The Self-Giving God

"These are the three persons and one God, who has given himself to us all wholly and completely, with all that he is and has." With these words, Martin Luther in his Confession of 1528 emphatically reaffirmed the Apostles' Creed in the words of his day, thereby confessing the heart and soul of the Christian faith. He did so through his focus on the terms "gift" and "endowment"—a focus which knows no like in the writings of any theologian before or after him and which is not replicated in any of his other writings, at least not with such succinct clarity.