Luther: The Point of Preaching

Luther deeply loved Jesus--the beautiful, caring, human Jesus of the Gospels. Any sermon that failed somehow to hold up that Lord--whose love reached its pinnacle in his self-giving on the cross--so that others could be amazed, as he had been, and then be drawn to trust in the promises and find peace with God and with self, could not be described as preaching Christ.

--Fred W. Meuser, Luther the Preacher (Augsburg, 1963); quoted in Sidney Greidanus, Preaching Christ from the Old Testament: A Contemporary Hermeneutical Method (Eerdmans, 1999), 121