"For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from observing the law" (v. 28). This is one of the bedrock principles of our Reformation faith, a faith that we might not share but for some unheralded laborers in the Lord's fields.

For example, where would we be without Johann Von Staupitz?[1] Staupitz lived in the latter half of the fifteenth century and on into the sixteenth, an older contemporary of Martin Luther. In Staupitz, the future Reformer had a friend and advisor who stood beside him during a dark night of spiritual crisis, and who taught him that God's saving grace in Jesus Christ is never cheap.

As a member of a noble Saxon family, Johann studied at Cologne and Leipzig before becoming an Augustinian monk. He received his doctorate in 1500 and soon accepted an invitat…