The Jewish mind hearing the letter of Romans read in the Church in Rome would naturally have this objection. In their mind, God has given them the law in order to give them life and to make them holy. Yet, Paul has argued up to this point that the law brings death and increases sin. So, naturally, they would ask, “Is the law sin?”
To this question, Paul’s answer is “By no means!” The law is absolutely not sin or evil. The purpose of this section is not to offer a testimony of Paul’s personal experience, nor is the purpose of this section to offer a theology concerning anthropology. Rather, Paul uses his personal experience, an experience that is universal to all believers, as a means to teach that God’s law is not sin and God’s law is not evil. Here Paul teaches us that the law of God is holy, righteous, and good. Paul labors to exonerate the law of God from any and all claims of it being evil.
In making this argument Paul also teaches us the purpose of the law—to search the heart and expose the sinfulness that resides in it.
I. The Law Reveals Sin (7b)
Paul, writes, “Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin.”
Here Paul makes the point that the law reveals sin and defines what sin is. God graciously gives us the law in order to reveal to us exactly what sin is. If God had not given us the law we would have no way of knowing which actions are sinful and which are not. Without the gracious gift of the law, we as sinful fallen creatures would be left to our own devices in determining what are moral and immoral actions, thoughts, and deeds. The result would be catastrophic.
If we just look at the postmodern relativistic world around us, we see clearly the detrimental effects of sinful man determining morality. What Paul argues here is that God determines morality, God determines what sin is, and God determines what is right and wrong. And he has revealed his determinations to us in his law.
Paul goes on and says, “For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, ‘You shall not covet.’”
Paul is saying that he would not have known that the covetous desires he experienced in his heart were sinful if God had not given to him the law. The law served to reveal to Paul that his inward feelings and emotions were sinful transgressions against God. With the law, God penetrated his heart and defines his desires as sin, which ultimately serves as a crushing death blow to Paul.
The law reflected to Paul the sinfulness of his heart and in doing so served to prepare him for salvation.
Charles Hodge in his commentary on Romans writes,
“The law, although it cannot secure either the justification or sanctification of men, performs an essential part in the economy of salvation. It enlightens conscience and secures its verdict against a multitude of evils, which we should not otherwise have recognized as sins. It arouses sin, increasing its power and making it both in itself and in our consciousness, exceedingly sinful. It, therefore, produces that state of mind which is a necessary preparation for the reception of the Gospel. Conviction of sin, that is, an adequate knowledge of its nature, and a sense of its power over us, is an indispensable part of evangelical religion. Before the gospel can be embraced as a means of deliverance from sin, we must feel we are involved in corruption and misery.”
II. Sin uses the Law to Arouse Evil (8)
Paul writes in verse 8, “But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. For apart from the law, sin lies dead.”
Apart from the law sin is powerless, it lies dormant and dead. However, when sin is exposed to the law it is aroused and revived. It comes to life, and now that it knows which laws to break and what lines to cross, it feels duty bout to break and cross them.
This is how the sin within us acts. It takes the good, holy, and righteous law of God and powerfully provokes us to break it. So, when we are told in the command, “Do not covet” we immediately begin to think of all the things we do covet, and then we begin to actively covet those things.
It’s like when someone yells out “Don’t Look!” What’s the first thing that we do? We look! We feel almost duty-bound to take a look. When I'm out running and I see a sign that says “Keep off the Grass” I immediately desire to stick one foot on the grass. I don’t want to run in the grass. I have had no previous desire to get onto the grass. But now that the law has told me not to get on the grass, the sin and rebellion that resides within me, which was dormant during the majority of my run, has been aroused by the law, and there is now the desire to get on the grass. Again, sin makes me feel almost duty-bound to stick at least one foot on the grass.
It’s not that our sin is nonexistent until the law comes. Sin is ever present within us and as Paul argues, it is aroused by the law.
This is the image that Bunyan paints for us in the Dusty Parlor. The man comes into sweep, but all that he does is stir up the dust in the parlor to the point that Christian is almost choked to death. The law does the same thing in the heart of a believer. It arouses, revives, and discovers the inward sinfulness and corruptions of our hearts. The law exposes us. That is one of the purposes of the law, and we must always be aware of this purpose, otherwise, our legalistic hearts may be prone to wander to the law trying to be cleansed by it, and end up being choked out by the sinful dust it stirs up.
III. Sin uses the Law to Condemn us to Death (9-11)
Paul continues to answer the question of the interlocutor in verses 9-11, “I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died. The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me.”
Here, Paul is thinking of a time when we felt that he was alive and stood right before God based upon his legalistic keeping of the law. But then a true understanding of the law came and Paul began to see himself as he truly was, standing dead and condemned before a holy and righteous God.
When the law entered, it stirred up and aroused the sinful conscience of Paul, and revealed to him that he was indeed dead. What Paul has come to realize is that the law of God could not impart life to him, the law could not save him, the law could not cleanse him. The law has merely served to reveal to him his true nature—dead in his sins and trespasses.
When Paul was confronted with God’s law, sin seized its moment in Paul and caused him to break the law of God. This law, that in the mind of Paul was supposed to give life actually condemned him to death as a law-breaker.
But it was the fault of sin, not the fault of the law. Notice that Paul says that “sin deceived me and through it killed me.” The deceitfulness of sin is one of its most dangerous qualities. Sin had deceived Paul into thinking that his mere outward obedience and actions alone were enough to please God and earn him eternal life. But in actuality, it was sin that killed him.
This is what Interpreter is trying the teach Christian in the dusty parlor. To not be deceived by sin into thinking that he will ever be acceptable before God because of his own merit or good works. Our good works and self-righteousness will choke us out, killing us and stifling our sanctification. Interpreter is desiring to guard Christian against being deceived into a position of self-righteousness.
Since you’ve read this far, let me encourage you to allow the law of God to examine your heart and reveal to you your sin and crush your pride, and sentence you to death, for this is the only way that you will ever come to see that you yourself are a sinner in desperate need of a Savior. Once you see that you have sinned and violated the law of God, turn from your sin, confess Christ as Lord and believe in your hearts that God has raised him from the dead, and be saved.
The law of God sentences us to death in order to prepare us for Christ.
IV. The Law Exposes Sin to be Sin (12-13)
In verses 12-13 Paul writes, “So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good. Did that which is good, then, bring death to me? By no means! It was sin, producing death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure.”
Here, Paul emphatically answers his interlocutor’s question. The law is holy, righteous, and good. The law is by no means sinful or evil. The problem is not the law, the problem is us. We are sinners and in our fallen nature, we violate the law of God. The law is not intended by God to save us or sanctify us, rather it is purposed to reveal to us that we are sinners so that we may be pointed to Jesus Christ who saves us from the sentence of eternal death which the law revealed to us. It is the law that exposes sin to be sin. And it is the law that reveals to us our plight and need for salvation.
In the dusty parlor, Interpreter shows Christian the only answer for our salvation and sanctification. Once the law has come in and swept up the sinful dust of Christian’s heart, Interpreter then calls in the damsel to sprinkle the water which actually cleans the room. The damsel and the water she sprinkles is the Gospel of Jesus Christ which alone can clean the heart of man. The ultimate purpose of the law was never to save, rather it was intended to point us to Christ Jesus, who perfectly fulfilled the demands of the law on behalf of sinners who will repent of their sins and confess him as Lord and Savior. Love the law, delight in the law, allow the law to reveal your sinfulness, and then place all of your hope and trust in the righteousness of Jesus Christ, not your own legalistic law-keeping lest you be choked out and remain dead in your sins and trespasses.
For those who have rejected their own self-righteousness and trusted in Christ Jesus alone for salvation, “there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 8:1)
In our church, we often sing the hymn, “Mercy Speaks By Jesus’ Blood.” The words of this song remind me of what Bunyan is teaching us in the Dusty Parlor. Essentially the water the damsel sprinkles is the allegorical picture of the cleansing atoning blood of Jesus Christ. Mercy speaks by Jesus’ blood alone.
Mercy speaks by Jesus’ blood;
Hear and sing, ye sons of God;
Justice satisfied indeed;
Christ has full atonement made.Jesus’ blood speaks loud and sweet;
Here all Deity can meet,
And, without a jarring voice,
Welcome Zion to rejoice.Should the law against her roar,
Jesus’ blood still speaks with power,
“All her debts were cast on me,
And she must and shall go free.”Peace of conscience, peace with God,
We obtain through Jesus’ blood;
Jesus’ blood speaks solid rest;
We believe, and we are blest.
Grace and Peace,
Chase
[1] Bunyan, John. The Pilgrim’s Progress. Minneapolis: Desiring God. P. 28-29