“Luther thought of the man outside grace as the ‘homo in se incurvatus’, the man inescapably imprisoned and entangled in himself. He believed, on the strength of the gospel, that to see oneself so was the work of the Holy Spirit….For the Holy Spirit convinces, not from illusions, but from realities we will not admit. He does so, too, when he lays bare to us our real sin, which is that we acquiesce in our own self-centredness, although we suffer under and complain of its consequences.”

Ernst Kasemann