Rule One:Abstain from Curiously

[JohnS]

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Why does the apostle add, and the Lord Jesus Christ? Was it not enough to say from God our Father? A principle in the Scriptures that we must note carefully is this: we must obstain from wrongly seeking God's majesty. "No one may see me and live," says the Lord (Exodus 33:20). Those who trust in their own merits disregard this rule, and therefore they remove the mediator Christ out of their sight and speak only of God; to him alone they pray and do all that they do.

The monk thinks, "These works that I do please God. God will regard these vows of mine and will save me because of them." The Muslim says, "If I keep the things that are commanded in the Koran, God will accept me and give me everlasting life." The Jew thinks, "If I keep the things that the law commands, I shall find God merciful to me, and so I shall be saved." Similarly, some misguided people brag of the spirit of revelation, or of visions and other such monstrous matters, dealing in wonders above their reach. Such people have invented a new cross and new works and dream that by doing them they please God. To be brief, whoever does not know the truth of justification takes away Christ, the mercy-seat, and will have to comprehend God in his majesty by the judgment of reason and pacify him with their own works.

But true Christian religion does not first present God in his majesty, as Moses and other teachers do. It commands us not to search out the nature of God, but to know his will presented to us in Christ, whom he wanted to take on flesh and be born and die for our sins; and he wants this to be preached among all nations. "For since in the wisdom of God the world in its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe" (1 Corinthians 1:21). So when your conscience is in conflict, wrestling against the law, sin, and death, in the presence of God, there is nothing more dangerous than to wander amidst curious heavenly speculations, searching out God's incomprehensible power, wisdom, and majesty---how he created the world and how he governs it. If this is how you try to comprehend God, attempting to pacify him without Christ the mediator, making your works a means between him and yourself, you will fall as Lucifer did and in horrible despair will lose God and everything else. God is in his own nature immeasurable, incomprehensible, and infinite, and so human nature finds him intolerable.

If you want safety, then, to flee from perils of conscience and salvation, bridle your presumptuous spirit, and seek God in the way Paul teaches: "We preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God" (1 Corinthians 1:23-24). So begin where Christ began---namely, in the womb of the virgin, in the manger, at his mother's breast. The reason he came down, was born, lived among men and women, suffered, was crucified, and died was so that he might present himself plainly to our eyes, and fasten our spiritual sight upon himself, so that he might keep us from climbing into heaven and from the curious searching of the divine majesty.

Whenever you are dealing with the matter of justification, therefore, and are wondering where and how to find God who justifies and accepts sinners, remember that there is no other God besides this man, Christ Jesus. Embrace him, and hang on to him with your whole heart, setting aside all curious speculations about the divine majesty. Those vain people who exclude the mediator do not believe this. Christ himself says, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me" (John 14:6). Therefore, apart from Christ you will find no other way to the Father, but only wandering: no verity, but hypocrisy and lying; no life, but eternal death. Take careful note, then, that when any of us has to wrestle with the law, sin, death, and all other evils, we must look to no other god, but only this God, incarnate and clothed with human nature.

Apart from the matter of justification, when you have to dispute with Jews, Muslims, and heretics about the power, wisdom, and majesty of God, work hard at it with all your wit, and be as profound and subtle a disputant as you can, for then you are in another vein. But in the case of conscience, righteousness, and life---take particular note of this---regarding the law, sin, death, and the devil, or in the matter of satisfaction, of forgiveness of sins, of reconciliation, and of everlasting life, you must withdraw your mind wholly from all reasoning and searching out God's majesty and look only to this man Jesus Christ, who presents himself to us as a mediator and says,"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest" (Matthew 11:28). In doing this, you will perceive the love, goodness, and sweetness of God; you will see his wisdom, power and majesty sweetened and tempered to your capacity. And you will find this pleasant contemplation to be fully according to what Paul says to the Colossians: "in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge....For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form" (Colossians 2:3,9). The world is ignorant of this, and therefore, to its own destruction, it searches out God's will, setting aside the promise in Christ. "No one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him" (Matthew 11:27; see also John 10:15)

This is why Paul so often couples Jesus Christ with God the Father. He is teaching us what true Christian religion is, which begins not at the highest, as other religions do, but at the lowest. It will have us climb up by Jacob's ladder, upon which God himself leans, with his feet touching the very earth, immediately beside Jacob's head (Genesis 28:12). Therefore, whenever you are uccupied in the matter of you salvation, set aside all curious speculations about God's unsearchable majesty, all thought of works, traditions, philosophy, and even God's law, and run straight to the manger. Embrace this infant, the virgin's little baby, in your arms; see him as he was born, sucking, growing up, living among people, teaching, dying, rising again, ascending above all the heavens, and having power over all things. In this way you will be able to shake off all terrors and errors, just as the sun drives away the clouds. And contemplating this will keep you in the right way, so that you can follow where Christ has gone.

That is why Paul, in wishing grace and peace not only from God our Father but also from the Lord Jesus Christ, teaches that we should abstain from curiously searching for the divine majesty (for no one knows God) and should rather hear Christ, who is in the bosom of the Father and tells us his will and who is appointed by the Father to be our teacher, so that we may all hear him (see John 8:18).