Luther's Words: God must humble in order to exalt

God is the God of the humble, the miserable, the afflicted, the oppressed, and those who are reduced to absolutely nothing.  His way is to exalt the humble, to feed the hungry, to give sight to the blind, to comfort the miserable and the afflicted, to justify sinners, to give life to the dead, and to save the desperate and the damned.  For He is the almighty Creator, making everything out of nothing.  But that pernicious and pestilent opinion of self-righteousness - which will not be an unclean, miserable, and damned sinner, but righteous and holy - does not permit God to come to His own natural and proper work.  Therefore God must take this hammer, the Law, which shatters, breaks, crushes, and reduces to absolutely nothing this beast with its vain confidence, wisdom, righteousness, and power, so that it may finally learn from its misery that it is lost and damned. 

(What Luther Says, #2093)