# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_November 1855_S330
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

330 How Are Truly Lutheran Congregations Founded, etc.

...how, according to Galatians 5:5, even a little leaven leavens the whole lump — that is, how an error in doctrine inevitably draws other errors after it and tears apart the golden chain — and partly how it is from pure doctrine alone that the hearers' pure knowledge, sound faith, and genuine godliness depend and derive.

C. The Reproof of the Unrighteous.

By "the unrighteous" is understood here not merely transgressors of, and those who fail to keep, the seventh commandment, but of all the commandments of the Lord; for just as, in the sense of Scripture, righteousness is conformity with the Law and its fulfillment, according to its spiritual sense and content, so unrighteousness (according to 1 John 3:4) is any contradiction of the Law, whether in the form of transgression, that is, the doing of that which God does not will and therefore forbids, or in the form of omission, that is, the not-doing of that which God wills and therefore commands.

The reproof of the unrighteous accordingly extends as far as the commandments of God extend; but although in practice it is usually only particular sins in word and deed against particular commandments that present themselves for scriptural reproof, and find their correction with reference to the commandment in question and its right interpretation and application — nevertheless the inborn corruption of original sin underlies all these individual cases, and becomes manifest in these instances of sin just as the corrupt root of a wild fruit tree becomes manifest in its sour and woody fruit. And for this reason it belongs to the genuinely evangelical-churchly, that is, Lutheran, manner of a pastor's reproof, that in setting the sinfulness of the particular case before the offender, he at the same time point out to the one reproved his indwelling, original-sin corruption present in the specific transgression or omission of the particular commandment; for just as in the ordinary preaching of the Law, so also here in its application to particular individual cases, the pastor strives, both there and here, not only that the guilty party recognize the wrong of the particular instance of sin, seek forgiveness from God — and, where necessary, also from men — and thereafter abandon such sin, but that, through the occasion of this particular outbreak of indwelling original sin, he thoroughly recognize before God this unrighteousness that by nature clings to him, sincerely and painfully repent of it, confess it honestly before God, and, in burning hunger and thirst for the righteousness that avails before God, reach out after the one Savior and Redeemer, lay hold of Christ and his merit in true faith, appropriate it to himself, and abide therein — that is, that he be converted from the heart to the Shepherd and Bishop of his soul.

It cannot, after this indication, be our present purpose, as already remarked above, to enter here more closely into the pastoral treatment of individual sins against the particular divine commandments.

Only this one thing remains finally to be mentioned: that the Lutheran pastor, according to the evangelical spirit that animates him, upon this wide and