Rather, it creates what is pleasing and good, confers it, and fashions it out of nothing. As Luther commented on this thesis: “Therefore sinners are attractive [to God] because they are loved; they are not loved because they are attractive…. This is the love of the cross, born of the cross, which turns in the direction where it does not find good which it may enjoy, but where it may confer good on the bad and needy person.”8
