# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1855_S170
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

170 How Are Truly Lutheran Congregations Founded, etc.

presents works that, in their essential nature, flow by no means from the natural will of the unregenerate person, but from the justifying faith of the regenerate person, and are a demonstration of that faith toward other people, joined with the confession of Christ, manifesting themselves in the fulfillment of the holy Ten Commandments, and wrought by the Holy Spirit and by the new spiritual nature and will of Christians, which, like husband and wife, beget these spiritual children.

No less different, however, is the manner in which this doctrine is treated in the Lutheran Church from that of the papists and enthusiasts; for among them only the burden is laid upon the shoulder, and the driver’s rod is not lacking, together with the false enticement and promise that such work-righteous activity is meritorious before God. — The Lutheran manner of preaching good works, by contrast, has the genuinely evangelical character of eliciting, without force or compulsion, the works commanded by God in His Law as signs and testimonies of willing, grateful love in return, by richly portraying and setting forth the immeasurable love and grace of God, especially in accordance with the 2nd and 9th Articles. And because it strives above all to portray Christ to the believing Christian people as the example of good works—Christ, who has been made for us not only righteousness but also sanctification—it seeks especially thereby to awaken, preserve, and increase zeal and diligence in good works. Yet at the same time, following the example of John and James, it does not fail to show believers who profess faith with their lips but have no works that, from the absence of works in themselves, they must conclude that their professed faith in Christ is merely a vain appearance, an empty delusion, and a very dangerous self-deception, which, despite every hypocritical confession of the lips, results only in eternal damnation. For just as those who rely on works but have no faith, so also hypocritical believers who have no works are without true and living faith in Christ; therefore, they belong only outwardly to the congregation of the called and to the external fellowship of the divine Word and Sacrament, but not inwardly to the congregation of believers and saints. And just as the latter are indeed in the world but not of the world, so the former are indeed in the Church but not of the Church, and are in it only as weeds among the wheat, as rotten fish in the net, as the foolish virgins among the wise, as the man without a wedding garment among the guests adorned with one, and as vessels of dishonor in the great house. —

In the doctrine of good works, it is entirely characteristic of the Lutheran manner of preaching, in keeping with its evangelical character and nature, to set vividly and powerfully before the hearers the dignity and glory of a Christian according to his heavenly calling, as well as according to the sincere godliness of his conduct in which that calling manifests itself. It most decisively rebukes boasting and parading one’s church confession when that confession does not manifest itself in all kinds of fruits of the Spirit according to Galatians 5:22 and in all Christian