Luther on Galatians 1: Jesus the Mediator

"If you ask how God may be found, who justifies sinners, know that there is no other God besides this man Christ Jesus. Embrace Him, and forget about the nature of God. But these fanatics who exclude our Mediator in their dealings with God, do not believe me. Did not Christ Himself say: "I am the way, and the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me"? Without Christ there is no access to the Father, but futile rambling; no truth, but hypocrisy; no life, but eternal death."

A major aspect of Luther's argument is the concern over the turmoil of the burdened conscience. Luther experienced that turmoil personally, and it didn't end until he fixed his eyes upon Christ. Luther here aims at those who seek to be free of their weighty conscience, attempting to know God in a philosophical sort of way, with all of their sophistry, trying to pinpoint the particular aspects, characteristics, and nature of God in a platonic sort of way. Luther does not condemn the study of God's nature in every respect. He condemns the study of it by those who think by it salvation will come. He instead reiterates, over and over again, that the Gospel is purely personal. Jesus really is real. He's a real person, and a relationship with Him, as our Mediator, is the only way to know God and to find salvation.

And I wonder how many of us rely on our study of theology to be our sanctification, rather than to Jesus. We may be so heavily in the books that we're distracted from committing heinous outward sins, but we can be eaten away by an impersonal gospel, which is just as heinous. Books do not save and sanctify, and neither does the Bible by itself. Jesus of Nazareth does.