# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1851 12 23_S68
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

68

if this Person is divided, we are lost, etc.

In that He says: "The Word was made flesh," He shuts out the Father and Holy Ghost, and retains the Son alone; He says: The Word, who was in the beginning, has become flesh, not the Father, nor the Holy Ghost. The Father is not Mary's Son, nor the Holy Ghost either. These words we have not set down nor carried into the Gospel; but they have remained so from the beginning of the Church of Christ. If you now ask reason: why the Son and not the Father became man? it will surely not be able to tell you, yea, it becomes a fool over it. Therefore hear what the Holy Ghost says to you through St. John: The Word became man, and has suffered, and not the Father, etc. How this comes about, you shall believe, and not know nor understand, but save it up until that blessed day of our redemption.

Reason stumbles at this article, when it would measure and grasp it with its cleverness, and thinks: In the Godhead there is one undivided being; how then can the middle Person alone become man, and not all three? I could well be as clever as any heretic, if I would at my pleasure play the master with these words: "The Word was made flesh." It is called believing; not seeing, measuring, or grasping. In the Godhead there are three Persons: the Son is the Word, who was in the beginning: that same Word or Speech, not the Speaker, has become man; therefore we do not let the other two Persons be mingled into the manhood.

And dwelt among us.

That same Person, namely, GOD's Speech, or GOD's Son, when He became man, did not straightway go up to heaven, or hide Himself in a wilderness; but dwelt among us. This is not a spiritual indwelling, as Christ says, John 14:23: "We will come unto him, and make our abode with him;" but a neighborly, civil dwelling. That is to say: He had a dwelling, like any other man, went in and out, so that one could see Him walking in the streets and lanes, sitting, speaking with the people, going on the water; not in a secret, spiritual manner, but visibly among us. Just as when I am in the house, I have something to do, read, write, pray, eat, drink, wake, sleep, go out and in, like my neighbor. Just so He also conducted Himself, was brought up at Nazareth under Joseph and Mary, helped His father work, when He was grown: afterwards, in the thirtieth year of His age, He began to preach, and to do wonders. He chose 12 Apostles and other 70 disciples, and sent them out to preach. This the Evangelist means when he says: "And dwelt among us.

Take good heed of the Evangelist's word. He will not have the natures in the Person, who is true GOD and man, separated, of whom he has said: "In the beginning was the Word." And 1 John 1:1: "The Word of life, that was from the beginning." And soon after he says: "The Word was flesh. The same Word (he says), we have not only seen, but with our bodily eyes in the head have right well beheld, and also handled with our hands." Yet the same Word was (as you say) before any eye was created, how then do you say, you have seen Him? Do you not hear, He will have the Persons undivided; so that Mary bore not only a mere man, but at the same time the true, natural Son of GOD. When she saw her bodily son, she saw also the true Son of God, the Lord over all. Although her eyes do not reach to the Godhead; yet they reach to the Person, in whom two natures, divine and human, are inseparably united. As, when I see a man covered or veiled with a garment, I see nothing but the garment; yet the man is essentially and presently there. Again, you give another a purse full of gulden; the purse you see alone, and not the gulden, and yet the gulden are in it nevertheless. Much more is it so here, where GOD and man are one Person.

Origen compares this union of divine and human nature to a glowing iron. As fire heats through the iron for use, and mingles itself in the whole iron: so the eternal Word has taken human nature, and filled the same wholly with divine light and life, and human nature is thus wholly united with the Word, as an iron is penetrated with fire by heat and hammers.

And dwelt among us.

That is, He has become our brother, has done as another man. Therefore, whoever has touched Him, as St. John at the Supper, has touched the Son of GOD. So St. John lay in the arms of GOD: the Apostles and others, who heard Him preach, heard the voice of God. These and other texts are written for the strengthening of our faith, that the two natures in Christ shall not be separated. The man JESUS is not alone, but He is also the Word or the Son of GOD, who has become man, and has dwelt among us. So that you may rightly and truly say: The Son of GOD lies in the cradle, and lies in His mother's lap, lies in the bed, goes upon the earth, fetches His mother water, chips, bread, fish, etc. Afterwards, when He was grown, and had been a boy, He followed Joseph's trade. This I say with so many words, to admonish you that you take hold of this article well and impress it upon yourselves, on account of those who divide this Person. The Jews crucified not only the man Christ, but the true GOD and man; for He is one Person in two natures.

When Philip the Apostle desired of the LORD that He should show him and the other Apostles the Father (perhaps he had thoughts of the Father, that He was an old man, had a hoary beard, as Daniel 7:9), the LORD Christ answered thereupon and says, John 14:9: "Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me? Philip, he that hath seen me hath seen the Father." So St. John says here: The Lord has not only dwelt among us, but has become so near to us, that we have beheld Him quite plainly in the face. He, as it is written, has a black, brownish beard, brown eyes, and we have also touched Him with our hands, therefore He has not been a ghost.

If this article remains pure and unperverted, we can build firmly upon it, and recognize what a glorious, unspeakable treasure the Father has given us; otherwise we stand in the very danger in which Arius, the heretic, who took the Godhead from Christ, and Manichaeus, who robbed Him of the manhood, stood. Where it comes to that, this treasure is already lost; though one cry long: "Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given," etc. Is. 9:6. Likewise: "He gave himself for our sins," etc. Gal. 1:4. then they are but wretched husks or shells: the weight is gone, where the Godhead is lost in the Person of Christ, and then only a creature is given for our sins: and then the devil is mightier than we, and we must die in our sins and perish everlastingly. But when the husk is full, and this kernel is still in the shell, that the Son of GOD has given Himself for our sins; likewise, left His life as a ransom for us, and shed His blood, which is the blood of GOD, for us, then the weight is so strong, that it treads the serpent's head, and crushes it, destroys sin, strangles death, tears open and breaks down hell. But if the husk alone remains, we are bettered neither by His death nor resurrection: yea, if all the angels died for us, it would yet help us nothing. The Word (that is the true Son of GOD), who was in the beginning, must do it Himself; He is the weight that treads down sin and death and swallows them up forever, who is a poison and pestilence to the devil and hell.

Therefore He became man thus. [illegible] He did not soon vanish, or fly into heaven: but dwelt among us, like another man, had hands, fingers and all manner of members, as I and you have. "He spit on the blind man's eyes, laid his hand upon him, also upon his eyes, and made him see" Mark 8:23. Likewise John, in the 9th chapter, v. 6: "He spat on the ground, made clay of the spittle, and smeared the clay upon the eye of him that was blind