'This is the first principle and most excellent article, how Christ is the Father : that we are not to doubt that whatsoever the man says and does is reckoned, and must be reckoned, as said and done in heaven for all angels ; and in the world for all rulers ; in hell for all devils ; in the heart for every e\il con- science and all secret thoughts. For if we are certain of this : that when Jesus thinks, speaks, wills, the Father also wills, then I defy all that may fight against me. For here in Christ have I the Father's heart and will ' (Erlangen ed. xlix. 183, 184).
Luther's sense of the rich and full Divinity of Christ is not won at the expense or neglect of His humanity. On the contrary, he believed that the reason why the Schoolmen had made so many mistakes was that they had practically omitted
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the humanity of Christ altogether. They had obscured His humanity by a multitude of con- ceptions and fancies which Luther could not abide. The legends of meaningless miracles and super- natural claiijis attributed to the infant Jesus, he characterizes as ' pure foolishness.' For it widened the gulf between Him and us. Where a mediaeval preacher delighted in recounting marvels taken from apocryphal sources, emphasizing all that tended to put Christ in a different order of being from us, Luther dwelt continually on all His characteristically human traits, on all that made Him one with us.
' The deeper we can bring Christ into our humanity, the better it is,' he says in one of his sermons (Eriang-en ed. vi. 155). So his frequent pictures of the boyhood of Jesus are full of touches from the family life of the home at Wittenberg. The boy Jesus lived just like other boys, was protected, like them, by the dear angels, was suckled at His mother's breast, learned to walk, ate and drank like other children, was subject to His parents, ran errands for His mother, brought her water from the well, and firewood from the heap in the yard, and finally, when He grew up and became stronger, began to ply the axe to help His father (passim). And this, Luther asserted against those who had erected it into an article of faith that Christ from the first moment of His life was so full of wisdom that there was nothing left for Him to learn. He will have nothing to do with those who ascribe to Christ only a nmtilated humanity. ' By humanity I mean body and soul. And this I wish to emphasize because some, like Photinus and Apollinaris, have taught that Christ was a man without a human soul, and that the Godhead dwelt in Him in place of the soul ' (Erlangen ed. X. 131).
As with every other article of his creed, Luther had a practical religious interest in holding so firmly to the humanity of Christ. The human life of Jesus glorified humanity, and was a pledge of the final glory of all redeemed humanity.
' It is,' he says in his exposition of Jn V*, ' the most precious treasure and highest comfort that we Christians have, that the Word, the true natural Son of God, became man, having flesh and blood, like any other man, and became man for our sakes, that we might come to the great glory : thereby our flesh and Ijlood, skin and hair, hands and feet, belly and back, sit in heaven above, equal to God, so that we c^n boldl.y bid defiance to the devil and all else that harasses us. We are thus made certain, too, that they belong to heaven and are lieirs of the heavenly Kingdom' (Erlangen ed. xlvi. l'2f.). It was no mere semblance of a man who was now exalted at the Father's right hand, but one who was bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh, to whom no human experience, save sin, was foreign, — a boy who enjoyed his play and helped in little household duties, a man who shared the common lot of toil and weariness and temptation, a real man living a true human life under con- ditions not so far removed from our own. Having life — a true human life — He understands us fully, and we can know Him, and God through Him. Through Him alone can we come to know God. ' Outside of this Christ no other will of God is to be sought. . . . Those who speculate about God and His will without Christ, lose God completely ' (Walch's ed. vol. v. p. 198).
With the Reformers, therefore, the historical life of Jesus is of the utmost importance, far exceeding all metaphysical dissertations upon the nature of a God-man. We can all have naturally a human sympathy with that marvellous life ; but faith, the gift of God, is needed to see the Divine meaning in that life and death. The meaning, put in its briefest form, is that in Jesus we see God appearing in history and addressing man. Hence the Person of Christ was something more than a mere doctrine for them — an intellectual something outside us. It must be part of that blessed ex- perience which is called Justification by Faith. It is inseparably connected with the recognition that we are not saved by the good deeds Ave are really able to do, but solely by the work of Ciirist. It is what makes us cease to trust all work-rigliteousness, and to confide ourselves to God alone, as He has revealed Himself in Jesus Christ. When Ave knoAv and feel that it is God Avho is Avorking on our behalf, then Ave instinctively cease trying to think that Ave can Avork out our OAvn salvation (Erlangen ed. xii. 244). Hence the Person of Christ must ahvays be something more than a mere doctrine for the trne Christian. It is something Avhich we carry about Avith us, as part of our lives.