Justification by Faith Alone

Introduction- Pull Yourself Up by Your Bootstraps

There was a German author in the 1700’s by the name of Rudolf Erich Raspe. In one his collections of fictional short stories, The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen, Rudolf depicts a scene when Baron is trying jump over a swamp with his horse, he misjudges the distance and fails to get to the other side. Baron is about to drown in the water when he gains the strength in his own arm to pull himself out of the swamp by his ponytail along with his horse between his legs.

To understand the impossibility of this actually happening watch this clip from a movie that was made about the book.

Show clip

The thought that anyone can do this is crazy. It’s like a cartoon. It’s simply impossible. From this scene that we just watched sparked the phrase pulling yourself up by your own hair, which sounds painful. So it later changed to pulling yourself up by your bootstraps.

Who in here has heard the saying, “Pull Yourself Up by Your Bootstraps”?

It is literally impossible to pull yourself up by your bootstraps.

Demonstrate trying

Trying to pull yourself up by your bootstraps is just as impossible as trying to pull oneself up by your own hair.

That’s the irony behind the saying. You’re trying to do the impossible.