Thursday, October 27, 2011

The Blessedness of the Gospel

Man, don't you understand that all is in itself a gospel?  For it is a blessed gospel that one is brought into despair, not by sin, nor by the superior force of Satan, but by the Holy Spirit of God, who could save one's poor soul from becoming a legalist and a hypocrite, and whose purpose in it all has only been to let the overpowering glory of Christ shine forth.  In other words,… the Spirit would show us that one may receive forgiveness without making atonement by one's own sorrow over sin and without any personal merit or self-betterment; that one may be a child of God, one's sinful nature notwithstanding.

Bo Giertz, The Hammer of God, (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 2005), 101.

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