# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1860_S20
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 20 —

...humanity torn away from God, despairing, driven by sin, death, and
the devil into hell, and are to proclaim loudly and publicly that God
is reconciled through the blood of His Son, and now has nothing but
sheer love and goodness in mind toward them, and freely and gratis, for
Christ's sake, offers them forgiveness of all their sin, adoption as
children, blessedness, and everlasting heavenly glory — they need only
believe it. We are to ask and exhort them, in God's and Christ's
stead, that they now also let themselves be reconciled, and let go of
their shameful enmity and mistrust! We are to testify this to them
with such certainty of faith, with such joyfulness, out of the Word —
not, of course, in our own strength, but in the power of the Holy
Spirit, whose mouthpieces we are — that they may take good courage,
learn to believe, come to Christ, and in this faith find peace and
rest for their souls. And in this faith we are to strengthen them,
ground them, and fully equip them, through the continued testimony of
God's saving Gospel, so that they gain and keep a steadfast heart,
overcome sin, death, and the devil, and at last carry off the end of
faith, the salvation of their souls. That, that is our real office in
our congregations. And when we exercise the office of the Law, as
indeed we must, we should nevertheless bear in mind that it is a
foreign office, which we carry out only in passing, in order to be
able to carry out our real office. But it is in this latter that we
are to live; this we are to pursue with the genuine delight of our
whole new man, and all the more zealously when we must see and lament
how few are obedient to the Gospel. We are to attend to our office and
cry out God's grace and mercy in Christ. For His praise may not be
kept silent here on earth as long as it stands — even if the whole
world pays it no heed.

May the gracious and merciful God, especially in this wretched time,
fill us so fully with His grace that even under threats and
persecutions, indeed in the face of death, we joyfully cry out: "We
cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard." If this is
truly in earnest with us, as indeed it certainly should be, and if we
rightly acknowledge our own unfitness, then let us, calling upon our
Lord, learn from him who so testified and preached of God's counsel
for our salvation as one who had himself been present at it — and
that precisely because, after he himself had received mercy, he could
say of himself: "In my heart there reigns, and alone shall reign, this
article, namely, faith in my dear Lord Christ, which is the sole
beginning, middle, and end of all my spiritual and godly thoughts,
which I may have continually, day and night."

Now, if this admonition applies especially to us preachers, the
hearers are nevertheless not excluded from it. For we Christians
altogether are indeed the chosen generation, the royal priesthood, the
holy nation, the people for God's own possession, that we should
proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called us out of darkness
into His marvelous light. In the family, in the workplace, and
wherever we may find ourselves in our civic circumstances, there is
opportunity enough to fulfill this blessed calling. May the Lord make
everyone faithful in his