One obvious question is how Luther found his way out of the egocentric thinking of the world and of the professing Church at the time. The quote from below shows how this happened and it also informs us of the basic nature of the driving questions people have today. Jonathan Edwards spoke of how evangelism starts with recognition of the selfishness of human beings. That cannot be bypassed, and it can even be useful in talking to people in their fallen condition. No person that is interested in the absence of pain and the presence of the greatest good will want to go to hell. That is the place we start because that is the only place an unregenerate person can start. But the answer to the egocentric question must become, as it did with Luther, theocentric as indeed the Gospel is. We cannot stay with the egocentric question but move the issue to God.
“He himself began with an egocentric conception in his quest for a ‘gracious God.’ His problem was: ‘How can I attain such conformity with the Law of God that I may be sure of acceptance with Him and secure peace for my troubled mind and conscience? He found a gracious God, as we have seen, but not by the way he had sought, not by becoming worthy of God’s approval. Indeed, it was rather the gracious God who found him and took him to Himself, despite his unworthiness and sin. Luther did not win God’s favor by his merits, but God’s unmerited grace overmastered Luther and became the compelling force in his life. To his egocentric question, we might say, Luther received a theocentric answer, which became thenceforward his dominant and all-absorbing theme. We can certainly speak of a Copernican revolution here.” (Let God Be God! An Interpretation of the Theology of Martin Luther)
This is the cry of the penitent Publican in Luke 18:13. “But the tax collector, standing some distance away, was even unwilling to lift up his eyes to heaven, but was beating his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, the sinner!'” The tax collector saw his sin and that drove him to God asking for grace. This was the issue with Luther. He was a brilliant man who was trained in the legal field. He became a monk and was severe on his body with the whip and sleeping on cold floors in an effort to attain righteousness. It is said that he confessed sin to his confessor for hours. His brilliant mind had been opened by God to see to some degree the extent of the Law and he saw that the number of his sins were more numerous than he could imagine. But in seeking God to save him in the way of his own efforts, honesty and biblical training forced him to see that this was not possible. He was driven to a Gospel of grace alone. What we see, then, though for Luther this agony of soul lasted for years, was that his egocentric drive to obtain salvation drove him to the point where God opened his eyes to true grace. From then on Luther grew in his God-centeredness.
The Gospel of Jesus Christ is the Gospel of God and the Gospel of the glory of God. This Gospel is fully centered upon God and His glory. It is a Gospel of the cross of Christ where the glory of God shines forth through Jesus Christ. It is the Gospel of a resurrected Savior because now He lives in the souls of His people. The God-centered Savior that saves sinners will save them from their self-centeredness and be the life of God and God-centeredness in their souls. The Lord Jesus Christ who is the life of those He saves is thoroughly and perfectly God-centered. He is perfect in His love for the Father and His God-centeredness. He also has perfect love for His people and out of His love for the Father and for His people He will only do what is the very best for them. He will work a love for God in them which is to say that they will become God-centered.
We can see the awful nature of pride in the souls of human beings. Pride is so hideous that it will take a human soul and blind it to the truth of God and of self. It blinds souls to think that God must be gracious to them. It blinds souls to thinking that God loves them in a human-centered way and that His love will leave them in their self-centeredness and humanistic way of thinking. We would do well to focus on Isaiah 48:11 which says this: “For My own sake, for My own sake, I will act; For how can My name be profaned? And My glory I will not give to another.” That leads us to the prayer of the saints: “Not to us, O LORD, not to us, But to Your name give glory Because of Your lovingkindness, because of Your truth” (Psa 115:1). The cry of Luther’s life and writings echoed the cry and prayer of the psalmist. It was that no glory would be theirs but instead would be God’s. While the Pharisees sought the honor of others in their self-made religion, true Christianity flees from glory for self in order that it may all be God’s. After all, all true glory is His anyway.
God Loves... Himself 
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