Man is saved from  by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone to God glory alone.

In just five years (2017), it will have been 500 years since Martin Luther nailed his infamous and world-changing 95 Theses to the door of the the church in Wittenburg, Germany on All Hallows Eve (October 31). He posted his “bulletin board material”, which were 95 statements meant to reform the church in the hopes of awakening her to the wonder, beauty and transforming power of the gospel of God’s grace in Jesus that had been lost through the centuries. It was to be the start of the Reformation of the church in which Scripture alone guided the church to see that man is rescued from his sin by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone to God’s glory alone.  Historian Robert Capon paints a powerful and provocative word picture in describing the impact of the Reformation on the church.

The Reformation was a time when men went blind, staggering drunk because they had discovered, in the dusty basement of late medievalism, a whole cellar full of fifteen-hundred-year-old, two-hundred proof Grace – bottle after bottle of pure distilate of Scripture, one sip of which would convince anyone that God saves us singlehandedly.  The word of the Gospel – after all those centuries of trying to lift yourself into heaven by worrying about the perfection of your bootstraps – suddently turned out to be a flat announcement that the saved were home before they started…Grace has to be drunk straight: no water, no ice, and certainly no ginger ale; neither goodness, nor badness, not the flowers that bloom in the spring of super spirituality could be allowed to enter into the case.

This is precisely what the Apostle Paul said in Ephesians 2:8-9, “For by grace you have been saved through faith.  And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”  

Soli de Gloria!!!