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No man can know who God is. The cleverest scholar knows nothing more concerning God than the simplest man. There dwells of course within every human heart a feeling of something higher than itself, a dim apprehension of a Power ruling all that is, and giving His Law to all that lives. But how dark and confused this pre- sentiment is, is shown by the history of mankind and by everyday life. What variety of ideas men have of "God" and "the divine" -- and how many have no conception of the matter whatsoever. Who dare to say, "I know who God is. I know His plans and purposes?" This much we know of God; He is the great mystery. And we know something else, even though obscurely -- that things are not well between God and ourselves. We cannot dismiss either one, the darkness surrounding God, and the darkness in ourselves. Can it be that both are the same?

"No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared Him." Why did the Apostles and the first Christians call Jesus the Son of God?

Because in him they discovered who God is. Jesus is like God. To be enabled to perceive that Jesus was not simply a noble, engaging man but the manifestation of the nature of God was the crisis and creative moment of their faith; and that perception was the glad news. In him God speaks to us. Therefore the first Christians also called him the Word of God. The Prophets were called of God and commissioned to proclaim the Word of God. But what they spoke was not yet the real Word of God. It was but the Prophet who spoke, not God Him- self. They were His tools, mouthpieces, but He Himself remained hidden and far away. No prophet had the temerity to say, look at me, and then you will know who God is.

Still the Prophets had something which no one else in all the history of the world possessed -- neither the great Chinese sages, nor the Greek philosophers, nor the saints of India. They had a message from God Himself. The Prophets had indeed the Word of God; but they themselves were not the Word. Hence they knew that something greater was yet to come; they pointed to the future, to the coming Messiah. Even the last of the Prophets, John the Baptist, spoke so. "But One mightier than I cometh, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to unloose,..." He, who is more than a prophet!

Who is more than a prophet? One who not only has the Word, but is the Word! He who does not merely proclaim and promise salvation, but gives it. He who unlike the Prophets does not need to be told of God what to say, but who speaks of God as of Himself, who possesses within himself the fountainhead of the Word of God, who docs not stand awe-stricken before the mystery of God, but who, himself, reveals the mystery of God. No man can be that. Man can never be more than a prophet. Above the prophet stands only the One who Himself equips the prophet, who gives the Word -- God. God alone possesses the Word, and no one can say, the Word of God comes from me, except God. He who says, Jesus is more than a prophet, Jesus is the Word of God -- says, Jesus is not simply a man like us, but he is God Himself.

That is the inconceivable -- and precisely in this in- conceivable subsists the Christian faith. Non-Christians have everything but this, they have the commandments of God, even the commandment to love one's neighbor, the omnipotence and wisdom of God. But this they do not have -- God, who Himself comes to us and shows Himself to us as God-man, longs for fellowship with us, and that He -- in spite of all -- is not ashamed of us, but loves us and desires to bring us to glory.

This God, who condescends to man and comes so near the humankind as though He were one of them -- this God the heathen do not have. And we know this God only because of what has happened. This self-condescension, this humiliation, this God we have in Jesus Christ.

To be sure not every one has God in Jesus Christ. All depends on what Jesus means to a man. He to whom Jesus is only a man -- were he ever so exalted, pious, noble, wise, the greatest of all religious founders and saints -- does not have this God. "He who hath not the Son, hath not the Father." It is with him as with a man who has a banknote on which is printed 1000 dollars: the belief that the note is counterfeit makes it worthless to such an one, a mere scrap of paper. He does not have the 1000 dollars. He who does not believe that in Jesus God Himself comes to us, does not apprehend the God who reveals Himself to us in the coming of Jesus Christ. He does not perceive the gracious will of God; God's secret, the divine plans for the world are not unveiled for him. The atonement did not take place for him; Jesus Christ is not God's word and deed for him. He is not that man's Saviour. For a man cannot save us. Only God can do that, only Jesus Christ can do that if God is in him as the Saviour.

We should honor great men, saintly men are noble examples for us, but no great or saintly man can reveal God's mystery to us and bind us with God; no man can take away our guilt and make us certain of the completion of life in eternal life. This God alone can do, and He does just that in Jesus Christ, who, for that reason is not merely a great man, but the Son of God. How does it happen that God comes to us as man? I do not know, I do not even know how it happens that something becomes alive, that a man is born. That is God's secret as Creator. How much more the incarnation of God remains His secret. But what I can know, and what I can rejoice in every day as a Christian is that God bestows His love upon me in His Son, and that He will give it to all who believe on him, the Son of God.

We speak of this age as the twentieth century. The year 1, the birth year of Jesus, divides world history in two parts -- before Christ and after Christ. Thus the world acknowledges, externally at least, the coming of Jesus as the world epoch. One may well be amazed that so humble an event has had such tremendous universal consequences. And still all this is nothing, for it is possible that the calendar may be altered, and a new year accepted. Jesus as an epoch-making personality is -- like all other world history -- dust, mortality.

Who was Jesus? A great, saintly man, greater than all other saints? Founder of a religion, the greatest of all? The supreme example? If Jesus is that, then he is, like every other great man, dust.

There will come a time when he will have nothing more to say to any one. Who was Jesus? As long as you ask in this way, you remain in a cool historical detachment from your question, quite interesting but fundamentally of no consequence. Ask, Who is Jesus? What is he to me? Can a man who lived nearly 2000 years ago mean anything to me? No! What was is past, and lives only through recollection. What was, does not, ultimately, concern you. For this reason he has two names -- Jesus Christ. He is called Jesus for all who know him only through history. If you know him only so, he means nothing to you. Jesus Christ he is called for those to whom God reveals His own secret. Of ourselves we cannot give to Jesus the name Christ. Christ, Saviour, Redeemer, he is called only for him whom God Himself saves, through him. If we were to read in the paper tomorrow that a spring of quite wonderful properties had broken forth at Bethlehem, Palestine, and that whoever drank of this water would become healthy, what sort of a pilgrimage there would be to Bethlehem! "There alone healing is to be had," people would say. Yes, more than that has transpired, the divine spring has broken forth there, and whoever drinks of it "will never die -- in eternity." How is that possible? What does that mean?

Jesus is a man, but in that human life something happened that never happened before. In him God's will, God's world plan, God Himself, whom we do not apprehend, but can merely surmise, became manifest. "He who sees me, sees the father." Jesus Christ is the sole "place" in the world where one can see God, and because we see God there, we also see ourselves anew -- in truth. Of ourselves we do not know who we are; we do not rightly know what the Bible means in saying "God created man in his own image." Nor do we rightly know that we are sinners and lost creatures. Both can be known only when one knows God, but we do not know God. Who God is, and who we are, is revealed to us in Jesus Christ by God Himself. God had to come to us as man to show us ourselves, our own creation, and our own sin. But He came and showed us ourselves and Himself, to lead us from the lie unto the truth, from damnation to salvation, from perdition and death to life and blessedness.

God did not do this by setting up a picture, a mirage, a window -- through which we could see into the heart of things, into the mystery of God and our own mystery. It is not as spectators that we can see Christ in Jesus, but only when we are challenged, called to an accounting, pressed to make a personal response, pressed for a decision. He alone apprehends Jesus as the Christ who allows God to call him in Christ. Before one answers yes to this call, one "sees" nothing -- nothing but this remarkable man Jesus of Nazareth. When others say, he is the Saviour, the Redeemer that is of no significance to you, no more than a picture which some one else thinks beautiful should give you pleasure. You must know him yourself, be able to say yes to him. That is faith. Jesus is not the Christ for the onlooker, the thinker, the scholar, the historically informed, but simply and solely for the believer. "He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live," he alone drinks from the spring of life.

It is proclaimed to all, behold the tabernacle of God is with men! Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world. Behold there, he, in whom God reveals your godlessness, and in spite of that, calls you His child! But the question is, whether we simply hear this message, or whether it finds the heart, whether we apprehend it as the truth, whether we hear God Himself come to us in Jesus calling us to Himself. When that happens Jesus is not simply Jesus of Nazareth, the great saint, but something happens to us as to Peter -- Verily thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God! Then will he also say to us, "blessed art thou, for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father in heaven." When that happens -- Christmas has truly come.

Every one has a bad conscience whenever he thinks about God, for we know quite well what God wants of us, and our own failure to do what He demands. We know that we are disobedient. But because we know that we do all the more what we ought not -- we flee from God, we hide from Him like Adam and Eve after the Fall. The Law of God drives us away from God, or, more correctly, our bad conscience drives us away. We do not fear God, but we are afraid before God. Therefore the bad conscience, despite the fact that it tells us the truth, is, so to speak, an enemy of God. It is precisely this which stands between us and God. It does not let us come to God. A bad conscience and the law of God belong together. We have a bad conscience because we know the law of God. But the God who is known to us solely from the law is not at all the true God. The true God does not say first, "thou shalt," but "I am." How do the Ten Commandments begin? Not with "thou shalt have no other Gods before me," but with "I am the Lord thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage."

God is not primarily the lawgiver, but the lifegiver. The essential is not what He demands but what He gives. As Creator He gives us life, the world with all its goods, his Ordinances are His gift. It is His gift that man and woman are created so wonderfully for each other, that the one can be happy only in the devotion to the other. Marriage is holy because it is God's gift. God does not give commands to show that He can give orders. His Commandments are nothing but explanations of his Ordinances which are gifts.

The meaning of all the Commandments is not to destroy that which God has so wondrously bestowed upon you -- this life which is holy because it is God's gift; God's commandments are given to protect life from gross infringement, like a wall thrown about a glorious garden. The Commandments of God are gifts of God.

God wants to bestow more than this life upon us. Even the heathen know faintly that this life on earth is a gift of God the Creator. But they do not know that God wants to bestow something upon us much greater than life. This is the message of the Bible only. God did not say all at once what He proposed to give. His speaking begins with Abraham, "in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed." What this world-wide blessing of Abraham really is, Abraham does not know, but it is promised, and Abraham believed the word of promise. Later the Promise is of that wonderful King of righteousness and the kingdom of peace of which Isaiah prophesies: when righteousness will rule instead of unrighteousness, life instead of destruction, peace among the nations instead of war, peace even among the animals. The dawn becomes ever more bright. There comes Jeremiah with his God-given word of promise concerning a new covenant in which there will be not only righteousness and peace in the external sense of the word, but forgiveness of sin and peace with God, wherein the law of God will not have to be commanded, but goodness will be inscribed in the heart of man. And above all, God Himself will be graciously present with His people, and they shall really know themselves to be His people. Then finally, the clear- ness of morning before the sunrise, the New Testament in the midst of the Old, the promise of the coming servant of God, who takes upon himself the guilt of His people, bears their grief and through his suffering atones for the sin of man (Isaiah 53).

That is the biblical message, not what God wants of us, but what He desires for us; not what we should do, but what God does and gives. The Law of God is every- where, the Promise of God is only in the Bible -- the promise, namely, that God comes to His sick, rebellious people, to heal them, the message of the "Saviour," the healing, saving, forgiving, and redeeming God. This promise is really the Word of God.

Only so can one understand the Commandment of God aright. God desires nothing of us save that we allow Him to bestow life upon us, not merely this life that ends with death, but His life, that knows no death. To allow Him to give us life is nothing different than -- believing in Him, the saving, healing God. The beginning of the Ten Commandments can be rightly understood only from the fulfilment of the Promise: "I am the Lord thy God which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage" -- for what this house of bondage is and how God has led us forth from it, is revealed in the message of Jesus the Saviour-King, "Christ," the Saviour.

Man is favored above the rest of creation in having a free will. "God created man in his own image"; created man as a personal being, that is, as a being that does not simply develop of itself into that for which God created it, but rather as a being who achieves his destiny only by saying his "yes" to it. Children have dolls that say "yes," too. But they can say "yes" only when one presses them on the right spot; they can say neither yes nor no by their own decision or insight. They are automatons. Man is no automaton, he can and must continually decide how he is going to live. This capacity of deciding is the personal element in us, the free will.

Therein also lies, since we can freely decide for ourselves, our ability to do evil. An animal can do no wrong; it acts as it must, it has no freedom of choice. There are no good and bad rabbits, no good and bad foxes. They all do more or less the same, and have therefore neither a good nor a bad conscience. But men do not all act the same; each goes another way than the other, because each chooses his own way. Therefore no one is as the other. And yet the Apostle is right when he says "there is no difference, for all have sinned." This is so because every one chooses his own way, in- stead of God's way. There are as many individual ways as there are men, but there is only one way that is right, and that is God's way. And it is precisely this way which we do not follow -- or are you perhaps the exception the Apostle overlooked, do you follow God's way?

But God in His creative goodness, having given man freedom to choose for himself, gave him something more in that when he sinned he might not wholly corrupt his life and the life of Others, might not wholly deviate from God's way. This gift is the Ordinances of God. There are many things, despite our disloyalty, and wilfulness that come out right in our life, because God Himself has made it right. Thank God, we have no power over the change of seasons from summer to winter, over the course of the stars, no power over the laws of nature at work in our bodies. There are limits drawn about our lives by God's creative ordinance which we cannot trespass and within which, therefore, God's order prevails in spite of our sin.

There are, however, certain areas of God's creation where we can go out of bounds, but which limits we know ought not be transgressed. It is this I have in mind by the term, the Ordinances of God. Because they have been implanted in our nature by the Creator, every normal man has a kind of instinct for them, and yet they are ordinances lying within the realm of the will. The most important of these ordinances is the fact that God has so organized human life that no man can live for himself. He cannot live without the other. Man needs woman, woman needs man. The producer needs the consumer, the consumer the producer. The people need the leaders, the leaders need the people. Human life is so ordered by God because God has created man for Jove. Love is something voluntary, not even God can or will force it. But He does want to lead us in that direction. And so He has ordered life, that the individual can never take this direction without the aid of others. We are to be "exercised" so to speak, thereby, for love. It is because of the Ordinances of God that there is fellowship among men despite the dominating self-will which would wholly separate us. However, just because man is intended to learn some- thing by them, these Ordinances are no inviolable laws of nature, but can be disregarded by man. The more a man thinks of himself alone, and purposes for himself, so much the more are these Ordinances threatened with ruin. The more conscious man becomes of his ability to shape his own life, so much the more are these Ordinances of God endangered. And never in world history has that been more so than today. Every natural -- instinct for "what is fair," for those Ordinances that hold mankind together, is almost lost. The fellowship of man is consequently more and more dispersed. This can be most clearly noted in the marriage question. In earlier days people knew -- even the heathen knew -- that man and wife belonged together for life. Today that is no longer custom. Self-will begins to shatter even this most elemental Life Ordinance. In earlier days every one knew that children belonged to parents and parents to their children, the homogeniety of the family was taken for granted, but today it is threatened with collapse by the thought of self-sufficiency. In earlier days every one knew that there must be rulers and ruled, both needing each other but today every one wants to rule himself and take no advice.

Evil is present in every age, but it is not as predominant in one age as in another. Our day is in many respects better than earlier generations. But its difficulty and its evil consists in our no longer knowing the Ordinances of God, because every one wants to be "independent."

There has been selfishness in every age, but selfishness is today the recognized spirit because man no longer knows that God and how God created human beings for each other. Even the intellectual leaders of our time know it no more, for they think the highest achievement is to be a personality. But God has so formed life that one can become a personality only when he knows that he belongs to others and serves them. The man who recognizes nothing higher than reason becomes "independent" -- he no longer needs others, he is his own master -- even his own God. And then human fellowship is dissipated like a string of pearls when the cord is cut. What binds us together is the Ordinances of God, behind which Stands God's love. He alone, who is bound to God and through God to his neighbor, can really become a man.

What does God desire of us? Does He want many things or only a few, or is just one thing needful? Doubtless He wants many things. .Every moment He wants something different from us: that we should be stern with one man, mild with another; that, at one time we should yield, at another time be firm. He wants not only that we should not steal, but that we should be neither greedy nor covetous, not only that we give generously when we are moved to compassion, but also that we be frugal so that we may have wherewith to give. Also that we should not slander, judge, gossip, or speak unkindly. But neither does God approve of cowardly silence or tight-lipped selfishness when we might give counsel. Who can put down in detail just what God

wants of us? Indeed we cannot think of a moment in our life when God wants nothing of us, nor of a moment in which He does not want something different than He wanted previously or may desire later, because each particular opportunity is unique and will never return. For that reason no one can ever retrieve what he has once let slip; each moment brings a new duty which wholly claims us. Life is like the endless chain in a modem factory; it passes by us and requires something particular every passing moment. It is not the nature of life itself but it is God who requires of us that we do this and not that to life as it passes by.

One can also say, on the other hand, that it is not many things which God requires, -- but only a few; he gives us only a few commandments in which he says everything. He wants us to be conscientious in our words (9th Commandment). He wants us to deal justly with the affairs of other men, and respect the life of all (6th Commandment). He wants a right attitude toward those who are the only support of social order (5th Commandment) . We are to respect not only the person but also the property of others (8th Commandment) etc. These fixed principles are the contents of the Ten Commandments. Everything that we should or should not do according to the will of God is contained therein.

It is also correct to say that we are simply to do one thing. He who keeps the first Commandment keeps all the rest. For the first Commandment means; thou shalt have God for thy God: which means that we should never forget, whatever we do, that we are not our own but God's property and must act accordingly. "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart." For only when you love God with all your heart do you really remember that you are His property, only then is it true for you that He is your God. All evil comes from our desire to be our own master, from loving ourselves more than God. Or, rather, it is not loving more, but loving falsely. To love oneself well one must love God, for it is only through love to God that we can achieve our true destiny.

God wants only that we should be that for which He created us. He created us "in his own image." That is a simile. A man looks in the mirror and beholds his image, or some one shouts and the cliff echoes his cry. We have been created by God that we should reply to Him in the Word of Love with which He has called us into life. "Let us love him for he first loved us." That is the Commandment. All others are contained therein. But there is even more than the Commandment of God here. The Commandment of God is what God wants of us. But if we understand the words concerning the image of God, we also know what God wants for us. That God first loved us, before He demanded anything of us, and that He demands nothing more than that we should accept His love, that is, react to love with love, is simply what we call faith. Faith is the acceptance of God's grace, God's incomprehensible, undeserved Love; and whosoever does that fulfils the will of God.

Evil essentially is only the supposition that we can get along without God. This idea, "for my life God is superfluous: I am my own master," is the poisoning of the spring of human life; from this source all life is poisoned. The sin of Adam and Eve "ye shall be as Gods" does not mean to have the idea that one is God, but to endeavor to be independent of God. Free from God, away from God is to be God-less, evil. Against this all the Commandments are directed.

Haven't the Commandments more to do with men than with God? Are there two kinds of Commandments -- those which tell us our duty to God and those which inform us of our obligations to man? Loving God and loving man? What does it really mean to love God? It means, as we have previously said, to know that all we have is from God; to know that God's good- ness alone holds and supports us, and therefore to perceive that we belong absolutely to God. To know this banishes not only godlessness but also selfishness; and one is bound through God to his neighbor.

God gives us our life by giving us other men at the same time; He has so formed us that we cannot live alone. If things are right between ourselves and God, they are also right between ourselves and men. We look upon them as those to whom our life belongs. The man who knows himself to be God's property belongs thenceforth to his brethren. There is only one Commandment, it reduces at last to this: Love God and thy neighbor as thyself.

And now -- on what terms are we with these Commandments? They are given us to do them. For what other purpose should they be given? Every man who has to do with God, knows that he should keep the Commandments at the cost of his life, if need be. But what man fulfils them? Do you really love God with all your heart and your neighbor as yourself? Because the first love is not true, neither is the other -- and you lie, steal, commit adultery. Perhaps you do not break the Commandments in the gross sense of the word, but in the more refined and secret sense you do break them and you think that is not so bad? The more refined sins, under certain circumstances are much worse than the gross varieties. So then, we do not keep God's command. The spring of life is really poisoned, things are bad with us. This is the testimony of conscience and even more sharply and clearly, the testimony of Holy Scripture. Behind God's command stands the fearful word -- Judgment! Lost! It is written more sharply in the New Testament than in the Old Testament. What then are we to do?

Every Swiss knows what a law is, but no man, I fear, has as much trouble in understanding what the Bible calls "law" as the Swiss. In Switzerland the law is -- something that the citizen himself has made. For "the people is sovereign," which means, the people is its own lawgiver. But in the Bible law means not what comes from man but what is given to man. To understand this, let us think first of all of the so-called laws of nature. That a suspended object will fall to the floor when the string is cut is a law of nature; even the free Swiss burgher can do nothing about that. It is so because God has made it so. The earth takes 365 days to complete its course about the sun, this is a fact which not even a national election can establish or abolish. It is so because God has made it so. Or, take the laws of thought. That 2 and 2=4 cannot be altered even by a world school congress or the unanimous agreement of nations. It is so because God has made it so. Every man must submit to it. Every one knows that too -- even the most inveterate Swiss Democrat. Here is compulsion, there is no choice about it.

But are there laws of God only where there is no choice to be made? Many think so today. Man is free, he can do what he wants. Who will have the temerity to interrupt him? You know the tale of "The Fisherman and His Wife" as told by Grimm. It is the story of modern man. Man has discovered that he can do all things, he can convert a waterfall into electric power, and make the finest pigments out of coal; he has shaken off the Lords of the Middle Ages and become "sovereign." He pierces mountains, binds seas together, alters the face of the earth; he can do all things, nothing daunts him. He is his own Lord, whom shall he permit to interfere? He can even be his own God.

Can he indeed? He can of course try it, according to the story of Adam and Eve in Paradise, and the end is ever the same. Evil comes of it. Man always over-reaches himself. He can have a strong voice, but when he essays to drown out the thunder, his voice cracks, becomes ludicrous and ugly; and he may even lose it on account of the strain. So it is, too, when man tries to play God. Great as man is, he is not the Creator, and that will be evident one day when he is shut up between six boards and lowered into a hole in the earth, not so large as the tiniest hall closet. There he lies and decays, the would-be Lord God. Yes -- then there is no choice about that!

No, man cannot do what he wants. For he belongs to Him who created him. As great as man is, he does not possess this greatness in his own right. It is all borrowed, bestowed greatness, it is a "gift," and a condition is attached to the gift. The more man is given, the more is expected of him. By whom? By the one who has given the gift, as is to be read in the Parable of the Talents (Matt. 25). Man is no proprietor, but a tenant; therefore a reckoning will be demanded (cf. the Parable of the Vineyard, Matt. 21). And the account- ing will be demanded on the basis of what he should have done with his gifts according to the will of God. The will of God is the law. The law is what God desires of us.

Every man, Jew or Christian, believer or atheist, cultured or uncultured, has some knowledge of this law. Every man has the consciousness of "responsibility"; every one observes that he cannot do what pleases him or seems profitable, that there is a "thou shalt," and a "thou shalt not." And even if he claims to be ignorant of such things, his conscience gives him the lie, his con- science that accuses him when he does what he ought not, or does not do what he ought. There has never been a man without a conscience. The law of God is as though it had been engraved in the human heart.

But God found it necessary to reveal his law in an especial way. While lightning and thunder flashed and rolled upon the peak of Mount Sinai, Moses received the Law, and gave it on tables of stone to the people of Israel. Something of the dread of the holy majesty of God the Lawgiver trembles in the narrative of this event (Ex. 19:20-32), and rightly so. That is something to strike terror into our hearts when God the Creator, the Almighty, the Righteous, and Holy says to us, "Thus and thus shalt thou do, and thus and thus shalt thou not do." Not because He requires something should we fear. For He desires nothing but what subserves life; God's law is not arbitrary. In His law God tells us nothing but the natural laws of true human life, you must do so and so if you want to live a human life; as the physician says, you must live so and so if you wish to remain healthy. This counsel is nothing fearful, but God says, I desire that you should so live, human not inhuman, creatively not contrary to nature, and this "I desire" is what terrifies us. For when God says, "I desire it," we know what is at stake. God is in earnest, He is not mocked; whatsoever a man sows, that shall he also reap.

God requires an accounting. He holds us responsible. And that is what strikes terror in us, for how can we bribe the judge in this case? Or thinkest thou that God will wink at evil? That is the (I must add it) cursed frivolity of our generation, that it thinks God does not take things seriously. He will not cast off any one be- cause of disobedience. Forgiveness has been misunderstood to mean indulgence. But the opposite stands in the Holy Scriptures. God will cast off the disobedient, for what men sow they must also reap. God is Holy, which means. He takes the Law seriously. God's law is as inviolable as the laws of nature. God is not an indulgent father, who cannot punish -- just as little as He is a moody or passionate father, who punishes in a fit of anger. God is a just God who repays according to deserts. And is not that cause for terror, dear friend -- that God holds you strictly accountable according to His law?

Is man good? Whoever reads this question will wonder how such a question is possible, for men are different. There are good and bad, there are very bad and less bad, very good and less good men. Experience proves the truth of this observation again and again. There are quite selfish men who ask for nothing but their own profit, shysters in business, tyrants in the house, men with an interest only in what is to their advantage. And there are others r/ho give themselves freely, often making astounding sacrifices, thinking ever and only of others, desiring nothing but to serve others and to do good. A person who fails to see this difference is blind to reality. Between the two extremes of good and evil there are as many variations in men as there are between the red and the blue of a rainbow. One can indeed say that there is no wholly bad man — each has somewhere some good in him -- like that atrocious Chinese bandit leader, who relentlessly slaughtered thousands, but nevertheless played heartily with children as though he were himself an innocent child. And one is also compelled to say, there is no one wholly good -- there is a flaw in each person of which one must say, there he fails. But most people are in between, a little more inclined to good, or a little more inclined to evil, according to their natures.

This view of the matter is quite correct, it is indeed necessary. But the Bible speaks differently. "There is none that doeth good, no, not one." "For all have sinned." In that passage Paul does not imply that even the best have somewhere some little evil flaw. On the other hand, "all" means that fundamentally all are in the same condition, namely bad. For "a sinner" does not signify that there is something bad in him, as a splendid apple may have a little bad speck that can be removed with a twist of the paring knife, so that you can scarcely see that anything has been cut out. No, by a sinner the Bible means "bad at heart," infected with evil at the core. "All are sinners" does not mean then that even the best are not quite saints. It means rather that the difference between so-called good and so-called bad no longer comes into consideration.

How is this view to be reconciled with what we first characterized as correct? That is not hard to say. We have spoken of what holds true among men, and there it is true so far as human affairs go. But before God the matter is otherwise. It is not as though God did not see the distinction between good and evil. How should He, who sees all things, fail to see that! It is not at all immaterial to Him whether a pupil takes pains with his writing, or whether he scribbles. How then could it be a matter of indifference to Him whether one belongs to the good sort or the bad? That it is a matter of concern to God, the Bible proclaims loudly enough. But on that level and within that sphere where Paul writes "all have sinned" these "good and bad" considerations have really no significance. Let me clarify this assertion by an analogy.

Two men board a train. One of them perhaps does something sensible, the other something stupid upon entering the coach. But as they look out, both notice that they have taken the wrong train and are going in the wrong direction. That one man was reasonable and the other stupid is a difference between these two men; it is a difference, however, which has no significance in relation to the fact that both, whatever their individual differences, are going in the wrong direction! This is what the Bible means by the word sin, the total perverse direction of our life, the tendency away from God. In this train all men are traveling, says the Apostle. He himself, one of the most blameless, according to human opinion almost a saint, says of himself quite clearly, "O wretched man that I am, the evil which I would not, that I do; the good that I would, I do not."

To simplify matters, let us speak of you and me, instead of all men. So far as I am concerned I find that what the Apostle says of himself applies absolutely to me too. How is it with you? Would you like to contradict the Apostle and say, "My dear man, I don't understand you, you have disappointed me. I at least am no wretched man who wants to do good and does evil instead." Can you say that -- not before men, but before God?

Sin is a depravity which has laid hold on us all. It is a radical perversion from God, disloyalty to the Creator who has given us so much and remains so loyal, an insulting alienation from Him, in which all of us, without exception, have shared. I emphasize the "shared." For is it not true that we are all connected with one another by hidden roots, like the runners of a strawberry patch, all of whose plants have developed from the one parent stock? We are not only connected with each other in our life-root but our connection is precisely evil. There is a kind of common "sin fluid" that flows through the whole root system, and yet each individual knows it to be his own guilt. Explain this guilt as I will -- as inheritance, bad education, etc. -- it is finally my own fault. I know that I am involved in the evil of others, and at the same time I implicate them in my own evil. As far back as I can remember, I recall that I have had a bad conscience before God. And still I know, just when I think of God -- it is my guilt. One cannot explain this, evil, sin, is forever inexplicable. What one can explain is not really evil; for what we explain we make ourselves superior to, we become master of.

Am I then in sin? Is this really so? How do we know for certain? Not every one knows it. Most people know only what we first mentioned, that there are good and bad people, and of course they count themselves for the most part among the good or even the better class. But what we said about sin we do not apprehend for ourselves. We do not perceive it until God casts His light like a dazzling beam into our dismal gloom. We know what sin truly is because and since Jesus Christ died for man's sin. It is as though a great boulder lay across the road. That isn't so big, one thinks, and tries to push it to one side of the road, but it won't budge, it is too heavy. Then a strong man comes along; it is too heavy even for him. And then a horse is brought and even the horse drags it away only with the greatest effort. We measure the weight of the boulder by the effort and power required to remove it. So, too, is it with sin. It is not until we see how much it cost God to remove the stone between us and Him, that we understand how great was the weight of sin's guilt. Christ shows us how completely the whole movement of life is in the wrong direction. It is primarily he, in whom God addresses us the most earnestly, who shows us our condition. Not until then do we lose the courage to say that man is good. Then, and then only are we ready to hear the message of forgiveness and salvation.

What is man? No other question is so important as this one. As war or peace may depend upon the stroke of a pen in the hands of a single government official, so your life depends upon the answer to this question. The man who believes in his heart that man is an animal, will live like an animal. In a certain sense and within certain limits the statement is true, you are what you believe yourself to be. What is man? One can give various answers to this question which are not untrue. One can, for example, say that man is a chemical mixture of lime, phosphorus, and nitrogen. The Bible says it more simply -- man is dust. That is true, but there are other judgments. One can say, man is a machine, or rather a factory with an enormous number of complicated machines, the stomach for example, a combustion machine. This is not untrue either, but it is not every- thing that can be said. One can say that man is an animal, and who would contest the many similarities which we have in common! We shall probably have to leave the question of our corporal relationship with the animals to the natural scientists. They are quite possibly right.

Yet men have always somehow known that man is more than animal, and it is verily a peculiar kind of scientific method which can no longer see the differences that separate man and beast and machine. The animal possesses understanding, no doubt, but has no reason. It has, no doubt, the beginning of a civilization, but no culture. It probably has curiosity and knows many things, but it has no science, it probably plays, but it has no art. It knows herds, but not fellowship. It probably fears punishment, but has no conscience. It probably realizes the superiority of man, but it knows nothing of the Lord of the World. Man is something other than animal, as the animal is something other than a plant. But what then is he -- man? If he is no animal, perhaps he is a God. That sounds absurd, yet this madness is quite prevalent among us today. Fundamentally, say many, man and God are identical. Human reason is the same as divine reason. The soul is identical with God. Indeed this insane idea is very seductive when one rightly ponders it. For is not "God in us?" That

man "fundamentally" is God, has been stated not only by ancient heathen, but also by many modern thinkers. even by many of our German idealistic philosophers. In spite of all that -- it still is false. Man is not God because he is God's creature. He is not divine "in his deepest nature"

because .in his deepest nature he is a sinner. How is it possible that two such mutually exclusive concepts of man could be championed from ancient until modern times -- man, an animal; man, a God? The Bible gives us the answer to this question, for it tells us what man really is. The Bible first tells us, God created man; man, like the worm, like the sand of the sea, like the sun and

moon, is God's creation. That means that man is what he is because God has so made him. He has received his life, his existence, his peculiar being from God, precisely as the thousands of animals have their characteristics from God. Whether or not God has employed an evolution of millions of years for the purpose of creating man is the critical concern of the natural scientist; it is not a critical question for faith. When I say God created man, I do not therewith deny that man originates from earthly parents. God uses human parents to create men. Man in the first place, then, is a member of this earthly world which comes and goes, changes and grows. Man is dust of dust. But like the dust, gloriously created of God, even more marvelously than plants and animals.

In the second place the Bible says that God created man in his own image. It is only of man that this statement is made. That he is created in the image of God distinguishes him from all the other creatures and makes him somehow similar to God. For what is it that is expressed by the word "image" but similarity of some sort? As a further cause of this similarity the Bible states "God breathed into him the breath of life and he became a living soul." What distinguishes man from the rest of creation is the share he has in God's thought, that is, reason as distinguished from mere perception, which the animal also possesses. Man can think into the eternal and infinite.

We must now make a third statement, God created all creatures by His Word. But He created man not only by His Word, but for and in His Word. That means, God created man in such a way that he can receive. God's Word. That is reason in its true sense. Man really becomes man when he perceives something of God. We are men when we perceive the divine Word. If a man, for example, had no conscience he would not be man but inhuman. Conscience is in some way the perception of the voice of God. Man has been so created by God that he can become man only by perceiving God, by receiving God's Word and -- like a soldier repeating a command -- repeating God's Word. God says, I am thy God. True man should say, Yea, Thou art my God. God says. Thou art mine. True man should say, Yea, I am Thine. When he says that in his heart homo sapiens becomes humanus. Previously he has been inhuman. God created us in His image, as reflections of his image. That means we are human in the degree we permit God to speak to us. We are man to the extent that we let God's Word echo in our hearts. We are not simply men as a fox is a fox. But we are men only when God's Word finds an echo in us. To the degree that this fails to happen we are inhuman. No fox behaves unnaturally because a fox comes finished from the hand of God. It is created by the Word, not in the Word. But man is created in the Word, which means that man can say yes or no to that for which God has created him, to that which God has destined as the goal of His creation. Then man becomes either human or in-human. The freedom to say yes or no to God is the mystery of man. We have this freedom from God because

He has addressed us. Were God to cease speaking to us, we could answer no more, either yes or no. We would then have ceased to be men. It is in this way God desires to have an image. Men who love Him who first loved them, who reply to Him who first addressed them, in free acknowledgment, in faith. The mystery of man is the mystery of faith!

Our life is "superficial" without depth or meaning so long as it does not have its roots in eternity. Either it has eternal significance or it has no significance at all. Temporal sense is nonsense. The Bible permits us to see this eternal depth: "thine eyes did see my substance yet being unperfect, and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them." We do not just happen to exist. Although we were begotten and born of our parents, we come from eternity, from the eternal thought and will of God. Before anything comes into existence it has been thought and willed by God, as the work of art is in the mind of the master before it is put on canvas or paper, or in stone. Deep, deep are the roots of our life. Far beyond all temporal visibility it roots in the divine invisibility, in the eternal "counsels."

It was something profound when this God-rooted quality of life was revealed to the author of the 139th Psalm. But we feel even the Psalmist had intimations given of a destiny as deep as his revealed origin. That God's eye saw us in eternity, signifies not only an eternal origin; it signifies an eternal destiny.

When God "beholds" a man, it is written. He looks upon him graciously. His face is against the man with whom He is angry. When a man is permitted to perceive that God sees him from eternity, when the eternally beholding eyes of God rest upon him and his view meets God's eternal vision, the greatest thing that can happen on earth transpires. A man then knows that God loves him from eternity and for eternity. God has- chosen me from eternity to eternity. That is the faith, the full, whole evangelical faith -- election from eternity. Such a man knows that he is saved without his effort, out of this evil world and age, out of the depravity of sin and death. It is God's grace alone. His mercy, His boundless love, His election alone is the basis of my salvation. That is a Christian's greatest joy. When the disciples returned to Jesus from their first independent missionary journey and enthusiastically reported how much they had been able to do by God's power, the Lord replied: Rejoice not that the spirits are subject to you, rejoice rather that your names are written in heaven! When a man knows that his name is written in the Book of Life, in the Book of Election, he knows whence comes the peace that passes all understanding. He has then climbed the highest mountain of faith, and there remains then in this life nothing higher than the preservation and the operation of this greatest, most glorious discernment.

This discernment, however, is not given to any one for the purpose of constructing theories or speculations on how it now stands with others. You are elected, and with you every one is elected who believes; every one is elected who has truthfully spoken the "yes" of decision for Christ. The elect in themselves are only "them that believe." And believers are those who in their hearts "have become obedient to the Word of God." Election dawns upon no one except in the full, independent, obedient and trustworthy decision of faith. It is to those, who have served the Lord by serving the least of this world, that the Lord speaks in the last Judgment "come ye blessed of my Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world" (Matt. 25:34). Election and obedience, election and personal decision of faith belong inseparably together in the Bible. One cannot play election off against decision, nor personal decision against election, tempting though that be to reason. Reason must bow here, yet dare not abdicate. How the two can be reconciled, the free eternal election of God and the responsible decision of man is a problem we cannot understand. But every believer knows they are compatible. "He came to his own -- and his own received him not; but as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name." Without faith Christ means nothing to us; without Christ there is no faith. Which is more important -- light or vision? Stupid question! Vision and light belong together. Therefore, believe, and you will perceive that you are elected.

This is the message of the Scripture. But of double predestination -- that God has chosen one from eternity for eternal life and has rejected the other from eternity to eternal damnation, there is no word to be found in the Holy Scripture. One can scarcely avoid drawing this conclusion from the teachings of the Scripture. Logic always misleads in that direction. But the Scripture itself does not do it, nor should we. We should leave the Scripture as it is, unsystematic, in all its parts; other- wise we pervert its message. The Scripture teaches a divine predestination of election; it also teaches the judgment of the unbelieving. It teaches, too, that nothing happens without God's will, but it never teaches — let me repeat it -- even in one single word -- a divine predestination of rejection. This fearful teaching is opposed to the Scripture, while the doctrine of eternal election is not only according to the Scripture, but truly the center of the Holy Scripture, the heart of the Gospel reason cannot fathom this. That is always reason's fate with the Word of God. The dogma of Double Predestination is a product of human logic which can- not withstand the a-logical teaching of the Scripture. Let us rejoice in our eternal election, let us be wary of defection! Let us say with Paul: "We who are saved," and let us be warned of him: "He that standeth let him take heed lest he fall," for he cannot then escape the Judgment. The life of the Christian, like a door hung upon two hinges, must swing upon this promise -- and this warning. If it slips out of the one or the other it ceases to swing true.

"And were the world with devils filled, all waiting to devour us. . . " Who can deny that this is a bedevilled world -- the world in which we live? One glance at the newspaper suffices to establish this fact. Accidents, crimes, catastrophes, famines, epidemics, revolution, war and preparations for war. "And you dare to claim that this world is God's creation? ruled by a God who is love? Are you deranged?" What reply shall we make? I would propose that we answer frankly, yes, we are deranged. That is one thing the Bible tells us about ourselves, and hence, too, about our world. Can you imagine God's creation of the world as a sort of book set in type by the printer; everything is in the right place and makes good sense when one reads it; and then while the typesetter is gone, a scoundrel confuses the type. Everything is "deranged," whole sentences are inverted, others are utterly meaningless. Will you accuse the typesetter of setting up a madman's book?

It is so with our world. God's "composition" has become deranged through evil, sin. As it is written in the parable, an enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat. There is something opposed to God and to the creation in this world. The Bible speaks of a power inimical to God, a leader of all diabolical powers. But it speaks still more of the ungodly power which we all know only too well out of our own experience, concerning which we know quite well that it is opposed to God. This opposition is sin, which means rebellion against God's self-will, our own stubborn resistance to God's "composition." As surely as God is love, is my own lovelessness ungodly, diabolical, resistance against God's action. Whenever an unkindness is done, God's will is not done. Rather that occurs which God does not will.

So then God does not really rule in this world? When a father merely observes, for a while, the petulant, headstrong actions of his little son so that the lad may experience for himself where his own will leads -- does that mean that the father is a weak parent, who cannot control his son? He will, no doubt, take things in hand at the proper moment, but he prefers not to lecture his son, but rather to educate him through experience to make his own decisions. There is no doubt that God could, if He so desired, create order in this topsy-turvy world all at once; He could, no doubt, make us obedient with a wave of His hand. But He doesn't want to force us; it is His desire that we should turn to Him of our own free will. Hence He gives us, situated as we are in this deranged world, His Word, namely, the Law and the Promises, that we perceiving the insane folly of evil and the fixed nature of His love, may return to Him in freedom and gladness. For this reason He has given Himself in Christ Jesus to this deranged world, permitting the world to rage against Him -- the madness of men, the crucifixion of His son. He has made the revelation of His ineffable love. It is there He shows us how He is master of this perverse world -- so much master, that He can even employ its madness to reveal His love. God there produced His master- piece, if we may express it so humanly, by showing that He is Lord even of the greatest darkness in this world, that men even in rebellion against Him still remain tools in His hand to be used as He wills.

If we were compelled to discover God simply by means of the world as it now is, the thought would probably occur to us that there are two kinds of Gods, good and evil, redemptive and destructive. But in the cross of Jesus Christ we perceive that destruction is not God's will, and that in spite of it God keeps His masterly grip upon the world, and accomplishes His counsels of love. He gives us time to decide for ourselves, to turn to Him. And He gives us signs enough of His steadfast creative loyalty in the midst of this deranged, bedevilled world, that we may be able to find our way. "Yes, but how are we to explain all the evil, the wrong and the suffering from the love of God?" Dear friend, who has given you the task of explaining all this? A man who proposes to "explain" God's government of the world is even more ludicrous than the raw recruit who wants to explain the general's plan or a shop hand who criticizes the organization and management of a mammoth industrial enterprise. Man, what do you understand of the government of the world! "Thou art not the regent, creation well to guide" the hymn rightly phrases it. It is enough for us to know that God Who rules in a manner inconceivable to us in this deranged world yet rules by means of the Cross of His son. Let us give heed to the signals where God gives them, that we may understand His will. God transmits His will to us in the darkness of this world. It is to be found in the commandments and the gospel of forgiveness and salvation. To that we must cleave, foregoing the desire to decipher out of the darkness His will for ourselves. The solution of the world riddle will not come until the day of salvation.