The 5 Pillars of the Reformation ~ Grace Alone
Soul Snack 24/14 ... The Blustering Me.
Belting illiterate ears a pre-reformation pulpit piled sins to heaven in a Babel rivalling tower. Sins were audited and condemned by a priest. He then guaranteed atonement through some spurious human activity. The priest's judgements substituted divine judgement, and God would look to the priest to set the sinner straight. Or so an innocently ignorant populace were taught and believed.
In 590AD Gregory 1st who would also become known as Gregory the Great became Bishop Of Rome; the new pope. It was Gregory who promoted a doctrine of purgatory and affirmed such a place. An uninformed world would swallow such poison for another millennia. (How great was the lie after a thousand years of dissemination!) Gregory saw the issue of sins being satisfied by man, and blindly missed the Biblical witness to divine grace.
For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God (Ephesians 2:8)
But has the last reformation become the lost reformation?
Has grace been replaced by protestant zealots that seek their view of correctness above righteousness as the Roman church did?
Has grace been nailed to a crucifix that breaks fellowship with a disciple of a different Christian heritage or fold?
Has grace been replaced with pride by those who jealously protect pulpits, but scatter the flock?
I am reminded of the man once beside the hanging Jesus - a thief, a man of ill-repute, justly slain for his deeds. This criminal knew where to turn and who to speak to.
Has the protestant church forgotten the thief saved by grace, in its own branding to reject those too not like it?
The Roman Catholic Church still claims it is the only home of the true believers, the protestant church acts like this.
Where is there grace for the desert dweller, the lapsing wanderer, or even the Christian mystic - who extend their hands-held heart to the Lord?
We are all criminals, except one on Golgotha. It was grace alone that admitted a thief to paradise.
The protestant Pharisee in me still blusters 'I am right'; the thief in me pleads 'shut-up' for all is still grace.
Today's Soul Snippet:
Humility seeks a success that pride can never know.
READ the INTRODUCTION to The 5 PIllars of the Reformation
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