God's Miraculous Gift

The theme of Luther’s hymn was that God came to earth and sacrificed himself for us and should be praised because of it. In his hymn Luther uses many language devices, two of which are description and pathos, also known as emotion. Description is shown by saying “Not by human flesh and blood” in stanza two. It makes an image of the flesh and blood. When the hymn said “Boundless shall Thy kingdom be”, it also creates a picture in one’s mind of how endless God’s kingdom that is waiting for us will be. The second device, pathos, is shown when in the hymn it is said “Wondrous birth! O wondrous child of the virgin undefiled!” From this quote the author is exclaiming how magnificent that Christ came the way he did, and without sin. This stirs up some emotion for the wondrous things that without God would not be possible. Another example of pathos is when the author said “Marvel now, O heaven and earth, that the Lord chose such a birth.” He was saying how marvelous his birth was, that it was so humble that the Lord chose being born in a manger and how humbling that is to us.

A Compassionate or Harsh God?

In Borghardt’s sermon Jesus was mentioned 30 times in various forms such as Lamb, Christ, Jesus, and Lord.

The verbs were; makes us holy, slain, lives, died, rose, came, reigns, makes us alive, and made blessings for us.

The theme of Boghardt’s sermon was very different from John Edward’s. Bogheardt preached about how Christ died and saved us from our sins. He preached that we do not have to worry of the wrath of an angry God as long as we believe that Jesus died and rose to forgive us we will be in heaven with God. Boghardt focuses on loving God; while John Edward’s focuses more on scaring people in to following God. Edward's sermon spoke of how God is angry with us, that God only wishes to condemn us to hell because of how sinful we are.