# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1855_S168
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

168 How Are Truly Lutheran Congregations Founded, etc.

on the one hand, and, on the other, the faith of man—worked beforehand, to be sure, by the Gospel—which grasps, appropriates, and holds fast this Christ and His merit from the Gospel proclaimed orally (or in writing). They do not testify sharply, clearly, and distinctly that, with respect to the act of obtaining salvation and the work of reconciliation and redemption accomplished by Christ once for all, all people have in fact, really, and truly been redeemed and reconciled—Cain, Esau, Balaam, Saul, and Judas just as much as Abel, Jacob, Moses, David, and John—even before they were born and the Gospel reached them; for thus it is written in Romans 5:18: “Therefore, as by the sin of one (namely, Adam) condemnation came upon all men, so also by the righteousness of One (that is, Christ) the justification of life came upon all men.” (Cf. 1 John 2:2; Isaiah 53:6; John 1:29.)

This sharp and clear distinction between evangelical grace as God’s giving hand and appropriating faith as man’s receiving hand is entirely characteristic of the churchly, or Lutheran, manner of preaching, which therefore is not at fault if someone should regard faith as a power that contributes meritoriously to the sinner’s justification before God. Yet no less characteristic of the Lutheran manner of preaching than this distinction between grace and faith is the scriptural union of the two: for just as surely as the reconciliation and redemption of the entire human race has truly been accomplished by the grace of God and through the merit of Christ prior to and apart from all faith, so surely can it be appropriated to the individual from the Gospel only through faith, so that Christ is born in him and, through the subsequent nourishment from the Gospel and the Holy Supper, grows in him, increases, takes shape, and reaches mature manhood.

And for the sake of such a union—for without appropriating faith Christ with His merit can no more enter the human soul than the illuminating sun can enter a blind or willfully closed eye, or wholesome food a person’s closed mouth—for the sake of such a union between Christ and faith, it is therefore also said and testified of the latter that it justifies, although essentially and properly only Christ does this, and His merit, through the grasping of the Gospel’s testimony concerning His meritorious life, suffering, and death, is imputed only to faith.

Now this doctrine of justifying faith, which encompasses the appropriation of all salvation in Christ from the means of grace, the Holy Gospel and the Sacraments, and from which alone the doctrine of good works and Christian virtues then flows—this doctrine is the precious, costly jewel and the glorious lamp that shines purely and clearly, unadulterated and undimmed, only in the Lutheran Church, and as it were unites within itself all the articles of saving doctrine; for just as every corruption of every fundamental arti-