“For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.” (John 6:40)
How you must perceive, whether willingly or unwillingly, that the Ten Commandments are not the Son of God; also that all the holiness and righteousness displayed by the Jews are not the Son, but that the Son is something entirely apart form all the saintliness and the austere life of SS. Jerome, Ambrose, Augustine, or the entire papacy, and different from the good works and the asceticism of all the saints. Here is something far more exalted than the holiness of all that is called good works and the Ten Commandments, for these are not the Son. Even if you were to bring up the command to love God and my neighbor and obeying the Law, even then I would not yet see and have the Son. No, this is the will and the pleasure of the Father, this is what He insists on, that he who sees the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life. Would to God that this would penetrate our hearts! It has been stated clearly, plainly, and explicitly enough. If only we bore in mind that he who has the Son will have eternal life and forgiveness of sins and be delivered from death! You ask how you are to be delivered? Only by hearing and seeing the Son and believing in Him.
Luther’s Works, v. 23, 72