Reformation Day ... oh yeah, it's also Halloween!

October 31, 1517 - The day observing Martin Luther nailing his 95 Thesis on the Whittenberg door. A declaration that salvation is found outside of man. Our only hope is an "alien righteousness" ... Salvation and the Christian life is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, to the glory of God alone. The key verse for Luther was Romans 1:17, which is an Old Testament quotation from Habakkuk 2:4... "... the Righteous (Just) shall live by faith..."  Luther said when he finally understood what this meant, it was ".. like the heavens opened up.."   .   The just SHALL live by faith. Faith is Christ alone.. It is the only way we'll see heaven. 

Justification by faith is an answer to the greatest personal question ever asked by a human soul: “How shall I be right with God? How do I stand in God’s sight? With what favor does He look upon me? There are those, I admit, who never raise that question.  There are those who are concerned with the question of their standing before men but never with the question of their standing before God. There are those who are interested in what “people say”  but not in the question what God says. Such men, however, are not those who move the world. They are apt to go with the current. They are apt to do as others do. They are not the heroes who change the destinies of the race. The beginning of true nobility comes when a man ceases to be interested in the judgment of men and becomes interested in the judgment of God.”
                                                                    J. Gresham Machen, 1881 - 1937