Our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment

Oh that You would rend the heavens and come down,

that the mountains might quake at Your presence—  Isaiah 64:1

The god of our own making is one of compromise.  Shading the Truth, one baby step at a time.  Pilfering.  Nothing so very bad.  Because we have taken our eye off of the Standard, the Holy One.  

Cheap grace.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer described this long ago when the Church became boiling-lobster-pot-comfortable with evil.  The guards at the prison camps marched straight from the pews of a compromised church.  Much like today, and every day, since the beginning of history, we humans have been making excuses.  

“Cheap grace means the justification of sin without the justification of the sinner. Grace alone does everything, they say, and so everything can remain as it was before.   

Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, (it is) baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.

Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will gladly go and sell all that he has. It is the pearl of great price to buy which the merchant will sell all his goods. It is the kingly rule of Christ, for whose sake of one will pluck out the eye which causes him to stumble; it is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows him. 

Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of His Son: "Ye were bought at a price," and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon his Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered Him up for us. Grace is costly because it compels a man to submit to the yoke of Christ and follow Him; it is grace because Jesus says: "My yoke is easy and my burden light."  Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, pp 42-45

But now, O Lord, you are our Father;

we are the clay, and You are our potter;

we are all the work of Your hand.  Isaiah 64:8

Have Thine own way, Lord! Have Thine own way!

Thou art the Potter, I am the clay.
Mold me and make me after Thy will,
While I am waiting, yielded and still.

Have Thine own way, Lord! Have Thine own way!

Search me and try me, Master, today!
Whiter than snow, Lord, wash me just now,
As in Thy presence humbly I bow.

Have Thine own way, Lord! Have Thine own way!

Wounded and weary, help me, I pray!
Power, all power, surely is Thine!
Touch me and heal me, Savior divine.

Have Thine own way, Lord! Have Thine own way!

Hold o’er my being absolute sway!
Fill with Thy Spirit ’till all shall see
Christ only, always, living in me.

Absolute sway.  Yes dear LORD.