“This therefore should encourage them that for the present cannot stand, but that do fly before their guilt: Them that feel no help nor stay, but that go, as to their thinking, every day by the power of temptation, driven yet farther off from God, and from the hope of obtaining of His mercy to their salvation.
Poor creature, I will not now ask thee how thou camest into this condition, or how long this has been thy state; but I will say before thee, and I prithee hear me: O the length of the saving arm of God! As yet thou art within the reach thereof; do not thou go about to measure arms with God, as some good men are apt to do.
I mean, do not thou conclude, that because thou canst not reach God by thy short stump, therefore He cannot reach thee with His long arm. Look again, ‘Hast thou an arm like God’ (Job 40:9), an arm like His for length and strength?
It becomes thee, when thou canst not perceive that God is within the reach of thy arm, then to believe that thou art within the reach of His; for it is long, and none knows how long.”
–John Bunyan, All Love’s Excelling: The Saint’s Knowledge of Christ’s Love (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1692/1998), 13-14.
