The Jerusalem Sinner Saved; or Good News for the Vilest of Men by John Bunyan 1689

and by these temptations Christ takes advantage to make them the
more helpful to the churches.
The biggest sinner, when he is converted, and comes into the church,
says to them all, by his very coming in, Behold me, all you that are men
and women of a low and timorous spirit, you whose hearts are narrow,
for that you never had the advantage to know, because your sins are
few, the largeness of the grace of God. Behold, I say, in me, the
exceeding riches of his grace! I am a pattern set forth before your faces,
on whom you may look and take heart. This, I say, the great sinner can
say, to the exceeding comfort of all the rest.
Wherefore, as I have hinted before, when God intends to stock a place
with saints, and to make that place excellently to flourish with the
riches of his grace, he usually begins with the conversion of some of the
most notorious thereabouts, and lays them as an example to allure
others, and to build up when they are converted.
It was Paul that must go to the Gentiles, because Paul was the most
outrageous of all the apostles, in the time of his unregeneracy. Yea,
Peter must be he, that after his horrible fall, was thought fittest, when
recovered again, to comfort and strengthen his brethren. See Luke xxii.
31, 32.
Some must be pillars in God’s house; and if they be pillars of cedar,
they must stand while they are stout and sturdy sticks in the forest,
before they are cut down, and planted or placed there.
No man, when he buildeth his house, makes the principal parts thereof
of weak or feeble timber; for how could such bear up the rest? but of
great and able wood. Christ Jesus also goeth this way to work; he makes
of the biggest sinners bearers and supporters to the rest. This then,
may serve for another reason, why Jesus Christ gives out in
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