# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Dezember 1856_S359
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

On the Doctrine of the Election of Grace and Some Matters Connected with It, etc. 359

you will still feel at the same time (that is, in repentance) a terrible
struggle of the law, of nature, of habit or long custom, and finally of the
whole world, which resists this faith and trust in blessedness. Therefore we
cannot make this faith by our own powers; it is no self-acquired faith, but,
as Paul says, it is God's gift and does not come from ourselves." Unambiguously
divine and human free working coincide here — how else could there be talk
of a deliberate sinning, for whose sake grace withdraws? Unambiguously a
resistible grace is taught here, since it has already begun to draw the
sinner to God; the passage is the most excellent explanation of what is
expressed in Phil. 2:12 following: "Work out your own salvation with fear
and trembling; for it is God who works in you both to will and to do
according to His good pleasure." Unambiguously God's cooperation in sin,
directed toward the good, is set forth here in unmistakable words. Let us
now make use of this meaningful hint and apply it to the case of the first
human beings: as God, from eternity, knew that such a fall, through His
grace (setting aside that it could not have taken place at all had God not
exempted man from the ranks of determined beings), would be the condition
for a far more perfect revelation of His power, wisdom, and love than would
occur without it — since, without prejudice to human freedom, it could be
prevented from occurring — and He, just as He foresaw him, resolved to grant
him existence: then we must judge only this, that evil is grounded in His
will, and yet this will is never directed toward evil but always toward the
good. Luther indicates this self-limitation, by which He leaves man to his
own decision, not obscurely, when against Erasmus, p. 57, he holds that the
cause of Adam's transgression was "because God's Spirit did not always hold
and press obedience upon him to give it, but rather let him stand upon
himself." Accordingly, at the moment of his own decision, did the
Omnipresent One indeed cooperate naturally, but not spiritually in the sense
that He was the ground and that transgression the necessary consequence —
rather the human spirit brought it forth out of itself — and is the guilt,
that he became evil, therefore imputed to man in conscience, even though
the nature and character of the one willing was originally good — (cf.
p. 84: "Not that God created the wickedness in him — — though indeed God
does not make sin," etc., etc. p. 86: "Therefore one must not think that —
God — so works in us that He creates anew evil in us, etc., etc. But
whoever wishes to understand it must understand it thus: that God works
evil in us, that is, through us: not that the guilt is God's, but the fault
is ours — although He does make use of evil, according to His wisdom, for
His honor and for our salvation," etc., etc. — wherein, in all this, one
must never lose out of...