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The world often seems like a monstrously sinister machine, blind, insensible, destroying everything that man builds, fosters, loves, hopes. Why should the world concern itself about your wishes, little stupid man? What does your sigh mean in the midst of a universe where suns grow and age in billions of years? Such a thought makes prayer die upon the lips. Is there any sense in praying the roaring avalanche to spare the babe yonder in the path of its downward rush? 0 fate, blind, awful, senseless fate!

When we look beyond ourselves out into the world, prayer fades away. Man's tragic lot robs one of the courage to pray. Everything appears to be senseless, disorder, chance, confusion. Who then has a mind to pray? The world can at most permit us dimly to perceive a mysterious Power; but to make us trust ourselves to this Power, calling upon it as children do their father: "Help us!" the world is unable. How then can we pray? What gives us the courage, the confidence, the assurance?

As children lost in a woods, are fearful of the sinister darkness -- and then, suddenly, hearing a sound from the sombre blackness, a familiar voice, a loving, seeking, helping voice, their mother's voice -- so prayer is our reply to the voice from the Word of God in Jesus Christ which suddenly cries out to us in the mysterious, dark universe. It is the Father calling us out of the world's darkness. He calls us, seeks us, wants to bring us to Himself. "Where are you, my child?" Our prayers mean "Here I am. Father. I was afraid until you called. Since you have spoken, I am afraid no longer. Come, I am waiting for you, take me, lead me by the hand through the dark terrifying world."

It is a tremendous moment when a man hears this voice and knows he is safe. God is at hand! The world is not the ultimate, not all. There is a Lord of this world, a ruler over all things; one can call upon Him for He hears. I may say "thou" to Him and it is not merely an echo of my cry that returns to me, but an answer. There is meaning in prayer. Indeed if what has been said is true, not only has prayer meaning but in that meaning is life's most wonderful gift. How a lost explorer, immured upon the floating arctic ice must be encouraged when, thanks to the radio he has with difficulty rescued and set up, he not only sends out the S.O.S. but suddenly hears an answer! New courage and joyful hope mount within him. All can yet come out right. So too of prayer. In the midst of this dark incomprehensible world of fate, of death, it is the invisible contact with Him who is above all, and who calls to us: "Have no fear, I am here, thy Father, thy Creator and Redeemer. I will yet make all things come out right."

Faith lives on prayer, indeed, faith is nothing but prayer. The moment we really believe, we are already praying, and when we cease praying we also cease believing. The philosopher Kant made the statement that prayer obviously has no other effect than that of lifting the spirits of him who prays, and that to assume an effect outside the praying person was unreasonable. No other judgment is possible for the man who does not know the God who speaks to us, -- in the sphere of our feelings, perhaps, -- but utterly apart from our feelings, in Jesus Christ.

Because they do not know this God and this revelation so many men of our time no longer pray. True prayer is possible only as an answer to God's real revelation. True prayer, that is, prayer in which a man really believes he will be heard, is possible only when one believes in the Jiving God. What is meant by the "living God"? The God to Whom you can pray trustfully, because He has previously revealed to you His trust- worthiness. That is the living God.

Is it possible, then, for a modern man to pray? There can be no doubt that even the most cultured modem man who has at his disposal all the technical art of our day, needs to pray; indeed, deep in his heart wants to pray. But can such a man pray after learning all that he has about the mysterious world-machine, natural laws, and infinity? The modern man, no less than Abraham who looked up and beheld the starry Palestinian heavens 4000 years ago, is a living soul. He is no clod of earth, but an "I." Because of his spirit he is superior to this whole world of matter. My body is a bit of the world, my personality is not. Even the modern man can know that, and many of the clever and learned do know it. Then the question arises, has this personality a Lord, or is it its own master? Is this personality responsible -- that is, must it answer Him who calls it, or can it do what it pleases? Responsible man is already addressed by God: "Adam, where art thou?" We are all afraid of this voice, for we know that before it we cannot vindicate ourselves. But the voice which comes thus challenging carries within it that which also cheers: fear not, for I am thy God, thy Father. As surely as even the most modern man is a sinful man who cannot atone for his guilt, so surely the Gospel of the Grace of God is proclaimed to him. Thanks be to God for the many who hear it and henceforth answer God in prayer, with praise, thanks and supplication.

When we speak about freedom we generally make the mistake of asking what we are free from rather than what we are free for. Protestants are often very proud that the Reformation freed them from the Roman Catholic Church and its regulations, from its superstitions and from the authority of the Pope. All this is true, they must be answered, but what king or master do you now acknowledge? It is possible to get free from a false master only by accepting a good one; one is freed from superstition only by true faith, from the false law only by the true law. The man who has simply gotten "free" is without a master and therefore more deeply a slave. For there is no slavery comparable to the slavery of masterlessness. For then a man is slave to his own passions, or to that worst of all tyrants, the Ego, or as the Bible expresses it -- to sin. For Master-Ego and sin are exactly the same -- the sinful man is the man who recognizes no Lord but himself.

One can get free only by getting free from this Ego tyrant, sin. This liberation can occur only by the acceptance of God as our Lord. And we accept God as our Lord only by being saved through Christ from our sin. Freedom comes at no lesser price, one cannot underbid Jesus Christ.

"God saw with His eternal grace

My sorrow out of measure:

He thought upon His tenderness --

To save was His good pleasure.

He turned to me a Father's heart;

Not small the cost

To heal my smart:

He gave His best and dearest."



Luther knows what he is saying -- the cross of Jesus Christ is the price that had to be paid for our freedom. Not even God could "make it cheaper." Therefore the Apostle Paul says, "Ye are bought with a price; be not ye the servants of men." That is the freedom of a Christian man.

Paul always calls himself a servant of Jesus Christ. And in that servitude is his freedom. We are so created of God that we cannot be free, true men, happy, glad, strong manly men without Him -- only through Him. God created us for fellowship with Himself. Fellowship with God is, so to speak, the substance of human life. When we part with God and essay to stand on our own feet, we know our situation to be like that of the son in the parable who said to his father; "Father, give me my inheritance" -- then went into the far country and fell into misery. Without God we get into the far country and into misery. We waste that "human substance" which consists of fellowship with God and love. The redeeming work of Christ consists in bringing us, the lost, back home to the Father, and thus to liberty.

Only he who has become a "servant of Jesus Christ" is -- as Luther says -- a free Lord of all and subject to none, through the faith." He is free from worry -- "If God is for us who can be against us?" He is free from human authorities and Lords, from all legalistic service of the letter. Free from the guilt of sin, free from the fear of death -- for he has, through Christ, the forgiveness of sins and the promise of eternal life. He no longer needs to observe so and so many hundred laws like the pious Jew or Catholic, but only this one -- to remain by God his Father and Lord, bound by no other tie to this Lord and Father except the bond of childlike respect and grateful love. "Love God and do what you want!" was the way the great Augustine phrased it.

Just when one has become free by his reverence and love of God, and by his grateful faith in redemption through Jesus Christ, he is bound to men in a new way. So Luther adds a second statement to his first sentence: "A Christian man is the most dutiful servant of all and subject to every one through love." The slave of sin, slave of his own self is separated from men and wants to dominate them. He must seek his own. He is possessed by selfishness. But he who has been freed by Christ from this worst of all sicknesses and is placed in the love of God, is free from himself and free for others. The misery and the welfare of other men all at once become important for him. He sympathizes with them, rejoices with them, as though he were one with them. He would be ready to give all things, even his life for the sake of others. That is just the human element which now appears when the inhuman, the sinful has disappeared. He has become a true servant of man -- as Jesus was a servant of man. This freedom, the most glorious thing there is, begins at home. It grows the more we grow into communion with God: it subsides the more we separate ourselves from God. It is the fruit of faith alone. For faith is simply belonging wholly and completely to God. God desires to make us such glad free men through the Gospel.

None can understand the mystery of birth. The physician can "explain" how it comes about, and we can follow his "explanation." But as soon as we cease talking about the "something that originates in this way" and halt to think of ourselves as we know ourselves, what appeared as an explanation shows the face of a yet deeper mystery. "My life -- what does it really mean? Once I did not exist, I was born, now I am here, alive!" Such thoughts quiet all "explanations" and permit only that we marvel and say, "I cannot understand it at all." And yet, our quietness brings us before the fundamental question of existence. Our life is lived between two darknesses, the mystery of birth and the mystery of death. Birth means, "Here I am, I do not know why. I am what I am, I do not know why." And this, "Here I am as I am" cannot be spoken in the same manner as the words of the little lad who runs happily into the room, up to his mother, crying "Here I am!" Our words cannot be spoken thus, so happily, so simply, in so matter of fact a manner. We cannot say this "Here I am" and "As I am" without hearing something sigh within us, -- something of the feeling of a man who is hailed into police court or thrown into prison, and who now examines his cell, hurt, rebellious, sad, anxious. "Here I am -- why, really?" This question is concealed in every heart, but we scarcely note how it troubles us. We do not understand it.

Now, however, the cell door opens and we are told why our "Here I am, as I am" is so sad, anxious, and incomprehensible. God's Word tells us the secret of our life, created of God art thou, in His image, fallen from God hast thou, into sin! The Word of God, Jesus Christ gives you understanding of the meaning both of God's creation and our sin. When? How? We shall never understand this as long as we live, all we now know is, as far back as we can remember both have been present: that which comes from God and that which is against God, creation and sin. Already at the time a child is born both have had their share; they reach far back into the ancestry of the child, and all who are human beings have this double ancestry. Furthermore, the Gospel tells us that we are not only unhappy in this state but that in it we are cut off and lost from real life and from the truly good.

The Word of God says, secondly, that God pities us, that He saves us, the lost creation. He, against whom we live, is for us; he, without whom we live, comes to us. In Jesus Christ is given the double word -- God's inconceivable forgiveness and His promise of complete renewal. He shows us a picture totally different from what we see in ourselves. It is a picture of man truly, and perfectly undistorted, God's image. Whose picture is that? Your picture, says Christ -- it is you, through God's grace. God gives you this when you permit Him to draw you really and wholly to Him, when you believe and trust Him with all your heart.

When that happens, when a man really listens to God Himself, to Jesus Christ Himself -- what then? The Bible replies to this "what then?" with the word regeneration. Something has then taken place just as powerful and inconceivable as birth, the saying "Here I am as I am" finds a new meaning. "If any man is in Christ he is a new creature, old things are passed away, behold all things are become new." The old man still remains visible, but under the husk of the old, lives the new and begins to discard the old. Something visible begins to break forth from the invisible faith. It is love, a new manner of life, thought and speech, a new way of dealing with one's neighbor. It is not as though the old man simply disappeared, yet however a new life appears in transformations that give those, who know nothing of faith, something to think about and perhaps to ask about. Why has he changed so?

Do such things really happen? Or is this just a beautiful fantasy? No, says the Bible, there are such new men, whether they have names like Paul or Timothy, or, whether like the Philippian jailor, their names are un- known. Such renewal is to be found not only in the New Testament, but ever since then in every place where the Word of God concerning Jesus Christ is really believed "with the heart, not merely with the head" as Calvin says, -- wherever a son of man is bound anew with the heavenly Father by the power of the Holy Spirit.

There are reasons for our dislike of the word Conversion; it has done and still does much mischief. We all know of particularly devout persons who pounce upon their amazed fellow men at work, on the street, in the street-car with the sudden question, Tell me, are you converted? This is not the manner and method of the New Testament. Jesus went through the villages

and towns of Galilee, and cried, "Repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand." That the Christian life must be a daily repentance or conversion, was the first of Luther's Ninety-five Theses, with which the Reformation began. A man who does not know what repentance is, does not know the meaning of faith, forgiveness, or Jesus Christ. What, then, is repentance?

A right about face -- something as astonishing as though the water of the Rhine River should suddenly start .flowing upstream instead of downstream. The natural "inclination" of our heart and will is to seek ourselves. Like the rapacious spider that sits in the center of his web, we sit in the midst of our world in a spirit of acquisitiveness. We want men and what men have, their happiness, their possessions, their honor, their power. All this is our booty. But we want also from men their love, their respect, their time, and their sympathy. Our Ego sits like a king enthroned and demands that the world serve it. My wife, my children, my school, and -- yes, even my dear God, are all to serve "me." I am the Lord my God. Some maintain this primacy of the ego with delicacy, others coarsely; but all maintain it. So is the natural man, the unconverted man, the godless, loveless man. If any believes that I have made too harsh a judgment let him speak for himself. I confess in any case that I am such a man, -- and those I know are such people.

Something can happen in this sphere, however, that never happens in nature. The water of a stream never flows uphill, a goose never becomes a fox, or a fox a goose. But it can, moreover it

does happen, that this natural "inclination" of the human heart to say "I, I" can be reversed so that it says instead "Thou, Thou." That is the great miracle, the miracle that we designate with the word Love. Love is simply this, that one no longer sits, like the spider, in the midst of its web, or like the King Ego upon his throne, demanding service, but that one instead of living for himself, lives for others, instead of ruling, serves. There was one who could say of himself, "I am not come to be ministered unto but to minister." That was the decisive event in all human history: Jesus Christ who gave his life a ransom for many and his blood for the forgiveness of sin. Hence we know and the world knows because he came, what Love is.

Through him it is possible for the first time that this so new and totally different spirit becomes effective in the lives of others, for through Christ, God becomes the center about which everything revolves. He who is the sole legitimate king of our life, now becomes King in reality. He ascends the throne previously occupied by the pretender king. Ego, a truly violent revolution. And this revolution, (Umwalzung), is called in the Bible, repentance, return, conversion. When God becomes King, it happens that instead of "I, I" one says "Thou, Thou." This "thou" is addressed in the first place and primarily to God. "Thou God art my Lord." But who- ever comes to God experiences something noteworthy. At His door one hears the words, Go forth yonder where "thy neighbor" lives. God directs you with your love to your neighbor. You are to serve him. That is your reasonable worship. You are to show by your love to your neighbor whether you really love God.

This, then, is conversion: that we seek first the King- dom of God; that God's desire, namely, service to our neighbor, becomes our chief concern. But you cannot convert yourself; God alone can do it. He does it by addressing you both as your Judge and as your Redeemer, as He who "forgiveth all thine iniquities and healeth all thy diseases." And this conversion takes place within you whenever you permit God to say to you what He wants to say to you.

This reception of God's earnest voice happens, in- deed, for a first time; and in that sense one may speak of "my conversion." But it is more deeply true that one must be converted anew each day. Perhaps you bear in memory the time when it first happened; but there are many who cannot be definite about the "first time" who nevertheless know that it has happened, and happens every day. But there is another possibility, perhaps it has never happened to you! In that event that seemingly arrogant question, "Are you converted?" is, in- deed, not so improper after all. But the man who is really converted, that is, in whom conversion is a daily happening, and not an isolated moment, will not arrogantly parade his conversion. But he will long for every neighbor of his, that the other may share the life that he has received.

"By faith alone" was the battle cry of the Reformation. Can it, must it retain its priority today? Moreover, is it not a dangerous, even a false slogan? Has not this slogan become a challenge to polemical battle? Has it not produced among Christians the false idea that it depends "only" on the correctness of one's faith, and minimizes the correctness of one's life? If this is what one

understands by "faith" the taking for granted of certain dogmas, the simple acceptance of what is in the Bible as true -- there is indeed no more fatal error in Christianity than the saying "by faith alone." Faith then is a certain viewpoint, a weltanschauung, side by side with other theories and ideas. But a theory or a world-view, be it Christian or another, can never be essential. What does God ask about our theories or ideas? What does God care whether we have the "Christian world-view" or another! The spectator who strolls through life, has a viewpoint for he does not engage in the battle. God forbids us to be idlers, he wants fighters. It is only from the thick of the fight that one can understand what the Reformers and the Apostles meant by the word "faith." What do you "believe" rightly under- stood means, whom do you trust, to whom have you pledged your loyalty? Or it means what we were perhaps asked as children, whose child are you? That I belong wholly to God, that I, as the Heidelberg catechism so beautifully expresses it, "with body and soul, both in life and in death, am not my own, but belong to my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ . . . and makes me heartily willing and ready henceforth to live unto Him."

Just as it is false to confuse faith with a viewpoint, a mere acceptance of certain "dogmas," so, too, it is wrong to suppose that faith is only a vague "trust in God" which even the pious heathen have also possessed. Why then would we need the Bible, the Revelation of God in Jesus Christ, the Cross and his Resurrection? It certainly depends upon trusting the true God and not any sort of chimera of the divine; that we entrust ourselves to the God who revealed Himself in Jesus Christ and nowhere else as our true, real God, and not simply to a product of our fantasy. When one takes the word "faith" seriously, as it is meant in the Bible, a man cannot truly believe in any other God than Him who in Jesus Christ has shown Himself to us and called us to Himself. One believes truly only when one knows "by faith alone" and the pious heathen know nothing of that. The Bible alone speaks of this "by faith alone." Why is that?

Pious heathen of ancient and modern times all want to come to God themselves, by prayer, by a virtuous life, by stern discipline, by a holy life. They think, that if they are earnest enough about this pious life, that they are true to God, and He will accept them. All pious heathenism -- even all pious "Christian" heathenism -- is "righteousness by the works of the law," trust in what man does. But in contrast to this the Bible says that you cannot be "good enough." If you choose to go this way, there are only two possibilities: either you deceive yourself about yourself, forgetting that you are a sinful man, confusing the demands of God with the standards of middle-class integrity and thus satisfying yourself; or you really take God's will seriously and fall into despair when you see that you can never be just before that will. Frequently it happens then that the pendulum swings back and forth between false self-trust and despair. That is the religion of the pagan. In the Bible, however, it is said that you cannot satisfy God, but God satisfies Himself and you. You are not to rely on what you do, but solely, alone on what God does. We must say even more than that. You cannot know what the word "God" means until you are at the end of your strength, and can hope only in God. The man who has not yet discovered this "God only" has not yet discovered God. The gods of the heathen are not truly God. The true God is the God one finds when he can no longer help himself, and he puts his hope in Him alone. To hope in God alone, not in the power of self, one's ability or knowledge, means faith, means being God's own.

This is harder than all penances, prayers, and the good works of the pious heathen. For there is nothing in all the world so humiliating as no longer to trust in one's self. And nothing is so difficult in all the world as to trust in God alone. Difficult? Indeed -- Impossible! We cannot force our being's abdication and accept God alone. Only God can do that for us. And he has done that for us -- on the Saviour's cross. It is there that a double action is accomplished, for our pride is broken and buried -- and there God comes to meet us, He who alone can help. To believe aright means, then to receive the crucified Christ, to apprehend in his cross the end of all our self-redeeming activity, and the beginning of God's creative redemption. That God alone can and does help -- this is closed to our knowledge, inaccessible to our trust except through the cross of Christ. "By faith alone" then, means not I, but God alone creates my redemption, my salvation, the saving and redeeming of the world; He alone is good, He alone brings to the desired goal -- "with might of ours can naught be done;" -- that means to rely on God alone, to make God our whole defense.

Does not that make man lazy? Ask a Luther, a Zwingli, a Calvin whether this "God alone" faith made them lazy! Examine the lives of others who have really received this "God alone" faith in all of its depth and magnificence, and inquire whether it has made them morally indifferent or ethically lazy. It is the great mystery of God that men do not become strong until they know their weakness, and expect all things from the power of God. The strong, the real "doers" in Christendom have been those who relied solely on the work of God, and not those who trusted much in human activity. For God's power is made perfect in weakness, and only when a man knows how weak he is can God become mighty in him. It is precisely the truly good that is done "by faith alone."

"It is enough to drive one to despair!" We have all uttered these words when we have waited vainly for the success of a cherished project, when great and repeated exertions have not caused our work to prosper, when our high expectations of another person have not been fulfilled. Fortunately these dismal moods do not come every day, for if they did we should indeed be driven to despair.

There are people, however, who have the feeling of despair, not now and then but constantly, and when we observe carefully we realize that there are more such folk than we are apt at first to think. We are often desperate without noting it or knowing why. Why do we despair, really? We are driven to despair when there is apparently no way out, no goal in view. But do we see the way out, the goal? One goal we certainly see -- death. We must all go hence, is that not enough to drive us to despair? If death terminates all -- can there be anything more desperate than that? No other goal, no way out, no sense to anything, everything in vain, if the close of all things is always the one vast empty nothing. Death -- the great chasm into which all must eventually fall, the beautiful along with the dissolute, the good along with the bad, the valuable and the valueless alike. When a lad in the first grade has taken great pains with his drawing only to have the teacher snatch it roughly out of his hand, tear it to bits and throw the pieces into the wastebasket -- isn't that enough to drive the poor little lad to 'despair? But are we not all such poor little fellows, whose teacher is death, casting into the great chasm with his rough hand all that we have created, all that we have tended and built up with loving care? Does that not make us desperate?

There is only one thing more fearful than the thought that death ends all: that one is in such dreadful condition that he hopes that death ends all, because he is fearful of what is to come afterward. When a bad conscience troubles a man so that he must think: I will be punished for what I have done; there will come a day when all things will appear in the light of day, the great unavoidable reckoning. When one is so desperate that death -- I mean death as the ultimate -- seems a way out, a goal to be desired -- that is the ultimate desolation. Whether or not we give this most fearful thing the name Hell is of no significance; the name does not matter. This thought, in any case, leads one to despair. And who has never had such a thought? Have you so lived that you can be sure it does not await you? Are you certain this is not your goal? Death and Hell as a goal is indeed enough to drive one to despair, and who or what can free us from utter dejection? No one, nothing can do it. For no one can avert death, and no one can take away my guilt. All the lovely, charming, and powerful things of life cannot master this despair. Who is master over death and the fear of Hell? You can determine not to think about it -- draw the curtains of your soul. You can plunge into work, to forget it, you can drown your sorrow in drink, plunge into society and gossip in order to drown out these voices of despair -- but it is useless. When children at play try to stop the flow of a spring by placing their hands over the overflow pipe, the water spurts out from under their fingers. So, too, with the resolution not to think about our despair. We become ill and nervous, sleep badly, discover desires unknown before, in short our despair works within the deep and dark places of our being like a sinister and destructive spirit. To dismiss conscious thoughts of our despair is not to cure it. How, how shall we come to terms with this thing?

There is but one word strong enough to conquer despair -- and that is faith. Either we despair -- or we believe. Nothing but faith is able to swallow up despair, there is no other alternative. That is the great either-or in life, more important than any other. Ether despair -- or faith. That means that either everything will come out all right, or everything will come out all wrong. Either death and Hell in the end, or the end is God. Faith means with all things end in God. "Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting, O grave, where is thy victory? Thanks be to God who giveth us the victory......" So to speak is the work of faith. Only he who believes in God wins the victory over despair.

Who can speak that way: ". . . who hath given us the victory?" Who is able to say, We have the victory? Death and Hell are overcome for us? Who has spoken this glorious word and how could he do it? Listen to the rest of the quotation: "Thanks be to God who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." That is the victory; Jesus Christ is the Word of God, the Word with which God robs death and Hell of their power to make us despair. God in Christ has closed the chasm of death and quenched the flames of Hell -- for every one that believes on Him. For: "he that believeth on me, though he were dead, yet shall he live." "For I am persuaded, that neither death nor life, nor principalities, nor powers.....(nothing) shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." Hence we must constantly keep Jesus Christ before us. Because he is the Victory, because in him God forgives our guilt, and because in him God promises us eternal life. Faith means to hear Jesus as God's Word to us, and see him as God's victory; and that alone means the end of despair.

Many a person has opened the Bible at some time or other, turned over a few pages, read this and that, and laid it aside again, saying, "Nothing there for me." Perhaps a few years later, after something has happened to him, he has read the same passages again. But now every word is like a hammer blow of God upon his heart. Why this difference? One can express it in two ways, from the human side and from the divine side. One can say that the Lord opened the heart as was said of that seller of purple (Acts 16) ; or one can say that God's spirit spoke directly through the Bible.

Without the work of God's spirit in opening our hearts, we cannot really understand the Bible. The book may appear interesting, or instructive, or touchingly beautiful to us; but to move the heart so that we know that God is now speaking to us, Himself to myself, this the Bible can do only when the Holy Spirit is added. So too is it with the message of the preacher on Sunday: we can hear a fine sermon without the Holy Spirit, but we then do not hear the Word of God in the sermon. Even a simple man on the street or at home can speak the Word of God to us -- through the Holy Spirit.

God has not spoken only in past times by the Prophets and Apostles. He speaks today. But not everything that pretends to be the Word of the Holy Spirit is what it claims to be. We need a measure by which to know what is of the Spirit of God and what is not. This measure is the Bible, the document, the original word of the Holy Spirit, the normal meter upon which all that claims to be God's Word must be gauged. What- ever fails to agree with it, cannot be God's Word.

The Holy Spirit does not only speak. When God really speaks there occurs not empty words but action. God's Word is ever the Word of the Creator. The Holy Spirit is creative power, wonder -- might. When God's Spirit enters a life, something miraculous always takes place. All becomes different than before. The letters of the Apostle are full of the miraculous workings of the Spirit of God. The first and perhaps most important is the fact that the human heart formerly disquieted, divided, rebellious, and at the same time despairing, becomes peaceful. "Peace with God," "reconciled" is the apostolic description. We are by nature at war with God and consequently at war, too, with man. We are not in a position to bring peace out of this conflict. The most wonderful thing that can happen to a man in this earthly life is to become right with God. The immediate result is joy. Many men claim they believe in God, but they go through life with as little peace as those who believe nothing. So to live is to manifest a misunderstanding of what belief means. A man who has really found God, so that God Himself has spoken to him and said, "You are my child," cannot be disquieted any more; a great never-ceasing joy has been kindled in him. This joy can almost be smothered by life's ashes, but it cannot be quenched. It continues to break forth again and again in spite of the ashes, and that is the work of the Holy Spirit.

The greatest fruit and the most glorious miracle is love. Love is an inward openness to the needs of others. As long as we do not love, the "other" remains on the outside. He is locked out, a stranger. We are for our- selves, and the "other's" existence has significance only as it pertains to ourselves. Love is a miracle that makes of the "other" no stranger; we are created for him, here for him, ready for him, eyes and ears for him; our whole being speaks to him -- come in, you are welcome here! An open door for my neighbor is love, the greatest miracle of the Holy Spirit.

The Spirit of God renews men. We say of ourselves, I am as I am; as we say of another, he is as he is. We mean that each man receives this or that nature from his parents, and lives his life true to his received endowment. We say that as surely as an apple cannot be changed to a pear, so surely is a person's nature unalterable. But He who made the apples and pears, the Creator, can alter anything and He does it, too. The Bible is full of the message of transformation. "If any man is in Christ he is a new creature; old things are passed away, behold, all things are become new." That is the miracle of the Holy Spirit.

In the New Testament the Holy Spirit is In an especial manner the Spirit of the "community" of Jesus, the "Church." For the Holy Spirit is a spirit of fellowship, bringing individuals out of their isolation) making "one body" of them. To be sure there is for the most part little evidence of this in our churches, a sign of how little the Holy Spirit is alive within them. As the fire is to be known by its brightness and warmth, so the Spirit of God is to be known by the fellowship it produces. And as fire kindles fire (what looks like fire but does not spread is probably only pyrotechnical display), so life kindled by the Holy Spirit must spread and ignite all with its burning. It was in this way that the Church of Jesus Christ spread, it was in this way that the Reformation set all Europe on fire within a few years. It is the Spirit's way of working. The Holy Spirit is God at work now, redeeming, coming to us in the word concerning His Son, the "triune" God.

The power of evil is in our guilt. Having erred we cannot make our wrong good, henceforth we have no power over it. Our evil now belongs to the past, it is now written yonder in eternity. As every mile a man drives in his car is automatically registered upon the speedometer, so everything we do is somehow "registered" in eternity, to appear for the first time on the Judgment Day. As soon as a thing is done, it is re- corded, and no repentance can alter the record in the slightest degree. It stands there and testifies against us -- guilty!

This "register" in the realm of eternity has, more- over, another uncomfortable feature. It not only registers what men see in me, but what God sees in me. Like the X-ray that reveals the inner parts that otherwise re- main invisible, God looks upon the heart. Thy heart, O man! Does that not frighten you? Does that not cause despair? "For in thy sight. Lord, shall no man living be justified." Make no mistake about it, on that register is written our death sentence. When God makes up the account, there can be no other statement than -- unfaithful! unfaithful! cast out!

That is what conscience tells us. In these days conscience seems to judge less severely. Who in our time ever thinks of Hell, or of being lost? Old wives' tales! We understand how to manipulate the register so that nothing causes us alarm. But such manipulation with the conscience really profits nothing. The register in eternity still shows the judgment -- lost. Conscience still informs us secretly -- thou hast not taken God's will in earnest. Thou canst not stand in His judgment. And secretly every one feels this. There is no one who does not fear God -- even those who deny God and laugh at faith in God. Beneath the surface, deep down in the soul, dwells the fear of God, the fear of being lost. Our conscience tells us that; it is -- as Paul expressed it once, "the handwriting . . . against us" (Col. 2:14); such is the meaning of the word guilt.

What does God say to all this? He tells us that the voice within speaks truly. The conscience that accuses us does not lie. That meter, upon which our guilt mounts like the mileage of the automobile, is God's instrument. We said that conscience registers what God sees, what God says. In God's chancery the death sentence against us is made up.

"Yes, but...." Have we any right to say "Yes, but"? Is it possible that God "may not be so strict," and, as the saying is, "may stretch a point in our favor"? The judgment, "the handwriting against us" is finished and signed by God. But.....

But, Jesus Christ, the crucified hath "forgiven you all trespasses; blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us......and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross." Not as though the sentence of death were meaningless. Registered means surely that from our point of view we are guilty and lost. Precisely this is what God wants to tell us by the cross of His Son.

God will not wink at evil. He takes our guilt seriously. Even for Him it is nothing inconsiderable. He cannot and will not tear up the "manuscript." He could no doubt do so, but for our sakes He will not. For we should then take guilt too lightly, and God desires to show us that what is written on the manuscript is correct. He will even carry out the judgment. But......over all stands His forgiving father love.

He will not destroy the manuscript that testifies against us, but He will destroy its power by a higher power. He has "nailed it to the cross" that we might see both our guilt and His even greater mercy; the earnestness of His holy will and the even greater earnestness of His fatherly love. That is the message of Jesus Christ, the Mediator.

Suppose a farmhand set fire to his master's barn. The man is liable for the damages with all that he has. The master could take everything the servant has -- shoes, clothing, money, and say, "All of this is only a small part of what my servant really owes me. And now let the scoundrel get out of my sight!" But the master does nothing of the sort, takes nothing away. He rather says to his faithless servant, "I will take everything upon myself; I will pay everything." And then the servant opens his eyes in amazement; for he sees what a good master he has.

God dealt with us in this way through Jesus Christ. He has taken everything upon Himself; He has Himself borne the curse of sin that we should have carried. Jesus went to the cross, because man could not have endured the presence of God. In permitting himself to be crucified Jesus both brought God nearer, and himself showed man more clearly his distance from God. The manuscript that testifies against us, is there displayed, legible to all, our death sentence. And at the same time it is destroyed, God loves you in spite of all. God's son had to go through this shambles really to come near to us. All this was necessary that we men might see God and ourselves, God in His love, and ourselves in our godlessness. Apart from the cross on Golgotha we should know neither our condition nor the boundlessness of God's love. God and man can there be seen together -- human misery and perdition, and God's presence and ineffable love. Jesus reveals both us and God on the Cross. And by that act he accomplishes the greatest thing possible: he brings man back again to God.

He accomplishes "the atonement through his blood." As a mother follows her lost child in all its misery, filth and shame, so, too, God in Jesus Christ came into our condition to be wholly with us. Thus Jesus, the crucified, is the promised "God with us" or "Immanuel" and Golgotha the one place in all the world where we may behold the mystery of divine Love. Who -- we? I will say it more correctly -- you, if you permit God to tell you by name that this was done because you need it, and because God loves you.

Do you know what a man is? Is he not an abysmal riddle? What has the wholesale murderer of Dusseldorf in common with Father Bodelschwingh, or with Elizabeth Fry, the angel of the imprisoned? Which of those is "man," true man? One can say what a true fox, dog or eagle is -- but what is a true man? Are you perhaps a true man? Really?

This question itself shows us at once the source of the riddle of man. It comes from our failure to be what we should be. Such a thing can be said only of man. He alone has freedom to be different than he ought to be. And indeed we are all different than we ought to be. What is written in the story of creation is no longer true, "God created man in his own image." We have all seen pictures taken in the World War, a man with helmet and gas mask, half erect and charging with fixed bayonet -- the image of God? or the devil? Which does he most resemble? You could be this man! It is only "chance" that you or your husband, brother or son do not look like that. God's image? We recall the starving thousands in China, the pitiable folk in insane asylums, prisons, hospitals, the drunkard who is violent in his home, the prodigal son, wasting his substance in the far country, remembering that we, too, are this prodigal son who can say nothing more to his father than, "Father, I am no more worthy to be called thy son. . . " What has happened to the image of God? Is it perhaps a fairy story? "You know what men are like. . ." "I know something about men and know. . . " Who can believe that fabulously great statement of the divine creation of man? A true man is an "ideal" that never occurs in reality. But how does it happen that we have such an ideal? How does it happen that every man knows quite well, I am no true man, things are not right with me? Whence this measure, this image of what we "really" ought to be? And whence the anxiety and the concern over our failure. When the Prodigal Son came to the extremity of his misery, keeping the swine, there awoke in him the memory of his home, and he sobbed with homesickness. How different it was at home! That is the secret experience of all of us. That "ideal" is like a. yellowed photograph of us, "as we used to be." A faded picture scarcely visible any more; we can hardly believe that there is a "true man."

Here he stands before us, not a fantastic ideal, but a true man of flesh and blood. "Behold the man," the image of God. That is Jesus, man as God wanted him to be when He created him, the man who lives wholly in the things of his Father. "My meat is to do the will of him that sent me and to finish his work." He not only says it but is it in all the narratives and word~ that the Gospels report of him. The "Son of Man --" he, before whom one must halt and say, yes, I have found him whom I have been seeking -- the man, the true Man.

What does it profit us that he lived 1900 years ago? For all of that we are not what we ought to be. But this man Jesus has something to say to us. "I am sent to you by my father -- by your father, to tell you that He wants to make you like me. You are to become as truly man as I am."

"Who, me?"

"Yes, you!"

"But that is impossible -- I’m a poor sort of man; no one can make anything much out of me." "You are right. No one can do it but God. But He will."

Jesus Christ is come not only to show us the true man, but to tell us God's purposes to remake us in our lost image. That you shall become. Moreover, you shall be like Jesus Christ, who has gone into eternity. "It doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him." That is the glad message of the Gospel. We suffer most from ourselves, even when we do not realize it, even when we suppose the cause of our grief and suffering is from without. The deepest cause of all that is not right, is that we ourselves are not right. And therefore that is the greatest message that we can hear -- things will be right with you. Ponder how a blind man must feel when he is told, "You will receive your sight again," or when a cripple is told, "You will be straight and strong again!" And this is only external! We are to become internally right again, straight and strong and fine through God's grace. "Rejoice with exceeding joy." That is the message of the Son of Man.

It is especially difficult for Swiss people to believe that we must and do have a king. The word Liberty was sung to us even in the cradle. It is a beautiful word, and we rightly exalt it. But this honor of liberty is only one half of the truth, liberty is not the first, but the second word. The first word is obedience. God created man in His own image -- which means that we are created for liberty. But we have overlooked the first word: God created man. Therefore God is master. As long as men keep that firmly in mind, that God is Lord, they may and should strive for liberty; but when they have forgotten the primary truth their liberty becomes license and arrogance. What is true of the child is true also of adults. We become free only through obedience. A child who has never been obliged to follow, remains a weak creature all his life, the football of his moods, a slave of his desires and passions. A man who holds aloft only the one word Liberty without knowing first and foremost that God is the Lord, whom man must unquestioningly obey, is and remains a child, a spoiled, poor, silly child. The most important word in our language is the one so often thoughtlessly and profanely used -- Lord God. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. That is the undergirding of a sound house. Where the foundation is weak or decayed the house is constantly threatened with collapse. How much more important is this solid base than a good coat of paint on the weather boarding outside.

God, the Creator of all things, your Creator and mine, desires to rule, to be king. But He does not propose to be a tyrant. He could do with us what He would; He could so make us that we were unable to do wrong, like a machine that performs what it was made to do and nothing else.

God, however, does not want that! He does not want us to be machines, He does not want us to be compelled to do His will, but that we might do it of our own free will. And that means obedience, for only he who freely does the will of God, of his own accord, really obeys; all other obedience is pretense for it does not come from the heart. God wants us to obey Him with all our heart, in reverence and love. Such a king He desires to be. For this cause He has sent us Jesus Christ, for this reason He has given us the Gospel. The Gospel is the message of the "Kingdom" of God, -- more correctly the "reign" of God.

Who is God, where is God? God is in heaven, people say, and that is far away. God is invisible, unknown -- and so obedience is difficult. No doubt the great house of God, the world in which we live is full of traces of the Lord who built it and to whom it belongs, but He himself, the King, we do not meet in His house. And we want to meet Him, not His works only but -- Him, His very self. The Prophets of the Old Testament brought indeed messages of this royal Lord, like heralds whom the king sends to proclaim his will. And they were permitted to say something more. They pro- claimed that He Himself was coming soon and would no longer be distant, but would dwell with His people. He comes, He comes, He Himself! So could they speak because they saw Him coming, He in whom the invisible God was visible, the distant and inconceivable one was near and conceivable, yet they never saw Him upon earth. But like the servant who announces the king's coming, they draw back the curtain and say, this is He -- so John the Baptist, the last Prophet, proclaimed at the coming of the Lord, The Lord! Here He is -- He Himself.

That is our Lord Jesus Christ. Hence the kingdom of God begins with him, the time of the reign of God. "He came unto his own." The will of God, the mystery of God, the heart of God, the hidden counsels of God are revealed in Jesus Christ. God comes as a man to the sons of men for only so could men understand Him. God in heaven -- is something so distant, pale and indefinite that He scarcely concerns us at all. God in heaven causes us no concern. But the conception of God on earth is something serious for it brings the will of God near and unavoidable, as clear and perceptible as the will of a man we meet. The Jews felt indeed this crisis and that is why they wanted to have nothing to do with him. They killed him. It transpired exactly as the Lord prophesied in his Parable of the Vineyard (Matt. 21). The husbandmen themselves crave Lordship, so they murder the messengers who come to collect the rent; they murder the Lord's son who comes to restore the property to his Father.

So, too, do we. We want to be our own Lords. "He came unto his own and his own received him not." Jesus Christ is come but we will not have him for our king, we want to remain "free." But that simply means we want to remain slaves of evil, for if Christ does not reign in us, some one else does. Evil desire, greed, covetousness, thirst for honor, thirst for power, egotism. One can believe that these things comprise freedom. In reality they are slavery, and this can be demonstrated by the results -- unhappiness and the creation of unhappiness. Men thus enslaved become in-human, evil, and society becomes a strife of man against man. There is neither peace within nor with other men, for God has ordained that man shall be forever peaceless, joyless, in bondage, except in obedience to the Creator. "But as many as received him to them gave he power to become the sons of God." Thank God the story of the husbandmen need not be repeated. It can happen that a man accepts Jesus as his king. Just that is faith. Faith does not consist in self-made opinions about the Bible and God, nor in accepting the opinions of other people. Faith means to accept Jesus as King and obey him. That is the oldest creed of the Christian Church -- Jesus, the Lord! This confession, of course, may be a mere phrase, a surface opinion. But then it is a lie. For "My Lord" means him whom I obey. Faith is obedience, and the Christian life, is, so to speak, military service: marching under the command of Jesus, the Lord. But quite different from the army, too! The command is the will of him who allowed himself to be killed on a cross, that we might learn the meaning of obedience, of sacrifice in service to one's neighbor.