Wisdom and strength require bootstrap-pulling and the placing of noses to grindstones.
“If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed” (John 8:36).
How do the words “The righteous shall live by his faith” go from a context of hope in hopelessness to the cornerstone declaration of the chief doctrine of the Christian faith?

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God has a strange delivery system, the foolish preaching of the cross and foolish preachers for Christ’s sake delivering it.
The result of this day’s proceedings, in Luther’s mind, was likely to be a painful death at the stake.
The Holy Spirit does what his name implies. He makes us holy. We believe in Jesus Christ, our Lord, and come to him only by the Holy Spirit who calls us with the gospel.
This is not a plea for us to be given the strength to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps. It is our helpless cry when boots – straps and all - slip off the edge of temptation’s cliff.
The petition not to be led into temptation is found in just the right place within the seven petitions.
If we want to see evidence of our Father’s answer to the fifth petition, we need only to look at the cross and the empty tomb.
Even though the horn of plenty on our table is there as the fruit of our labor, that is also a gift of God’s grace
The place where it is most difficult for us to accept God’s will is when suffering, calamities, and finally, death itself.
The kingdom of God has a proper name, and his name is Jesus, Son of God, Son of Man.
The paradoxical Puritan doctrines of an inability to convert oneself and the command to work out one’s salvation with fear and trembling placed would-be converts like Mather in quite a bind.
Our prayer confesses that God’s abode is beyond us, yet ever so near for the prayer presupposes that we are being heard, even in our sighs and whispers.
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