Because the gifts of God’s Word and Spirit that allowed us to live well were ours from the beginning, we naturally failed to attribute them to God, seeing our well-being as a matter of our natural powers instead, thereby blurring the difference between creature and God and falling into the sin of pride so stressed by Augustine.

empires, slavery—the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy. The reason why it can never succeed is this. God made us: invented us as a man invents an engine. A car is made to run on petrol, and it would not run properly on anything else. Now God designed the human machine to run on Himself. He

Psalm 14 shows up in Paul’s letter to the Romans. David and Paul both say humans aren’t good people; we have nothing to offer God.

Martin Luther was asked what he contributed to his salvation, he replied, “Sin and resistance.” God Himself has done all that He requires of us. May we learn how to rest in Him, because He’s where the joy is!