The Mighty Fire of God's Love

Luther:

The chief and fundamental thing in the Gospel is this, that before you take Christ as your example, you recognize and accept Him as God's gift to you; so that when you see or hear Him in any of His work of suffering, you do not doubt but believe that He, Christ Himself, with such work or suffering of His, is most truly your very own, whereon you may rely as confidently as if you had done that work. . . . See, this is to understand aright the Gospel, that is, the infinite grace of God. . . . This is the mighty fire of God's love toward us whereby He makes the conscience confident, joyful, and content.

--as quoted in Sidney Greidanus, Preaching Christ from the Old Testament: A Contemporary Hermeneutical Method (Eerdmans, 1999), 119