Martin Luther: The Man Who Rediscovered God and Changed the World

by Eric Metaxas

This is the earthshaking insight that gave Luther the solidest of all foundations in Scripture upon which to base what may well be reckoned the greatest revolution in human history. But by jesting in 1532 that it happened in that most humbling and humiliating of places—“upon the toilet”—Luther made it a perfect illustration of his theological foundation. That is because it is in keeping with everything he knew about the incarnated God of the Bible. The specific point here is that the infinite and omniscient and omnipotent creator God of heaven did not descend to earth on a golden cloud. He came to us through screaming pain, through the bloody agony of a maiden’s vagina, in a cattle stall filthy with and stinking of dung. This is how humans enter the world, and if God would enter the world as a human being, he must enter it that way. It was the only way to reach us where we are and as we are, and because of his love for us he did not shrink from this approach, vile and difficult as it must be. Luther saw in this the very essence of Christian theology. God reached down not halfway to meet us in our vileness but all the way down, to the foul dregs of our broken humanity. And this holy and loving God dared to touch our lifeless and rotting essence and in doing so underscored that this is the truth about us. In fact, we are not sick and in need of healing. We are dead and in need of resurrecting. We are not dusty and in need of a good dusting; we are fatally befouled with death...

Crucial!!!!