538. IX. CONFESSION OUGHT TO BE MADE BEFORE THE LORD GOD THE SAVIOR, FOLLOWED BY SUPPLICATION FOR HELP AND THE POWER TO RESIST EVILS. The Lord God the Savior is to be approached because He is the God of heaven and earth, the Redeemer and Savior, to whom omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, mercy itself, and also justice, belong; also because man is His creature and the church is His sheepfold; also because in the New Testament He frequently commands men to approach, worship, and adore Him. That He alone is to be approached He has enjoined in the following words in John:
Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that entereth not through the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber; but he that entereth in through the door is the shepherd of the sheep, I am the door, through Me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall find pasture. The thief cometh not but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I came that they may have life, and may have abundance. I am the good shepherd (John 10:1-2, 9-11). That man is not "to climb up some other way" means that he is not to approach God the Father, because He is invisible and therefore inaccessible, and conjunction with Him is impossible; and this is why He Himself came into the world, and made Himself visible and accessible, and conjunction with Him possible; which was done solely that man might be saved. For unless in thought God is approached as a Man, every idea of God perishes; it falls as sight does when directed out upon the universe, that is, into empty nothingness, or into nature, or into what is met within nature. That God Himself, who from eternity is One, came into the world, is clearly evident from the birth of the Lord the Savior, in that He was conceived by the power of the Most High through the Holy Spirit, and from this conception His Human was born of the virgin Mary; from which it follows, that His soul was the Divine Itself that is called the Father (for God is indivisible); and that the Human born therefrom is the Human of God the Father, which is called the Son of God (Luke 1:32, 34, 35). From this again it follows that when the Lord God the Savior is approached, God the Father is approached also; therefore, to Philip asking Him to show them the Father, He replied:
He that seeth Me seeth the Father; how sayest thou then, show us the Father? Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me? Believe Me, that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me (John 14:6-11). But on these points more may be seen in the chapters on God; the Lord, the Holy Spirit, and the Trinity.
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