Luther on John 20: 19-23

Luther, in his 1521 sermon comments on Jesus going through the locked doors.

This is going through closed doors, when he comes into the heart through the Word, not breaking nor displacing anything.  For when the Word of God comes, it neither injures the conscience, nor deranges the understanding of the heart and the external senses…Such is the power of the Word of God.  Thus we have two parts, preaching and believing.  His coming to us is preaching; his standing in our hearts in our hearts is faith.  For it is not sufficient that he stands before our eyes and ears; he must stand in the midst of us in our hearts, and offer and impart to us peace.

In the above paragraph Luther was comparing how God works through the Word and Faith in comparison to the radicals whom he refers to “as the false teachers…who break all the doors and windows, breaking through like thieves, leaving nothing whole and undamaged, and perverting, falsifying and injuring life, conscience, reason and the sense.  Christ does not do this.