# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1855_S166
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

166 How Are Truly Lutheran Congregations Founded, etc.

Such is the nature of the biblical and Christian preaching of the Gospel. For it alone opens wide, like the gate of Paradise, to the sinner who rightly despairs of himself because of his nature, corrupted by original sin in body and soul, and who has been thoroughly convicted by the Law of his spiritual inability to do anything truly good—indeed, of his spiritual death—the free grace of God in Christ, which is neither earned nor can be earned, and the gates of the unfathomable and incomprehensible mercy of the heavenly Father toward His disobedient and apostate children on earth. It alone discloses to him the counsel of the Triune God, eternal Love, hidden in itself: in foresight of the lamentable fall into sin of the entire human race in Adam, to send the Son of God in the flesh so that, through His life, suffering, and death, which alone possess merit, and through His fully sufficient, substitutionary satisfaction, He might become the atonement for the sin of the whole world. It alone reveals in particular the abyss of the Father’s compassionate love toward His lost children, sinners, and enemies: He did not spare His own and only Son, the express image of His being and the radiance of His glory, but executed upon Him, the Innocent and Righteous One, the curse of the Law as the eternal and unalterable rule of His justice over us and toward us, so that He might spare us, the guilty and unrighteous, and show us grace instead of justice. This evangelical preaching alone is no less the joyful message of the reconciling and redeeming love of the Son, who allowed the sin of us all to be imputed to Him, paid the guilt of us all, and took upon Himself the punishment of us all, so that He might obtain and merit for us righteousness in place of sin, blessing in place of the curse, life in place of death, and salvation in place of damnation. It alone is the powerful working of God the Holy Spirit, who through it plants faith—and with faith, Christ and His merit—in the hearts of poor sinners, so that those who were condemned are declared righteous; those who were banished and outlawed become fellow citizens with the saints and members of God’s household; those who were lost and spiritually dead children become God’s recovered and spiritually living children; and those who were dwellings of the devil and his unclean spirits become the dwelling places and workshops of the Holy Spirit. Through this same means of grace, the Gospel, partly in oral speech and partly in written words, He now continues to renew, enlighten, fully prepare, strengthen, empower, and establish them, and by His power to preserve them for salvation.

And what, then, is the form—that is, the manner and way—in which the Lutheran Church presents this glorious Gospel of the great God, as the pillar and foundation of the truth, for the use and benefit of the congregations? In sum, it is this: that at all times it places this great and inexpressible deed of love and grace of the Triune God, according to all three articles, in its proper foreground and, to the best of its ability, depicts it before the souls of poor sinners as so mighty, lovely, sweet, inviting, and attractive that even the