Catechesis Notes for the Week—For God So Loved the World — “That there should be a God who would love the world and not begrudge it some good, is beyond all our ability to reason, comprehend, or understand. I would have wished for the world the fires of hell, and especially, I would do it if I were God, who knows the world inside and out. That is what I would do. But what does God do? Instead of his wrath, which the world has so richly deserved, he loves the world, and in such boundless and incomprehensible measure that he presents his very own Son as a gift to the world, his bitterest enemy… It would have been more than enough for God to wish the world ‘good morning.’ So he goes beyond this and loves the world, the disgraceful offspring. It is just about the most utterly hostile and ill-disposed contradiction. And in truth, that is what the world is: a pigsty of unabashedly evil people, who abuse all God’s creation in the most brazen way possible, blaspheme God, and provoke him to his face. These selfsame shameless people God loves. That is a love which transcends all love. This is truly a good God, and his love must be great, incomprehensible fire, greater by far than the fire which Moses saw in the bush, indeed greater by far than the fire of hell. Who would despair, seeing God is so disposed toward the world? It is too high and beyond my ability to elaborate on it, or to draw out the abundant riches that it truly contains.” Martin Luther

CP260531