# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1959_S38
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

DOCTRINAL ESSAY

article in the entire Christian doctrine, without which no poor
conscience can have any firm consolation or can truly know
the riches of the grace of Christ, as Dr. Luther also has
written:

“If this only article remains pure on the battle field, the
Christian Church also remains pure and in goodly harmony
and without any sects; but if it does not remain pure, it is
not possible that any error or fanatical spirit can be resisted.”
(Sol. Decl. III, 6; Triglot, 917)

Luther calls this article elsewhere “the teacher and chief, the
Lord, ruler, judge over all kinds of doctrines.” A Lutheran bishop
recently wrote about this article:

This article, whose roots lie in the Trinitarian dogma and in

the message of both the Old and New Testament, certainly is

not an article of faith among many others, like one green tree
among many greeen trees in the forest. It is rather that tree
which makes green all trees in the forest of articles of faith,
that which vitalizes and determines all articles of faith because
it makes audible to mankind the heartbeat of God in Jesus

Christ through the Holy Spirit. (Bishop Hermann Dietzfel-

biger, Informationsblatt fiir die Gemeinden in den Nieder-

oe Lutherischen Landeskirchen [September 1, 1956],

p.

It is this article which constitutes the heart and center of our
Lutheran Symbols from the Augsburg Confession to the Formula
of Concord.

But this teaching justification by faith without the deeds of
the Law not only brings about peace with God, it also becomes
in the hearts of those who individually have been justified by God
the great motive power for a life lived in accord with God’s will.
Those who have once tasted the love of God in Christ will also love
the brethren. Having become newborn children through the Sac-
rament of Holy Baptism, they also apply to themselves and seek
to conform to all the directives which God supplies in His doctrine
regarding the relation of parents to children, children to parents,
spouses to each other, employers to employees, citizens toward the
rulers of the state. They know that, having been baptized into
Christ and having put on Christ, “there is neither Jew nor Greek,
there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female,”
for they are “all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28). There are no
color and racial lines. They are eager also to do all in their power
to evangelize the world and to that end to support the church with
their time and gifts and talents. Thus divine doctrine, and the
acceptance of divine doctrine with all its many facets, never be-
comes for Christians who are alive in Christ a mere set of doc-
trinal formulations subscribed to and believed, but a powerful
dynamic for a consecrated life of holiness and service to their
fellow men.