God without Christ

Luther warned against speculating about God apart from His incarnation in Jesus Christ.

“True Christian theology, as I often warn you, does not present God to us in His majesty,” wrote Luther in his Commentary on Galatians, “but Christ born of the Virgin as our Mediator and High Priest.” He continues:

For as in His own nature God is immense, incomprehensible, and infinite, so to man’s nature He is intolerable. . . . Therefore whenever you consider the doctrine of justification and wonder how or where or in what condition to find a God who justifies or accepts sinners, then you must know that there is no other God than this Man Jesus Christ. . . . [W]e must look at no other God than this incarnate and human God.[1]

Luther is not confusing the persons of the Trinity. He is emphasizing the biblical truth that we cannot know the Father apart from the Son. As Jesus said, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). “No one who denies the Son has the Father,” wrote the apostle John. “Whoever confesses the Son has the Father also” (1 John 2:23).

Trying to think about God apart from Christ reveals a God who is “intolerable” to our sinful flesh. Consider:

A God without Christ raises the problem of evil and suffering. We imagine a deity far away, looking down on our world of sin and pain, wondering why He doesn’t do anything about it. God in light of Christ came down from heaven and “has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows” (Isaiah 53:4).

A God without Christ terrifies us with His wrath against sin. We are sinful and unclean, and we know we cannot stand before His holiness. God in light of Christ offers us grace and forgiveness (Eph. 1:3–10).

A God without Christ might choose to save us, or He might not. We can never know where we stand. God in light of Christ gives us assurance in His Son, who died for the sins of the world (1 John 2:2).

A God without Christ seems like an abstraction, an idea, a concept. We think of Him as the answer to an intellectual question, rather than a living being. God in Christ has made Himself tangible (1 John 1:1–3).

A God without Christ is a distant and disembodied deity. Either He is so far above us, we can hardly know Him, or He is a vague feeling of direction that is lodged within my heart. God in light of Christ is “Immanuel,” God with us (Matt. 1:23) and speaking to us in His Word (John 17:17).

Today, many people have trouble believing in or even conceiving of God. In teaching them about God, we must remember that “there is no other God than this Man Jesus Christ.” We must direct the godless to “this incarnate and human God.”

[1] Martin Luther, Lectures on Galatians: Chapters 1–4, trans. Jaroslav Pelikan, Luther’s Works Vol. 26 (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1963), pp. 28–29.