"God, Just Tell Me You Love Me"

You say, "God ought to confess His love to me specifically; then I would believe Him and could be certain that it was intended for me. No, dear friend, He states in a general way that His Son and eternal life are promised and given to all the world. Therefore He excludes no one whatever. But he who excludes himself will have to answer for it. Says Christ: I do not intend to judge men; but their own mouth will judge them, because, while this gift was intended and given for the entire world, they nonetheless, contrary to God's Word, did not want to accept it. Their refusal to do so must be ascribed to their own unbelief.

Source: Quoted in Ewald M. Plass, What Luther Says, A Practical In-home Theology for the Active Christian. St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House. 1959 Edition, 10th Printing (1994), p. 609.