More than anyone else I’ve ever read Bonar makes the central truths of the chief article of the gospel piercingly and pastorally clear. And a clear gospel is essential for both the heart and work of a minister, indeed every Christian.

When I found that Banner of Truth was slated to reissue nineteenth-century Scottish pastor Horatius Bonar’s exposition of the doctrine of justification The Everlasting Righteousness[1] this year, I was inordinately delighted.

That’s because, outside of Scripture, The Everlasting Righteousness is the most important book I’ve ever read.

More than anyone else I’ve ever read Bonar makes the central truths of the chief article of the gospel piercingly and pastorally clear. And a clear gospel is essential for both the heart and work of a minister, indeed every Christian.

In God’s providential kindness I came across Bonar’s book when I needed it most. Although I was already in my second semester of seminary, for several years I had I struggled deeply with assurance of my salvation. I found myself alternately anxious and ashamed, “laden with guilt and full of fears.”

It was at this point that God provided me with a pastor in Horatius Bonar, who, though writing over a century before I was born, seemed to know me. As I read, it became increasingly apparent to me that I had not only a deficient understanding of assurance, but also of saving faith and the complete sufficiency of the finished work of Christ. In short, I began to see that I had a deficient understanding of the gospel.

Here I highlight merely two of the areas in which Bonar’s work has been especially helpful for me:

The Nature of Justifying Faith

We rightly affirm that justification is by faith alone. But we can forget to explain what this faith is and how it justifies. I experienced the trouble caused by such a lack of understanding as I constantly wondered if I had believed the “right way.”

Reading Bonar, my misunderstanding was quickly corrected:

The question as to the right way of believing is that which puzzles many, and engrosses all their anxiety, to the exclusion of the far greater questions as to the person and work of Him who is the object of their believing…[They] are occupied, not with what Christ has done, but with what they have yet to do, to get themselves connected with His work.[2]

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