# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_November 1856_S336
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

336 How are truly Lutheran congregations founded and raised up?

...in which the authorities, to the exclusion of the subjects, hold the office of judge, administer law and justice, and, when necessary, for the protection of the righteous, remove the unrighteous even by the sword; but rather a congregation of God, in which no one other than the triune God rules — and indeed not, say, through the parish clergy as a kind of spiritual authority and ruling estate, but rather essentially and properly alone through His Word, which is certain and able to teach — and to which all members of the congregation, all citizens of the kingdom of God, be they teachers or hearers, must equally submit themselves, and which is also, in all church tribunals, the true and supreme Judge.

In the third place, the congregation, precisely as such, is reminded, precisely in this judging and deciding according to the Word of God, who through it carries out such an act, that it, although by grace a congregation of God, nevertheless consists of people who by nature are altogether sinners, and who here especially must take to heart the saying: "work out your salvation with fear and trembling," and "let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall."

In the fourth place, finally, it is impressed upon the congregation, precisely as such, before and during that act, that in this it performs not only a work of faith to the honor of God, but also a labor of love toward the soul of its sinning fellow-brother, who indeed belongs to all alike, as each individual member belongs to the whole body — partly in order to move him to repentance through brotherly admonition, rebuke, warning, threatening, entreaty, pleading, coaxing, and weeping; partly, should all this prove in vain, in order nevertheless to put him out from itself not for his eternal ruin but for his amendment, and to declare him a heathen and a publican, so that the seriousness and weight of this penalty may strike his conscience, break his hardened mind, and, through God's grace, help him to genuine repentance and conversion.

In truth, every Lutheran congregation of this land that has already begun to experience for itself this fourfold spiritual benefit in those instances will not be so foolish as to rob itself of it and to hand over its original evangelical rights — to judge and decide for itself according to God's Word, be it concerning the doctrine or the life of its members — into the hands of a narrow committee from its midst, whether it be called presbytery, or church council, or consistory, or church college, to be administered in its stead.

And it would be no less foolish were such a congregation, moreover with its incomparable doctrine, to give ear and room to the proposal of the Buffalo Synod and join it in forming a general church tribunal; for since the judgments of the same are supposed to be "actual judicial verdicts," such a congregation would thereby deny its evangelical rights, dearly purchased by Christ, and bind its conscience, first and last, not to God's Word as it stands, but to human judges. —