# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1860_S7
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 7 —

...the Son of God humbled for the sake of their sin, to whom they are to
be conformed under the cross, so that the surpassing power may be God's,
and not their own.

III.

The way runs through sin to righteousness, through weakness to strength,
through shame to honor, through poverty to riches, through affliction to
joy, through death to life, through hell to heaven. Whoever has — that
is, whoever is found, at least at the time of God's reckoning, to have
and to be working with it, to be keeping and gaining with it — to him
will be given, so that he may have abundance. All things in creation
must serve for the good of those who are called, according to the
eternal purpose of their salvation, to love God. He Himself is for us a
full, overflowing fountain, a wide, broad sea of grace and blessedness,
if only we could be truly capable of receiving Him. What is given, more
and more, already here, to those who abide with Christ? Their faith
grows stronger; their union of love with the Lord and with the members
of His body becomes ever purer and more intimate; their hope grows ever
more living and more blessed; they themselves grow more certain of the
forgiveness of their sins, ever richer in every kind of good work and
unfeigned virtue. Word and Sacraments are the means by which the
certainty of their state of grace is not only conveyed but also
strengthened; the rest of the soul in God, the highest good, is worked
and furthered; the comfort in the troubles of their temporal life is
thereby sealed and increased; the overcoming of each of their spiritual
enemies is granted and made easier; and their faithfulness in abiding
with Jesus and following Him unto death is sustained. All inward and
outward sufferings are thereby sweetened, in that the Spirit of
testimony glorifies in their hearts the riches of Christ Jesus and the
precious, greatest promises of His glorious grace; thus preserves, in
the innermost ground of their hearts, the peace which justifying faith
gives; and intercedes for them before the Father, with sighs too deep
for words, according to what pleases Him. Wherever they sense and find
some lack within themselves — whether humility still comes too hard for
them, or meekness, or mercy, or devotion in prayer, or delight and love
for the divine Word, or the denial of the earthly mind and the drawing
toward the heavenly, the denial of the world — they ask it of the heart
of Jesus, especially when they receive the wondrous testament of His
incomprehensible love, of His body and blood sacrificed for us, and it
is given to them. The spiritual light grows brighter in them; their
convictions, their insight into the work of redemption, and their
experience in the ways of God become more accurate and more vivid; their
glad, childlike trust grows; their walk becomes wise and considered in
Christian evangelical freedom, and yet humbly obedient under the command
of the Most High; and ever more room is made for a composed, loving,
unaffected character. — What is the end of it? Death is swallowed up in
victory. Their names are recorded in the book of life; who will take
away what God has given them, who will blot out what He Himself has
written?