paradoxum

I am overwhelmed by this quote...and yes, it's also my "quote of the week":

“The reformation was a time when men went blind, staggering drunk because they had discovered, in the dusty basement of late medievalism, a whole cellarful of fifteen-hundred-year-old, two hundred proof grace – of bottle after bottle of pure distillate of Scripture, one sip of which would convince anyone that God saves us single-handedly.  The word of the Gospel – after all those centuries of trying to lift yourself into heaven by worrying about the perfection of your bootstraps – suddenly 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, & certainly no ginger ale; neither goodness, nor badness, nor the flowers that bloom in the spring of super spirituality could be allowed to enter into the case.” ~ Robert Capon

500 years ago, men went "blind, staggering drunk" when they discovered the Good News of justification by faith alone (in Jesus Christ alone)!  Today, we yawn at such news...and we show how much we don't understand or comprehend...or better said, believe the Gospel.  We show how much we've watered down the Gospel of the grace of God!  In the midst of our "super spirituality" we see the fruit of our labor and feel our justification...and are swelled with pride...and become a prisoner to the Law.

We refuse to drink grace straight...so we water it down, mix it...take the edge off...and stay way to sober.  I want to drink grace straight...like Luther and Calvin and Augustine... 

...it's time to go to the cellar...

"...there might be a little dust on the bottle, but don't let it fool ya about what's inside..."