Alister McGrath described as “one of the most powerful and radical understandings of the nature of Christian theology which the church has ever known.”3 As such, this motif in Luther’s thought has commanded much interest.4 Yet there remains a correlative aspect of the “theology of the Cross” that attracts somewhat less attention in the secondary literature of Luther scholarship, namely, the Reformer’s understanding of cross-bearing. Luther was convinced that just as the Cross provides the substance