The Dusty Parlor :A Human Heart

This is my very first post in this blog, and as I intent to use this space as an online journal, I ant to start by writing about a very interesting analogy from John Bunyan. I love to watch very late TV shows, and there is one that is my favorite: CrossPictures TV. They are a very old ministry, they are now talking about the book " The Pilgrim's Progress" and today they talked about the dusty parlor.

The Interpreter ( the Holy Ghost) shows Christian a very very dusty parlor. A place nobody has cleaned or cared for years! 

Source

And as soon as they arrive someone starts to sweep the floor, and all the dust comes up and Christian can't breathe,then the Interpreter asks a girl to sprinkle some water on the dust, to settle it so she can easily clean the room. And this image really spoke to me. In my country I saw many people sweeping their front yard ( in the dry regions there is no grass) and the water really does the trick, and when the water hits the warm Earth a sweet smell of rain comes up. And Christian comments in the sweet aroma after the girl used the water. 

http://www.astarairconditioning.com/dust-home/

The Lesson from this allegory is very easy:  The dust is sin, the parlor is the heart, the first attempt to clean is the Law, and the water is the Gospel and the final attempt ( successful) to clean is the grace. 

The law is good and holy, without the law we would never be able to see our sin. So the Law highlights the human wrecked natural and our disgusting sins. However , it is a beginning we cannot only recognize our fallen state, but we need a solution for it . And the solution is God's grace, because he brought the sweet water of the Gospel to help us to actually clean the room and make it fit for the eternal king without shocking on the dust . 

"This symbol is, no doubt, designed to strengthen the impression already made upon the Pilgrim’s mind by the scene at Sinai. The dust of the 'Dusty Parlor' is indwelling sin. The besom of the law awakes the slumbering dust, revives its power, and causes it to be sensibly felt. Disturbed from its settled state, and discovered to our eyes, the dust of sin rises as a cloud of witness, witnessing against us. The law can disturb sin and arouse it, but the law cannot take it away. Then comes the Gospel, with the sprinkled waters of Christ’s atoning love, which bind sin and repress it. The power of the law and the Gospel respectively, with regard to sin, receives here one of the most telling illustrations that uninspired man has ever written. This scene, indeed, well describes those two scriptures—'I had not known sin, but by the law' (Romans 7:7); and, 'Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world' (John 1:29)."