# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1872_S76
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 76 —

Here attention was drawn to Luther's saying that more souls are lost
through the sin of complacency [*Sicherheit*, false security] than through all
other sins and errors combined. This is the sin against which we especially
must be on our guard. If a person gives himself over to false security, he
becomes satisfied with himself; he keeps lowering his standards with regard
to his official duties; he thinks all too quickly that he has done enough and
more than enough, even though he has scarcely begun to do anything. One
should therefore always hold up before oneself what God's word demands
of us. Peter's word about the prowling lion that seeks to devour us should
never leave a preacher's mind. So too that word: "Work out the salvation
of your souls with fear and trembling." We are to live in daily watchfulness,
faithful in all things. In carelessness and false security lies a chief danger
for us. Because we hold the pure doctrine, we are in danger of already
relying on the mere possession of the pure doctrine. Ah, it is a wicked
stratagem of Satan when one lets oneself be made lazy and complacent by
the thought: everything depends on the pure doctrine and on God's grace,
and nothing at all depends on your own conduct!

It was further remarked that it is far harder to keep the treasure of
pure doctrine and of right faith and a godly life than it is to receive it in
the first place. Keeping it requires that, by God's grace, we also remain
faithful, that we apply all diligence — not only to retain the faith, but also
to grow and increase spiritually. It is a shattering word of the Lord where
he says: "To him who has, more will be given; but from him who has not,
even what he has will be taken away." Only then, therefore, do we truly
keep the treasure, when we also grow. In spiritual things there may never
be a standstill. A standstill is a relapse. Just as there is no standstill in
nature, so too there is none in the kingdom of God and of grace. Against
the enthusiasts [*Schwärmer*, religious enthusiasts/fanatics], however, we
preachers must indeed emphasize: man with all his skill can accomplish
nothing; but God's word is and remains a power of God, even, as our
forefathers used to say, if the devil himself were to preach it. But how
unfortunate would be the man who thought: if I only put forth the word,
without falsification, just as it comes to my mouth and pen, that is enough;
it is after all a power of God. With such an attitude we will not long keep
the treasure of the pure word.

Here it was further remarked: we younger preachers have not gone
through such hard spiritual struggles as the fathers of our Synod did. We
can scarcely imagine the magnitude of those struggles, since one had to
fight one's way through every possible error before reaching the full truth.
For that very reason we stand in all the greater danger of not valuing this
treasure of pure doctrine as we should, and of guarding it less faithfully
than our Synod fathers, who first had to win this treasure for themselves in
a wholly different way. —