What is hidden before God is visible before the world, and what is hidden before the world is visible before God. “Which are the virtues (i. e. powers of being) of God? Infirmity, passion, cross, persecution: these are the weapons of God.” “The power of man is emptied by the cross, but in the weakness of the cross the Divine power is present.” And from this he says, about the state of man: “Being man means non-being, becoming being. It means being in privation, in possibility, in action. It means always being in sin, in justification, in justice. It means always being a sinner, a penitent, a just one.” Now this is paradoxical and it makes clear what Luther means with God. God can be seen only through the law of contrast.
This is confirmed by his idea of God when he goes to ontological considerations, as he does in his writings on the sacrament. He denies everything which can make God finite, or a being besides others.
“Nothing is small, God is even smaller. Nothing is so large, God is even larger. He is an unspeakable being, above and outside everything we can name and think. Who knows what that is, what is called ‘God’? It is over body, over spirit, over everything we can say, hear and think.”
And from this he makes the great statement that God is nearer to all creatures than they are to themselves. “God has found the way that His own Divine essence can be completely in all creatures, and in everyone especially, deeper, more internally, more present, than the creature is to itself and at the same time nowhere and cannot be comprehended by anyone, so that He embraces all things and is within them. God is at the same time in every piece of sand totally, and nevertheless in all, above all, and out of all creatures.”
