Only one man did this, Jesus of Nazareth

Albrecht Peter's book on the Luther's Catechism, Volume 1, on the Ten Commandments is simply wonderful. Each page is full of insights.


The Creator nonetheless watches over the First Commandment, as well as over the entire First Table of the Decalogue, by always bearing witness to Himself in conscience as well as in nature and history—even in idols He does not permit His name to be blasphemed."' In this, the Creator God waits for the man who does not misplace what is majestically apparent in the images of the idols, who has not become immovably mired in ever), available worldly thing, who does not additionally debase the eternal Lord into being the pedestal of that person's own self-glory. The invisible God waits for the man who stretches out to him as his Father the hand of genuine childlike trust through all his life and death.

Only one man did this, Jesus of Nazareth. God confirmed and testified to it by raising Him from the dead. This is how this one also became for everybody else God's hand stretched out to them. At the same time, God here uncovered the ultimate depth of the original guilt of all men. It consists only in this: that we reject this hand of the invisible Creator and Redeemer as it is stretched out to us, either because we haughtily trust ourselves or because we timidly doubt it. The original sin of free will against the commandment of selfless love of God is thus ultimately the continuous no to our salvation in Jesus Christ alone. "Of all men, no one could think what the sin of the world is: not to believe in Christ Jesus, the crucified""'