# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_November 1856_S333
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

How are truly Lutheran congregations founded and raised up? 333

...has sinned against the individual, he must first of all guard against two things: first, that in the pending dispute he take up the private complaints of the one party or the other, that is, of the offending or the offended side (rather it is his duty, here as elsewhere, to reject in the most decided manner all tale-bearing of one individual against another, and to point the ostensibly or actually offended party to Christ's order in Matthew 18:15) — nor, when church discipline proceeds to the second degree, that of brotherly admonition and rebuke, that he himself be one of the co-admonishing witnesses; and then, that he refuse his pastoral mediation should, without any doing of his own, both parties in the course of the matter come to agree in seeking it. For if in this way a truly Christian and brotherly reconciliation can be brought about, then the purpose of love is achieved just as completely, and with, as it were, a lesser expenditure of means than if the matter had come before the congregation, and the bond of love between the shepherd and the sheep of Christ concerned is thereby all the more strengthened. Yet in this case it holds that the pastor must exercise due caution not to press the matter toward a peaceful settlement, but beforehand — also, where it is needful — with the wholesome sharpness of the Law, step by step, to instruct the consciences and to bring about a thorough, penitent recognition of sin in the guilty party, and thereafter to move heart and will to sincere confession and asking of forgiveness. For it is foolish, and acts in accordance neither with the Law nor with the Gospel, when, without such caution and care, the breach is, in a merely human way, only outwardly smeared over and patched, but not thoroughly healed within by the sharp caustic of the Law and the balm of the Gospel — since then, upon some slight outward occasion, the damage later breaks out all the more ruinously.

With regard now to the grosser, public scandals of individual congregation members, it is indeed certain that such must come before the congregation and, provided it has already matured far enough in Christian and churchly understanding, be dealt with by it. Yet it is by no means forbidden to the pastor — rather it is in keeping with the evangelical mind and spirit — beforehand to go to the sinner or to summon him to himself, in order to deal with him pastorally: whether it be to break, God willing, the temporary hardening that frequently sets in after a fall into sin, or, in the case of repentance already setting in, to let severity or comfort take place as circumstances require; but in any case to bring the guilty party to the point of first recognizing that a public scandal also demands a public satisfaction, and then to declare his willingness, overcoming all false shame, to render this satisfaction as well. For without such pastoral effort it could otherwise easily happen that, in the case of a hardening of the guilty party already having set in, he stubbornly refuses to come before the congregation, or even merely before the church council. But if the pastor honestly does his part, then the guilty party alone bears the fresh guilt of his refusal.